The Turkey problem

[dimitris]

So if it's that easy to detect, track and get a firing solution on an F-35... why are both Russia and China developing stealth aircraft too?

Exactly. And it's not like Russia and China only have the technologies and systems mentioned by dimitris... And LOL ad using LOAL missiles with bistatic (or multistatic) radars or Su-35s receiving radar signals sent by another Su-35... Such things are so easy that nobody has done anything even remotely close to that yet....

Maybe my writing wasn't clear. I mean "They will perfect the placement of bistatic radars, fullstop.", i didn't mension missiles with bistatic radars. Spoting a stealth plane with low frequency or bistatic radars, firing a 3-4 missiles salvo at the general direction (2-4 miles accuracy) and let the missile heads do the lock-on is the best anti-stealth idea so far. Turning ideas to practice is Turkey problem we are talking about here.
For the Su35 to F35 to another Su35 signals.When an LM engineer was asked if the curved surfaces of the F35 is a stealth problem in a way that they do not "gather" the returning signals in a few directions (like the F-117) he answer "Yes we know that, but we assume that beside and behind the F35 there will be friendly forces". That will not be the case at the Turkey/Russia sea/airspace borders when both types will be flying.
Russians are one thing, Chinese are an other. Russians are Scandinavians, metallurgy is in their DNA, their mathematicians/software developers are at the top of the world, out of the box thinking is in their blood, they just lack good T/R modules. Chinese are good copy/pasters.

[blindpilot]

... Such things are so easy that nobody has done anything even remotely close to that yet....

.... Spoting a stealth plane with low frequency or bistatic radars, firing a 3-4 missiles salvo at the general direction (2-4 miles accuracy) and let the missile heads do the lock-on is the best anti-stealth idea so far....

Even if such a thing was remotely possible, and right now it's not, I am amazed at the blind spots of the "how to attack stealth" theories.

One theory example: Even though Russia Stronk et al can apparently totally negate MIssile defenses by throwing a few decoys in the warhead cluster. (with sensors that have solid target returns and data) it seems the stealth attacker is totally defeated by salvos into the void. Hmmmm ...

That answer is that, even if remotely possible in theory, this easily countered by the F-35 pilot sitting on bar stool in the O-Club. The bistatic low freq etc. super system detects "something" fickering in the returns and launches a salvo - - at...

A few hundred cheap MALD type decoys flying into the void. After these super smart defenders salvo all of their expensive super secret sensor missiles, (still missing virtually all of the cheap decoys btw), ...

The F-35 pilot downs one last beer, goes out to his aircraft and takes off into an airspace that has been depleted of defending missiles shooting at shadows.

This blind salvo idea seems to have a few short comings ... not the least of which would be running out of salvo missiles before any stealth aircraft has even started engines. Yeah just keep shooting salvos into the vast unknown ...

IMHO,
BP

PS MALD SAS can be set to look like an F117. So it's been done before.

[spazsinbad]

I want to be in your F-35 (mixed variants) squadron 'BP'. I think my flight gear would be slippers & dressing gown (timesaver) & a sipping cup (for the FAA Fleet Air Arm bearded ones).

[milosh]

So if it's that easy to detect, track and get a firing solution on an F-35... why are both Russia and China developing stealth aircraft too?

I didn't said it's easy - the opposite- it is the trillion dollar question. I said that, even without selling the S-400, they would have several good opportunities to see if and what kind of return signals they can get from various sources.
The Su-57 or the J-20 are not stealth the way F35 is. They just tried to reduce RCS from let's say 4m2 to less than 1m2. They have different war doctrines, the loss of a fighter jet/pilot is not unacceptable, like in US doctrines. It is not that they don't have the supercomputers (especially China) to solve the Ufimtsev equations for 2nd gen stealth (curved surfaces) they just dont want to spend that kind of money or compromise other plane characteristics to bring them to the F35 stealth level.

Nope.

Chinese stealth study from 2016 mentioned >0.5m2 median as normal value for modern stelath models they analyse, those models didn't take in account RAM&RAS, with RAM&RAS rcs would be noticable lower at least one magintude lower so we are talking about >0.05m2 for median RCS in most imporant segment of frontal RCS (30 or 45 left and right).

[white_lightning35]

Maybe my writing wasn't clear. I mean "They will perfect the placement of bistatic radars, fullstop.", i didn't mension missiles with bistatic radars. Spoting a stealth plane with low frequency or bistatic radars, firing a 3-4 missiles salvo at the general direction (2-4 miles accuracy) and let the missile heads do the lock-on is the best anti-stealth idea so far.

