Forum: F-35 Lightning II

Is it possible for one aircraft to act as a transmitter and another as a receiver?

I understand that with older radars which scan a wide area it would be hard to pinpoint a target that is reflecting a beam from a different source.

With AESA you'd think this would be possible because the beam-widths are thin which would allow a separate receiver to estimate where a reflecting object is a lot better.
Working out which beam actually hit the object for the purposes of triangulation would be a matter of timing and coordination between the computers on the transmitting and recieving aicraft.
I'm sure if there's any way to insert a unique signature into individual beams, this would make the process simpler.

I'm not sure if this is already used/possible, but with the way stealth aicraft are designed to redirect beams away from the source, this would be a way to counter that to some degree.

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Ofthen i was asking myself the same question. Probable whit a laser intra data flight comunication is possible to synchronize the two antennas.
Even more interesting, at that point, maybe they could also synchronize to act as a single-distribuited powerful aesa (event between three or more aircraft)

Wouldn't be much simpler to have each aircraft use it's own radar and share the data with each other? Or, how about one aircraft serving as mini AWACS and then using the data link to provide the information to the other? I think that's what F-22 and F-35 are meant to do.

I know that the SAAB Gripen was intended to (I am not sure if this ever became the case) be able to rapidly deploy from austere basing and engage targets that were being designated by either other Gripens, AWACS platforms, or ground based radar, Based on that, I would have to say that something along that nature must be possible, however it may just be that they were exchanging locations of hostile aircraft and shooting missiles based on target bearings, not actual radar locks.

This is different to just showing friendly aicraft what you see on your radar, that's a given. This is trasmitting your own beam then someone else receives it.

If you shoot a beam at a stealth aicraft coming at you head on, that beam and its scatter is not going to come directly back to you. If you transmit the beam and the refelected scatter off the enemy is received by one of your other colleagues who is flying away from and low for example, then you could possibly triangluate the position of the enemy.

This all assumes that the receiver can detect which direction some unexpected beam came from which I think they can.

Then the stealth A/C is already between the two non-stealthy fighters then the only thing keeping the non-stealth alive would probably be the rules of engagement.

Of course I think there's people in this forum more qualified than me.

Bi-static radar is an existing radar system similar to what was discussed. The transmitter & receiver are not co-located, however, their relative positions are fixed which allows them to calculate beam travel times. With moving transmitter & receiver you'd have to have some way of sharing extremely accurate location information real-time.

Remember also that the receiving aircraft will be getting "millions" of returns for each "ping".

AESA will cut this down to "thousands".

munny wrote:

This is different to just showing friendly aicraft what you see on your radar, that's a given. This is trasmitting your own beam then someone else receives it.

If you shoot a beam at a stealth aicraft coming at you head on, that beam and its scatter is not going to come directly back to you. If you transmit the beam and the refelected scatter off the enemy is received by one of your other colleagues who is flying away from and low for example, then you could possibly triangluate the position of the enemy.

This all assumes that the receiver can detect which direction some unexpected beam came from which I think they can.

However, when this beam is scattered, is it weakened at the same time? Wouldnt a hypothetical reciever have to be incredibly close to the intended target to even attempt to pick up this weakened scatter?

kingalbert wrote:

Bi-static radar is an existing radar system similar to what was discussed. The transmitter & receiver are not co-located, however, their relative positions are fixed which allows them to calculate beam travel times. With moving transmitter & receiver you'd have to have some way of sharing extremely accurate location information real-time.

Thanks for putting me onto the right terminology. I did a search on bi-static radar and two aircraft and it appears variations of this are already patented.

The method I described was patented in 1986 while in 2003 a different method which involved multiple satellites in orbit acting as transmitters and receivers was patented. This would be a nice system considering the lack of RCS management on the top of aircraft.

It seems that the main hurdle to overcome is getting the 2 aicraft to constantly advise each other of relative location (which you would think is easy with today's GPS technology...laser comms...etc).

Forum: F-35 Lightning II

Can one aircraft act as a transmitter and other as receiver?