Is there a place for Traditional CAS in the 21st century?

"Paul F Austin" wrote in message
.. .

"Thomas Schoene" wrote
Paul F Austin wrote:

When I first looked at F-35, it seemed a looong step backward in
terms of situational awareness, with virtually no rear-quadrant
visibility. DAS promises to fix that. If it works for F-35 then it
should work for UCAVs.

The bandwidth issue is still a real concern. That's a lot of data to
transmit via long-range RF signal, and there's already lots of
competition
for the spectrum. What's possible to do by wire or fiber inside the
aircraft may not be practical via radio to a remote operator.

TCDL provides 200Kbps downlink/10Mbps uplink service. That's adequate for
this kind of situatuational awareness. More downlink would allow more raw

For how many nodes/UCAVs at once?

data but in this case, the fusion of the six DAS thermal cameras occurs
on-board and only the FOV in the direction the user's HMS is pointed at
need
be downlinked. CDL provides uplink services at various rates from T1 up to
256Mbps but that's overkill. CDL also lacks the total system capacity that
would be required. Today. The USAF is busy expanding the satellite comm
network capacity in anticipation of increased traffic.