It is an idea, not really the best one. How many missiles are in a S-400 battery? Enough to fire 3-4 missiles in "the general direction" of a potential target many times? Doesn't seem very wise.

For the Su35 to F35 to another Su35 signals.When an LM engineer was asked if the curved surfaces of the F35 is a stealth problem in a way that they do not "gather" the returning signals in a few directions (like the F-117) he answer "Yes we know that, but we assume that beside and behind the F35 there will be friendly forces".

Would you please provide a source for that? Thanks. I just find it curious that he would say that while all prevailing information for LM and others is that the f-35 has all-aspect VLO, albeit with a larger RCS from some angles.

Russians are one thing, Chinese are an other. Russians are Scandinavians,

wrong

metallurgy is in their DNA,

I fail to see how

their mathematicians/software developers are at the top of the world, out of the box thinking is in their blood,

Yeah, we'll be seeing a Russian Silicon Valley in no time!... It's not like the best ones left for the real Silicon Valley.

they just lack good T/R modules. Chinese are good copy/pasters.

Both true

[marsavian]

The thing about curved surface stealth is that it limits the return signal in any one particular direction reducing spikes so even if you set up bi-static radars the returning signal will still be weak in whatever direction you picked it up. Surfaces like leading/trailing edges where spikes are unavoidable are usually treated with RAM to reduce those too. Also the smaller radar on the missile still has to get a lock. Stealth aircraft just defeat traditional radar technology, Electro-Optics/Infra-Red is the only real antidote to them.

[botsing]

firing a 3-4 missiles salvo at the general direction (2-4 miles accuracy) and let the missile heads do the lock-on is the best anti-stealth idea so far.

Right...

Spot the F-35 in the "general direction" of that 2 mile area:

F-35.png (2.67 KiB) Viewed 25107 times

Now imagine:

• The F-35's stealth will make it even harder for a (relatively small) missile seeker.
• The F-35 will spot those missiles the moment they are fired.
• If by pure luck a missile is fired perfectly in the right direction of the F-35, that same F-35 will take measure to move out of the way.
• That F-35 is not there alone.
• By firing those missiles you just identified yourself as a target.

It's pretty amazing that people come up with "anti-stealth solutions" but somehow forget that the stealth planes are active players too.

[XanderCrews]

. Russians are Scandinavians, metallurgy is in their DNA, their mathematicians/software developers are at the top of the world, out of the box thinking is in their blood

[XanderCrews]

Russia does not need to sell S-400 to "read" the F35's. It just needs political will from Turkey.
They can place only the S-400 radars (or others with same characteristics) at a warehouse, a container, in a forest, anywhere and do the job.
Moreover if they know the flight path of a F35 they can exploit the civil radiowaves (from 80Mhz radio to 800Mhz fullHD) and receive the signals at silent hidden stations in a truck or even a van. Then they will Know that when an F35 is at point A and a civil transmitter is at point B, they will receive a certain kind of signal at point C- the silent receive station.
They will read the F35's signature at, difficult to jam, low bands (HF to VHF) and they will perfect their lock after launch missile algorithms.
They will understand the F35's AESA LPO capabilities, and the Link16, GPS jamming opportunities.
They will perfect the location of bistatic radars.
Stealth planes reflect radiowaves to a few, other than the emitter, directions, they don't eliminate them. So if a Su35 flies over Black Sea at point A and a F35 flies over Turkey then a second Su35 at point B may receive the reflected X-band signal from the first Su. A big envelope of these readings could give the Know-how to fly 2 (or more) Sukhoi's to keep the F35 locked and -via triangulation and RTDS- produce fire solutions.
They will make the full envelope (day, night, clouds, mist etc) of the F35 IR signature. A 5000$ 2k IR camera near an airport can do this.
The acoustic signature envelope also matters. If a set of microphones catches the F135 sound then they will know the direction the sound comes, the speed of the source (dopler) and -approximately- the distance. If you fire a Mach 4 missile with good Kalman filters (with feed from several mics in a vast area) and an IR head (Russians have all of them) do you have good kill probabilities ? (Feel free to answer, i really dont know)

No

If the Russians can cyberwarfare down an RQ-170, God knows what they can do to ALIS.

If the Russians can collide and crash at airshows, god knows how theyll crash in war.

