
optimist wrote:I've seen this said, that seems more like it, because of a very narrow field of view.
"You scan the horizon and look into the night through a straw and may see shadows of the one or two..
etc. etc."
Would radar modes normally give you where you want to look, for a wider search?
Along the path of looking at what 5th Gen sensor fusion is.(ie. not 4th Gen track amalgamation), this is not meant as being a snarky answer. While the premise statement is true, the reality is that the followup question is a 4th Gen question. It has no meaning in a 5th Gen world.
Fifth Gen is an ecosystem, not a bag full of components with measurements. At that level, I suppose for the F-35... DAS, Barracuda et al provides the 360 degree spherical aspect. But beyond that the very operation of the sensor fusion package directs wide angle and narrow beam sensors and data seamlessly as one system to create that ecosystem. There really is no wide angle searching and fine beam tracking for those narrow purposes. The ecosystem builds itself, with the data available. That data may be totally from off platform, and not using any systems on the aircraft other than the MADL comm link. But it will sort of look like it came from an all seeing sensor on the aircraft. That's an ecosystem.
In that regard the F-35 does not search, nor track, nor target ... the system does, and then presents the world to the pilot. The pilot's account of what it was like to fly the first Israeli F-35 into the Middle East is filled with outright awe of this characteristic. All of these concepts are beyond what the eurocanards do in the realm of "sensor fusion." The F-35 is "not in Kansas anymore Toto."
MHO,
BP
PS Israel account - https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/origin ... ority.html
Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel ... In a farewell interview with Haaretz, ... said. “There are some things you only learn on your feet. This happens with every plane that we add. But when you take off in this jet from Nevatim [IAF base], you can’t believe it. When you ascend to around 5,000 feet, the entire Middle East is yours at the cockpit. It is unbelievable what you can see. The American pilots that come to us didn’t experience that because they fly there, in Arizona, in Florida. Here they suddenly see the Middle East as a fighting zone. The threats, the various players, are in short range as well as in long range. Only then do you grasp the tremendous potential this machine has. We already see it with our own eyes.”