Franco-German next generation fighter

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. Don't be that medieval knight who enters the battle expecting his shiny ECM armor to protect him from the long bow and musketoon. The best way to survive is to remain unseen until it is too late for an unwary opponent to react (a la Richtofen and Hartman).

Why not both
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Why assume VLO airplanes operate alone? F-22 certainly does not and it has been known for years that F-35 was designed to fight as a 4-ship. ESM is the primary sensor and is capable of generating a weapons quality targeting solution. You can guess the detectable last chance IFF ping before the missile shot is not going to come from the shooter, but from a flight mate in a safe location and completely different bearing. Look right while getting sucker punched from the left.

Don't underestimate the ECCM of the missile, its ability to switch to HOJ and missile end game support from any of the flight members. That is why the latest AAMs have 2-way data links.

Every move has well thought through counter moves. Don't be that medieval knight who enters the battle expecting his shiny ECM armor to protect him from the long bow and musketoon. The best way to survive is to remain unseen until it is too late for an unwary opponent to react (a la Richtofen and Hartman).

First of all allow me to point out that I don't assume any plane operates alone, but that is the kind of scenario often represented on the internet and media where amateur comparisons between weapons systems take place and hence the starting point before talking about supporting assets and tactics.

Some comments to your points:

1. A partner plane in safe position will guide the missile and perform IFF interrogation. True. But what about radar flare when weapons bays are opened and missile is launched? Wouldn't this give away the position of the attacking plane?
2. ECCM exits... both sides. So as said, it is a matter of whose systems are better as a whole and how many weak spots each side has, not only about who is stealth and who is not. In any case, if a fighter gets to detect early the launch it can try to outrun the missile, destroy it, attack the guiding plane with a faster missile, jam the link or take a number of actions, fooling the seeker being only one of the options available. Kinematics matter here too, i.e. consider engagement envelope of a 4 M AMRAAM against an almost 3 M MiG-31 flying 5 km above a F-35 and then the opposite situation if a F-35 would need to evade a R-37M launched from a MiG-31. This is massively lopsided in favour of the faster plane with longer ranged missiles. Again, not the only factor but also an important one to be considered in the overall capability comparison
3. Of course I agree attacking an unaware enemy is, by far, the absolute best way of succeeding and in fact responsible for the great majority of BVR kills. All I am saying is that also VLO planes will need to give away their position and intentions, if the rival is capable enough to monitor the radioelectric spectrum for communications and radar signals and to avoid being flanked
4. Between RWR and radar detection, the advantage is always for the RWR side, at least in terms of intercepted energy. We can theorize about LPI as much as we want but in the end this is physics and not magic. So a non-VLO plane could potentially detect the VLO one by detecting its radar emissions and pass the coordinates or go for a kill, even before it has been detected itself.
5. Going into a more complex scenario, now that you open the field: the defending side without VLO planes can keep them passive and relying on IADS data to get approximate positions of VLO assets in the area, launching LRAAM with active seekers that will be guided until being very close to the attackers, where its seeker can be used for the kill. That could degrade even further the advantage of VLO design to the point where it is not decisive at all.

So, again and for clarity: I am not negating the many advantages of VLO or LO designs. All I am trying to do is to address some overblown claims about its relevance that seem to forget that the whole fighting force and the tactics are responsible for a much bigger part of the result. Reductionism is easier to handle but that is not how things work.

Why do you think it is a mystery? As long as your force have more than 1 VLO fighter, in combat they can guide one another through datalink like AEW&C guide conventional aircraft, only one aircraft need to have its radar on. If neither side have more than 1 fighter, the advantage is still in VLO fighter favor.Because, unlike radar it is very hard and time consumming for a single platform to generate firing solution with RWR/ESM, if your adversary is constantly moving at high speed, in unpredictable direction in 3D space, then it is even harder, almost impractical.

See above regarding chances of the VLO planes of catching the enemy side unaware. Some additional comments:
- I very much doubt the VLO plane will move erratically but on the contrary, keep its lowest RCS aspect towards the attacked plane. This restricts massively the space to be searched for. In any case I was arguing that the attacked plane would be aware of what is going on, as opposed to being caught off-guard by an incoming missile.
- Don't know how difficult or time consuming is to locate a source of radiation like the applicable ones in practical conditions, triangulation is rather obvious unless further sophistication of the source signal is used. And as said, with an active homing seeker you don't need to have perfect targeting data, only to guide the missile to the proximity of the target. Also anti-radiation heads exist, that can lock onto you radar emissions.

