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

"Paul F Austin" wrote in message
.. .

"John Keeney" wrote

"Paul F Austin" wrote ...

"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?

One for each TCDL link. What's your point?

That if you have 100 UCAVs that need to be engaged that you need your
down & up links to be able to handle 100 UCAVs at once. Granted, most
planes currently are loitering to await their turn at a target. But they can
all engage at once if sufficient targets present themselves. If your UCAV
control link is limited to a half dozen planes concurrently you've opened
yourself up to saturation tactics.