alphaxraylima wrote:Likely, but at that point you would have a situation we're both sides have more or less the same information, a X-band radio transmission, one from the F-35 radar and the other from the jammer.
Not really, because the radar doesn't illuminate all targets at once, all the times. Radar scan its field of regard, by each beam position, one by one, then move on to the next position. In other words, you sorta track your adversary one by one if that make sense.
Like this: You see the whole 120 degrees field of regard, is not illuminated at the same time.


On the other hand, for support jamming, you would want to flood all adversary radars in the area with noise so none of them can detect your friends. You can track your enemy one by one with radar but you can't jam your enemy one by one with support jamming. Does that make sense?. let say if they have 10 aircraft and you are only jamming fighter A, then fighter B , C, D, E , F can alternatively take the role of using their radar. And the location of your squadron can be found. So you have to jam all to prevent that. As a result, the jamming beam has to be larger and the operating period have to be greater
In addition, do you intend to active jamming or reactive jamming? If your jammer is only reacted aka only transmit if it detects APG-81's pulse, then your formation is at risk from first pulse detection. In simple words, same as SAM, F-35 remain silent and only transmit once in a while. If that pulse is transmitted when the formation is sufficiently close then all your Gripen will be detected. By contrast, if you set one of your Gripen as support jammer, and he has to transmit all the time regardless of whether any APG-81's pulse is detected or not then F-35 squadron will have a much more stable passive track of Gripen NG jammer, than Gripen NG squadron's passive track of APG-81 radar, and they can start to attack it.
Secondly, Gripen with 3 EFT will be detected from pretty long range, and i suspect the burn through distance will be quite long as well
alphaxraylima wrote:I was not referring as much to the power or size of the radar as I was of the jammer itself. Most AESA radars can be used as jammers, and these will, in the case of pretty much all modern fighters, be X-band. This, combined with the fact that the radar is probably the single largest available transmitter on most fighters will mean that the frequency band that an AESA radar equipped fighter will be able to most effectively jam is the same that radar is intended for.
AESA radar can jam at others frequency as well
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4823136alphaxraylima wrote:On just internal fuel the F-35 is probably the fighter with the longest range, no question about that. The other ones are intended to use external tanks. In that situation the Rafale probably has the furthest reach. The Gripen E, configured with two 450 gallon EFTs, two BRU-61s with SDBs, three AIM-120s, two AIM-9s and a targeting pod would have a very slight advantage in fuel fraction over the F/A-18C carrying the same air-to-ground ordnance load but with two fewer AIM-120s and three 330 gallon EFTs. If my memory serves that image is actually from a presentation made by Dassault so I would take it with a grain of salt when it comes to the performance of the other two aircraft.
According to what can be found on Saab's website the air-to-air combat radius of the Gripen E is 1500 km with 30 minutes of on station time. Like you pointed out that is most likely with three EFTs (two 450 gallon tanks under the wings and one 300 gallon centreline tank), two IRIS-Ts and two BVR missiles. The Gripen E uses basically the same F414 engine as the Super Hornet so going by the range and endurance charts in the F/A-18E/F flight manual 30 minutes of flight at a maximum endurance speed translates to over 400 km at optimum cruise (at the same altitude) which is how I came up with the 1700 km maximum combat radius. Assuming that replacing the centreline fuel tank with two BVR missiles doesn't change the total drag index of the aircraft (which would result in a conservative estimation based on the F-16C/D flight manual) the Gripen E should have a combat radius of about 1550 km with two 450 gallon EFTs, four BVR missiles and two wingtip IR missiles (going by the change in fuel fraction). Which is similar to claims made for the SH, which is 1490 km with the same missile load and three 480 gallon EFTs. Obvious exclaimer, most of this last paragraph are based on my own speculations and calculations but I don't think they are too unreasonable.
I don't have F-18 E/F manual with me, so if you can supply it, it would be great.
Anyway,
1-You said "30 minutes of flight at a maximum endurance speed translates to over 400 km" what is the load out of F-18 in that condition?
2- Missiles close together are more draggy then when they are far apart due to interference drag, if you look at F-16 manual, you will notice that centerline tank drag index is different when station 4-6 are loaded vs when they aren't. So most likey 2 AIM-120 in Gripen centerline will be more draggy than when they are on F-16 outer hard point.