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Unfortunately that was the requirement of the JSF RFP in 2000. USAF learned much since that time and has demanded short and long term solutions such as Talon Hate and Einstein Box which will eventually be introduced if the bean counters allow it.

i would aree if those solutions were NATO given. That would be a great step.

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1. A partner plane in safe position will guide the missile and perform IFF interrogation. True. But what about radar flare when weapons bays are opened and missile is launched? Wouldn't this give away the position of the attacking plane?
2. ECCM exits... both sides. So as said, it is a matter of whose systems are better as a whole and how many weak spots each side has, not only about who is stealth and who is not. In any case, if a fighter gets to detect early the launch it can try to outrun the missile, destroy it, attack the guiding plane with a faster missile, jam the link or take a number of actions, fooling the seeker being only one of the options available. Kinematics matter here too, i.e. consider engagement envelope of a 4 M AMRAAM against an almost 3 M MiG-31 flying 5 km above a F-35 and then the opposite situation if a F-35 would need to evade a R-37M launched from a MiG-31. This is massively lopsided in favour of the faster plane with longer ranged missiles. Again, not the only factor but also an important one to be considered in the overall capability comparison
4. Between RWR and radar detection, the advantage is always for the RWR side, at least in terms of intercepted energy. We can theorize about LPI as much as we want but in the end this is physics and not magic. So a non-VLO plane could potentially detect the VLO one by detecting its radar emissions and pass the coordinates or go for a kill, even before it has been detected itself.
5. Going into a more complex scenario, now that you open the field: the defending side without VLO planes can keep them passive and relying on IADS data to get approximate positions of VLO assets in the area, launching LRAAM with active seekers that will be guided until being very close to the attackers, where its seeker can be used for the kill. That could degrade even further the advantage of VLO design to the point where it is not decisive at all.

Allow me to reply for dicross
1. Unless you are at lower altitude than the VLO plane, you can't even look inside the opening weapon bay of adversary VLO fighter, trigonometry and all that, if your aircraft is at higher altitude, the view to the bay will be blocked by VLO fighter's airframe, at the same altitude the radar flare is negligible because the bay door's edge are designed to deflect radar wave in others direction rather than directly back. The weapon bay opening only for a few seconds, thus, even if you can launch missiles reacting to VLO plane, after a few seconds, your radar loses track and you can't guide missiles to target.
2. ECCM exist on both side, but not to the same level of effectiveness, VLO airplane will always have a significant advantage
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Radar burn-through is massive lopsided in the favor of the plane with lower radar cross-section.

4. In terms of intercepted energy, it favors RWR over the radar, but in terms of available information, radars are far better because other than the direction of threats, they can also provide vital information such as distance to target, target velocity, heading, and radar are better overall for NCTR.
Besides, a fighter with its radar offline is effectively invisible to adversary RWR and radar information can be transferred through data link, so you know what this means:
If you have a squadron of 10 non-VLO plane versus a squadron of 10 VLO planes, the VLO squadron can know the location of all non-VLO planes, whereas the non-VLO squadron only know the location of 1-2 VLO fighters who are emitting
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Also anti-radiation heads exist, that can lock onto you radar emissions.

Allow me to answer this for of MLight too, anti-radiation seeker are not useful against fighters because:
1. They home on what is emitting so they can't chase aircraft who run away or simple have their radar offline when missile reach terminal phase
2. Same as above, anti radiation head can be countered with terrain bounce jamming (shine your radar, jamming beam toward the ground surface and let the missile hit reflection lobe)
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or blinking jamming (2 assets alternatively switch their jamming beam on then off)
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See above regarding chances of the VLO planes of catching the enemy side unaware. Some additional comments:
- I very much doubt the VLO plane will move erratically but on the contrary, keep its lowest RCS aspect towards the attacked plane. This restricts massively the space to be searched for. In any case I was arguing that the attacked plane would be aware of what is going on, as opposed to being caught off-guard by an incoming missile.
- Don't know how difficult or time consuming is to locate a source of radiation like the applicable ones in practical conditions, triangulation is rather obvious unless further sophistication of the source signal is used. And as said, with an active homing seeker you don't need to have perfect targeting data, only to guide the missile to the proximity of the target. Also anti-radiation heads exist, that can lock onto you radar emissions.

