Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

Even ruskie fighters have been doing (passive) beamforming for years.

BTW: The Eurofighter is a little better than a stock Amiga 500, as it is at Macintosh II levels of CPU. (Gonna party like it's 1987.)

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My bad TEG, I wasn't clear enough in my pondering an 'F414 EDE-TYPE-equivalent' engine upgrade for the Euro Fighter. Not an actual F414 EDE for the EF Wink

Thanks for input always, sir.

Meteor is a promising weapon, but its radar will be its chief limitation. It will end up with a missile that can kill from 60 nm away yet won't even be able to reliable detect a Super Hornet from that far away so a missile is useless without significant data from datalinks.

They don't have to detect SH, just the Su which should be easier with that RCS.

Still, radar range and tracking abilities would be the limiting factor not the missiles used which is sad. You would be able to shoot farther than you could see.

Don't active radar missiles mostly use their internal radar for terminal guidance anyway?

yes, they use parent or third party targeting data for mid-course guidance

Yes, but what I am saying is that you need to be able to see something 60 miles away to get the necessary target data for the meteor in order to fire it. Without significant datalink help from other fighters it will be impossible for the Eurofighter to take full advantage of the range and power of the meteor. What I'm saying is that the range that you can detect, track, and engage with meteor is reduced not by your missile's limited range, but by your own fire control radar. If the fire control radar can see farther than you can shoot, then once you get within tracking range and eventually the missile's range you can fire and guide your missile until it pitbulls. With an old mechanically scanned array your tracking range is only a fraction of the effective range of the meteor and as such you can't shoot until you're within, say, 30 miles of the target. That's half the effective range of the meteor.

It's just so much better when the effective range of your weapons isn't limited by what is responsible for programming said weapons in the first place.

hcobb wrote:

BTW: The Eurofighter is a little better than a stock Amiga 500, as it is at Macintosh II levels of CPU. (Gonna party like it's 1987.)

Actually a pair of 1987 Mac IIs.

Each of the F-22's Common Integrated Processors has the CPUs of an entire office worth of 1994 Power Macs and instead of math coprocessors they have a virtual supercomputer's worth of i960 DSPs.

http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/f22_cip/

And the Raptor doesn't hold a candle to the F-35's CPUs of course.

The claim is that the CAPTOR has tremendous capability for an MSA so it would be nice to see some data for the tracking range.

Even without AESA the Meteor is good because it's overkill against the T-10 armed with R-77. There's simply no way an R-77 equipped T-10 series can compete with a Typhoon armed with Meteor.

If they want to go against more competent opposition they do need the AESA.

I wonder how much AESA work you can do for the cost of 3 extra assembly lines. (That built a total of 700 planes BTW).

shingen wrote:

The claim is that the CAPTOR has tremendous capability for an MSA so it would be nice to see some data for the tracking range.

Stated tracking range against a 5 sqm target is reportedly more than 160 km. Certainly dependent on the background.

Scorpion82 wrote:

Stated tracking range against a 5 sqm target is reportedly more than 160 km. Certainly dependent on the background.

The radar formula says that range varies as the fourth root of RCS so...

EF sees Baby Seal head on at (0.0015 / 5)^0.25 = 13% of 160 km or 21 km.

Hence go for the AMRAAM kill, instead of the Sidewinder.

Scorpion82 wrote:

shingen wrote:

The claim is that the CAPTOR has tremendous capability for an MSA so it would be nice to see some data for the tracking range.

Stated tracking range against a 5 sqm target is reportedly more than 160 km. Certainly dependent on the background.

That's the kind of numbers I've seen thrown around. So, if they're not trying to do A2A and A2G at the same time, nor are they trying to detect LO targets, what's the big rush for AESA?

It seems they could probably handle a Su-35 with CAPTOR and AMRAAM.

The partner nations themselves have no pressing need for an AESA radar, but it is desirable. The main driver for an AESA radar are the requirements of potential export customers. Furthermore an AESA radar is required to remain competitive. With the proliferation of AESA based ECM systems dated MSAs are at risk to become too vulnerable and thus ineffective in jammed environments. The RAF is particularly interested in the EA capability to provide the Typhoon with certain SEAD capabilities to replace the ALARM which is due for retirement in the near future.

Do you agree that the AESA and Meteor alone should cut it, no need for "silent"?

Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

Silent Typhoon?