(false equivalence is a terrible thing)

[falcon.16]

I do not know what is waiting Trump for to cancel deliveries of F-35 to Turkey.

Maybe is a problem of some clausules on the contract and some penalties, because on this stage everybody knows Turkey will get the S-400 in Summer. So, it is not any debate, Trump need cancel this contract and LM need inmediately change location of the parts of the F-35 which was manufacturing Turkey to other country.

It is a very tired situation, and Erdogan it is not a reliable costumer.

This is a question for Nato too; maybe it will be necesary expulse to Turkey.

Some person who show support to Maduro can not stay inside Nato or inside democratic institutions.

TBH, I don’t think that the US wants to bring this issue to a head by doing anything irrevocable at this point. The report is due to Congress in Nov. By then several things will have happened; Turkey will have received the S-400 (or not), the US will have lined up subcontractors to replace Ayesas (only source for panoramic display), Kale’s share of blisk and other F135 parts, and TAI share of center fuselage. Several of the Turkish sourced parts are JV with US aerospace firms so most likely production will shift to US manufacturer. Elbit won the contract for the upgraded panoramic display in TR3 refresh so that might be a workaround.

Ergodan’s base responds positively to this brinkmanship with the US , but he’s walked back from threats previously. No one can argue Turkey’s been a reliable ally as of late. But, doing something as drastic as kicking them out of NATO, and cutting off all defense ties would have a disastrous effect on Turkey due to close ties with US defense firms, and a negative effect on US aerospace firms both military and commercial who source parts from US-Turkish Joint ventures. That’s not even touching the legal entanglements and possible compromise of US defense technology if we pushed them into the arms of Russia. I think it’s more likely the USG takes a “wait and see approach” while distancing itself as a supplier of weapons to Turkey. But, no, I think the odds of completing Turkish F-35 orders are slim at best and those two Turkish F-35’s never leave Luke.

I think USA have similar situation than it was Iran and sure Usa does not want to see as russian pilots fly F-35 same soviet pilots did with F-14 iranian tomcats.

Sooner or later they will take the final decition. I do not believe that all this issue is because USA dis not want sell patriot missiles time ago...i think it is excuses.

[falcon.16]

Russia does not need to sell S-400 to "read" the F35's. It just needs political will from Turkey.
They can place only the S-400 radars (or others with same characteristics) at a warehouse, a container, in a forest, anywhere and do the job.

Moreover if they know the flight path of a F35 they can exploit the civil radiowaves (from 80Mhz radio to 800Mhz fullHD) and receive the signals at silent hidden stations in a truck or even a van. Then they will Know that when an F35 is at point A and a civil transmitter is at point B, they will receive a certain kind of signal at point C- the silent receive station.
They will read the F35's signature at, difficult to jam, low bands (HF to VHF) and they will perfect their lock after launch missile algorithms.

They will understand the F35's AESA LPO capabilities, and the Link16, GPS jamming opportunities.
They will perfect the location of bistatic radars.

Stealth planes reflect radiowaves to a few, other than the emitter, directions, they don't eliminate them. So if a Su35 flies over Black Sea at point A and a F35 flies over Turkey then a second Su35 at point B may receive the reflected X-band signal from the first Su. A big envelope of these readings could give the Know-how to fly 2 (or more) Sukhoi's to keep the F35 locked and -via triangulation and RTDS- produce fire solutions.
They will make the full envelope (day, night, clouds, mist etc) of the F35 IR signature. A 5000$ 2k IR camera near an airport can do this.

The acoustic signature envelope also matters. If a set of microphones catches the F135 sound then they will know the direction the sound comes, the speed of the source (dopler) and -approximately- the distance. If you fire a Mach 4 missile with good Kalman filters (with feed from several mics in a vast area) and an IR head (Russians have all of them) do you have good kill probabilities ? (Feel free to answer, i really dont know)

If the Russians can cyberwarfare down an RQ-170, God knows what they can do to ALIS.
Russians can do all the above without selling the S-400. Even if they sell them i dont think they will turn them on in an F35 environment, to protect their secrets. Stealth planes are similar to coding machines. They are usefull as long as the enemy knows you have them but don't know how to crack them. Otherwise the F35 will be nothing more than an A-7 Corsair with gadgets...

You think all is very easy.


You never will know where is located one F-35, so it does not matter you have biestactic systems because will not know which lower signal as noise come from a F-35 and in the hypothetical case that you know it is a F-35 will be flying surely with luneberg pods. So, all data you are getting actually, in a real scenary war is the same than nothing.

