In article , "Paul F Austin"
wrote:

"WaltBJ" wrote
Yes, I understand all that - but I maintain today, as I have in the
past, that it will not be long before turning on a radar set will be
tantamount to suicide. And, yes, I know about LPI radars. But the one
thing about a long-range radar is that it has to radiate power, and
one side can detect the other's transmitter long before they
themselves are detected. Now add space elint to the equation,
GPS/Inertial guided missiles with ecm terminal homing and blithely
boring holes with the radar on will quickly go out of fashion. Even
more so, radar ground sites in known/easily pin-pointed stations.
Boats, too, for that matter. Might as well have a huge neon sign
saying "Hit me". Even in 1960 we had missiles that could switch to ecm
home; not much of a step to homing on AI radar with our progress in
micro processors. Now bring in satellite elint and direction . . .

Fortunately, F22s or F35s in operation won't do that. Both aircraft have
intraflight datalinks for cross-linking data among aircraft as well as other
links for e.g. downloading the take from RJs and satellite sensors. The
IFDLs allow a flight of F22s to share the radar duty cycle across multiple
aircraft in whatever strategy most suits the occasion, meaning that any ESM
location data on a particular emitter ages fast, especially if it's cruising
at M1.5. All the GPS in the world does you no good if you lose location
awareness on the target .

It's good to see that Lockheed is catching up to Sweden.


As an aside, F35s will have not two but seven IR cameras. The FLIR EOTS
sensor is augmented by a six-camera Distributed Aperature System of IR
sensors that gives the pilot a 4pi steradian field of view, including places
where aircraft structure gets in the way.

Very cool system BTW.

--
Harry Andreas
Engineering raconteur