Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

An oft-repeated claim of Pierre Sprey and his supporters is that the Raptor "betrays its position as soon as it turns its radar on." Is there any truth to this? I thought the whole point of an AESA radar is that it's very difficult to intercept and to jam (aside from its superior detection and tracking capabilities).

F-16.net Sponsor

icemaverick wrote:

An oft-repeated claim of Pierre Sprey and his supporters is that the Raptor "betrays its position as soon as it turns its radar on." Is there any truth to this? I thought the whole point of an AESA radar is that it's very difficult to intercept and to jam (aside from its superior detection and tracking capabilities).

I suppose it's possible, but the likelihood is very slim. Exactly as you said, AESA is designed to be LPI. Also, what exactly is Sprey trying to accomplish with this?? At least APA had some kind of vested interest in keeping the F-111 over the F-35 (allegedly his company would handle the upgrades...right Laughing

)

Sprey apparently thinks that stealth is useless, and that all aircraft research should go into mass producing A-10's and light-weight supermanuveralbe day fighters.
Actually, he seems to be stuck on the idea that missiles are useless, deep strikes on infrastructure are useless, and that CAS can only be accomplished by strafing.

He's trying to relive his youth

To me Mr. Sprey is like alot of old hats. A very smart man with lots of great ideas and lots of solid credentials. BUT! Who is qouted too often on every aviation topic available. His time has past and he is now a man who is almost entirely irrelevant. I respect his oppinions on aviation topics but that does not mean his word is law. If everyone had listened to Kelly Johnson there never would have been a F-117. New blood find new ideas and can take valuable lessons from the past in pushing forward.

He said if effective missiles are ever developed they should be delivered by transports.

shingen wrote:

He said if effective missiles are ever developed they should be delivered by transports.

Well, I have read that they are testing a system to launch AMRAAMS from the ground as SAMs...

That is a well established system for a medium range SAM called NASAMS and the cancelled CLAWS/SLAMRAAM.

SpudmanWP wrote:

That is a well established system for a medium range SAM called NASAMS and the cancelled CLAWS/SLAMRAAM.

Interesting. I guess the article I read was just about the Marines starting to use them recently.

Just type in NASAM II on Wiki. We have tested it several time here on my island(Andøya) in Northern Norway. The system acctual works.

AESA by its nature is extremely hard to detect in a jamming environment. From what I've read AESA works by running teams of TR mods at different frequencies, modulation, polarity and pulse width, all pretty standard ways of making signal detection and location more difficult. The signals each team emits are not very strong and can get lost in all the EW noise in the area (just another signal). The AESA digitally integrates all the weak, noisy return signals it gets back into a single coherent image.

In a heavy jamming environment, the AESA is just another voice in the crowd. Its signals will also change properties from pulse to pulse as well.

Obviously the force who can generate more noise and more widely distributed noise will benefit most from the AESA's properties. I suspect this is why the MALDJ is getting the go ahead. Having 100's or even thousands of mobile noise generators flying around in a theatre will certainly help all the AESA equipped aircraft.

The thin beam widths used also make physical interception less likely as well.

Part of F-22's systematic beauty is that it offers such powerful passive detection capabilities. Even against a nation with supercomputers tasked with tracking each F-22's unique radar signatures, bet on this across multiple upgrades and parts swaps, the F-22 can still and it will operate "dark". It doesn't need AN/APG-77 until launch time and, by then, the opponent will have scant opportunity to notice and evade. Pair F-22 and F-35 and the enemy is going to lose the exchange ratio by a lot. 0.02

icemaverick wrote:

An oft-repeated claim of Pierre Sprey and his supporters is that the Raptor "betrays its position as soon as it turns its radar on." Is there any truth to this? I thought the whole point of an AESA radar is that it's very difficult to intercept and to jam (aside from its superior detection and tracking capabilities).

During the gulf war F-117s were detected from the explosions when they dropped bombs on targets Very Happy

This was insufficient to direct AAA fire at the F-117 and so the Iraqis fired AAA blindly into the sky.

The F-22 radar is very difficult to detect. I haven't heard anything to suggest the radar warning receiver in other jets detects the F-22. If Sprey's assertion had any basis, there would be more kills against F-22s during exercises, once the other jet knew the F-22 had targeted them within visual range. Most reports say the pilots didn't know the F-22 was behind them until after they were 'killed'

It betrays its position to those who have an RWR capable of reliably detecting LPI radars. Let me know when someone has one.

Would be interesting to test it against a couple Growler-lites with updated ALQ-218 and see if a rough geo-location vs LPI AESA is in fact possible, especially when cueing long-range IRST as a cumulative search component? Well, one could hope there is such detection and location capability in the works, by either USAF or USN(?), as it will very likely be required within the next 8-10 yrs or so.

Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

Can the Raptor's radar be geo-located?