But if you have some help from inside,....example Turkey, then you can get some good information.

[hornetfinn]

These great anti F-35 scenarios always go the same way:

- There is only one F-35 in the whole combat area
- That lonely F-35 is totally blind, deaf and mute
- That lonely F-35 can only fly straight and level no matter what happens
- That lonely F-35 has no means to attack enemy fighters or SAM systems
- That lonely F-35 does not have any countermeasures to enemy systems
- When enemy radar gets one return from F-35, it will instantly know it's F-35 and has not trouble engaging it
- VLO stealth doesn't somehow affect missile seekers
- etc.

Yes, that sure sounds realistic... Basically these scenarios consider F-35 as lesser version of F-117 against very latest technologies currently being developed.

Anyway even if Russia did get a good radar signature of F-35 with Turkish (or any other) S-400 radars, I don't think that would matter that much. They (and everybody else) already know that it has extremely small RCS and can manage the signature extremely well (with competent pilot) against enemy systems. They could model F-35 in simulations (and are definitely doing so) and possibly even with some special built drones with RCS and other characteristics in the right ballpark. That will just tell them that detecting, tracking and engaging such targets is very, very difficult. Which is no big surprise to anybody really.

[dimitris]

... Such things are so easy that nobody has done anything even remotely close to that yet....

.... Spoting a stealth plane with low frequency or bistatic radars, firing a 3-4 missiles salvo at the general direction (2-4 miles accuracy) and let the missile heads do the lock-on is the best anti-stealth idea so far....

Even if such a thing was remotely possible, and right now it's not, I am amazed at the blind spots of the "how to attack stealth" theories.

One theory example: Even though Russia Stronk et al can apparently totally negate MIssile defenses by throwing a few decoys in the warhead cluster. (with sensors that have solid target returns and data) it seems the stealth attacker is totally defeated by salvos into the void. Hmmmm ...

That answer is that, even if remotely possible in theory, this easily countered by the F-35 pilot sitting on bar stool in the O-Club. The bistatic low freq etc. super system detects "something" fickering in the returns and launches a salvo - - at...

A few hundred cheap MALD type decoys flying into the void. After these super smart defenders salvo all of their expensive super secret sensor missiles, (still missing virtually all of the cheap decoys btw), ...

The F-35 pilot downs one last beer, goes out to his aircraft and takes off into an airspace that has been depleted of defending missiles shooting at shadows.

This blind salvo idea seems to have a few short comings ... not the least of which would be running out of salvo missiles before any stealth aircraft has even started engines. Yeah just keep shooting salvos into the vast unknown ...

IMHO,
BP

PS MALD SAS can be set to look like an F117. So it's been done before.

I don't disagree with you, trying not to shoot at a decoy, a false DRFM target or, even worse, a silent friend is exactly where the game is playing right now.

At the latest Western missile attack at Syria, JASSM and SCALP where used. A Syrian SAM battery officer said that there screens where saturated with false targets and they tried, in junction with Russian officers at the S-400 batteries, to "clarify" them. The results are still unknown/classified. Also a week latter Syrian SAM's shoot at Israel's false targets.
The points i wanted to make are:

a) The Turkish air space is not "sterilised". Russian AWACS, radars, IR sensors, SAM's will monitor F35 flights/exercises over Turkey's airspace

b) If Russian's get -one way or another- at their hands a pilot's report of an F35 exercise - "If and how many decoys they launched, when the RADAR, E/W suite was ON/OFF, what happened wnen they tried to jam them e.t.c" they will have a short cut, backdoor access to do their job.

c) Russia don't need to sell S-400 to Turkey to do the above

I also agree with you about F35 pilots drinking beers. After the US-Russia retreat from medium range missiles treaty the next gen super/hyper sonic missiles won't need an F35/Su57 to carry them 200 miles from target. They will travel the first 1000 miles on their own.

[dimitris]

Maybe my writing wasn't clear. I mean "They will perfect the placement of bistatic radars, fullstop.", i didn't mension missiles with bistatic radars. Spoting a stealth plane with low frequency or bistatic radars, firing a 3-4 missiles salvo at the general direction (2-4 miles accuracy) and let the missile heads do the lock-on is the best anti-stealth idea so far.

It is an idea, not really the best one. How many missiles are in a S-400 battery? Enough to fire 3-4 missiles in "the general direction" of a potential target many times? Doesn't seem very wise.

The idea of a kill chain, using low frequency radars is that you dont lock the plane, you lock, let's say, a 2X2X2 miles block and you sent the missile there. When the missile "enetrs" this block at any given direction, then if: a) It can see/ lock the plane, b) can take the turn, then you may have a kill.

I think that all kind of radar-guided-end-game missiles can't to this against an F35 because a) it is stealth, b) it has a very powerfull E/W suite, c) usually radar missiles are heavier, less g capable.

On the other hand you may have good chanche with modern IR end-game missiles that are guided to the 2 miles block via low frequency radars mid course guidance because : a) gyroscopes to guide and mechanisms to "clear" clouds, clutter, sun are replaced by more capable/reliable 3D MEMS and software b) Modern dual-spectrum IR detectors are high-res, dont need a heavy cryogenic apparatus to work and can provide IFF by 3D matching c) These missiles have large angle off-bore sight and are 60+g, thrust vectoring capable.

Identifying true from false targets is the key and that's where Turkey's problem comes in

For the Su35 to F35 to another Su35 signals.When an LM engineer was asked if the curved surfaces of the F35 is a stealth problem in a way that they do not "gather" the returning signals in a few directions (like the F-117) he answer "Yes we know that, but we assume that beside and behind the F35 there will be friendly forces".

Would you please provide a source for that? Thanks. I just find it curious that he would say that while all prevailing information for LM and others is that the f-35 has all-aspect VLO, albeit with a larger RCS from some angles.

No i cant, just delete the LM word. The thing is that if a modern X-band radar emits, this signal reflects on a curved F35 surface (with no spikes but at a wide angle) and directs somewhere. If there happens to be another X-band receive radar then in a triangle you know one side (the distance between emit-receive radars) and two angles (the one that you emit and the one that you receive) so the triangle is solved. If the two radars can have real time data sharing, i think they can produce firing solution in X-band.

Russians are one thing, Chinese are an other. Russians are Scandinavians,

wrong

Their "birth" race, the Ros where Vikings. I dont want to write political/historical comments, you may find interesting the story of the Varangian guard, maybe the best elite force ever

metallurgy is in their DNA,

I fail to see how

Even today western mechanics can't produce oxygen rich combustion pre-chambers (and their sealants) for rocket motors, although US bought NK-33's (60's produced) and now RD-180's. They don't understand how at a 2700+Celsius, high pressure, oxygen rich environment metal alloys don't just melt / blow sealants. Cutting edge SPACE-X motors use dual chambers, just to solve the sealants problem.

Titanium alloy parts for Western air/space industry are ordered from Russia, for good - i suppose - reasons.

IF, and i say IF we believe Putin's announcement for nuclear powered cruise missiles, this is a whole new level in metallurgy/heat transfer technology.

their mathematicians/software developers are at the top of the world, out of the box thinking is in their blood,

Yeah, we'll be seeing a Russian Silicon Valley in no time!... It's not like the best ones left for the real Silicon Valley.

We are not talking commercial use, i'll just remind you that PESA techology and the maths behind wave interference were first seen at MIG-31 look down, shoot down radar.

they just lack good T/R modules. Chinese are good copy/pasters.

Both true

[falcon.16]

These great anti F-35 scenarios always go the same way:

- There is only one F-35 in the whole combat area
- That lonely F-35 is totally blind, deaf and mute
- That lonely F-35 can only fly straight and level no matter what happens
- That lonely F-35 has no means to attack enemy fighters or SAM systems
- That lonely F-35 does not have any countermeasures to enemy systems
- When enemy radar gets one return from F-35, it will instantly know it's F-35 and has not trouble engaging it
- VLO stealth doesn't somehow affect missile seekers
- etc.

Yes, that sure sounds realistic... Basically these scenarios consider F-35 as lesser version of F-117 against very latest technologies currently being developed.

Anyway even if Russia did get a good radar signature of F-35 with Turkish (or any other) S-400 radars, I don't think that would matter that much. They (and everybody else) already know that it has extremely small RCS and can manage the signature extremely well (with competent pilot) against enemy systems. They could model F-35 in simulations (and are definitely doing so) and possibly even with some special built drones with RCS and other characteristics in the right ballpark. That will just tell them that detecting, tracking and engaging such targets is very, very difficult. Which is no big surprise to anybody really.

Yes, in a real war scenario with many fighters around with much bigger rcs than F-35, with many electronic warfare going, many noise, to find an only F-35 will be same than find a litle needle in a big haystack.