-You said a lone fighter, with 1 fighter, you can only triangulate to a stationary target.
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-Moving erratically here include accelerating , decelerating, increase altitude, decrease altitude at unknown rate, all screw up passive motion analysis ranging.
-Range of active seeker is short and long range air to air missile need to lead intercept, so without exact location, your missiles can't reach target

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https://www.bfmtv.com/economie/la-france-et-l-allemagne-lancent-l-avion-de-combat-europeen-du-futur-1627552.html

First contract for SCAF devlopment has been signed yesterday february 6 between France and Germany

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Interesting that this new fighter has no tail, do they prepaire for maximum VLO?

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Allow me to answer this for of MLight too, anti-radiation seeker are not useful against fighters because:
1. They home on what is emitting so they can't chase aircraft who run away or simple have their radar offline when missile reach terminal phase
2. Same as above, anti radiation head can be countered with terrain bounce jamming (shine your radar, jamming beam toward the ground surface and let the missile hit reflection lobe)
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or blinking jamming (2 assets alternatively switch their jamming beam on then off)
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The thing is that. You will not know which missile have anti radiation warhead nor a warning unless they already launched.

Plus you should not confuse Anti radiation with HOJ. Though both are passive there are clear differences. Namely that the former is specifically designed to engage emitting target while the later is an operating mode using existing hardware.

You can easily see that Anti radiation missile seeker is designed with wideband antenna like spiral or conical and use interferometer method in extracting target angular position. while HOJ missile is basically your AMRAAM with HOJ mode.

and turning off radar is basically a loss of situational awareness. Your enemy may have mixed type of seeker, while the ARM one might be fooled, you might lost another IR or radar homer coming. This is why it's preferable to have towed decoy or an expendable decoy in ARM situation.

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[USER="71228"]garryA[/USER]
Let me remind my original point once more: attack against an unaware enemy is and has always been the focus of air forces because it has a huge influence in success chances. It has been done and continues to be done with or without VLO, since it depends on many other factors and not only RCS, because the kill chain needs the use of radioelectric spectrum to detect / identify target and links for guidance, as well as moments during the attack where VLO is not guaranteed. Conversely, it is difficult that an advanced adversary will be caught unaware by a missile coming out of the blue and will therefore take action to counter the attack.

I am not discussing the whole range of tactics and means of aerial warfare nor denying the advantages of reduced RCS so I will not extend myself in the off-topic much further

Briefly to your points:
1. Weapons bay: true, it can be hidden from a given aspect but not to the IADS. In normal conditions at that moment the attacker would be at least detected by surveillance stations and the plane under attack could be informed.
2. Regarding ECCM: goal here is to fool the missile seeker at least during the end game, so burn-through distance not that relevant. Of course, the smaller the RCS the better, On a side note, it does not help if we use RCS data about LO/VLO planes which are not realistic and only represent claims in laboratory conditions at a very specific aspect and frequency.

[USER="43812"]moon_light[/USER]

Modern radioelectric ESM/ECM suites can accurately locate source of incoming radiation and generate targeting data by single plane.

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[USER="43812"]moon_light[/USER]
Modern radioelectric ESM/ECM suites can accurately locate source of incoming radiation and generate targeting data by single plane.

Only against ground targets, it is very complex to geolocate air target because they can move.
even alq-218 only advertised capability to geolocate ground threat
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http://www.northropgrumman.com/Capab...s/default.aspx

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Moonlight, no offese met, but your points and illustrations are from a very outdated book. One can locate a moving tarrget (using inertial vs doppler), of course not as precisely as two aircrafts would. Modern jamming systems are designed to send extremely short patterns, shorter than frequency hopping emitters do.

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Allow me to reply for dicross
1. Unless you are at lower altitude than the VLO plane, you can't even look inside the opening weapon bay of adversary VLO fighter, trigonometry and all that, if your aircraft is at higher altitude, the view to the bay will be blocked by VLO fighter's airframe, at the same altitude the radar flare is negligible because the bay door's edge are designed to deflect radar wave in others direction rather than directly back. The weapon bay opening only for a few seconds, thus, even if you can launch missiles reacting to VLO plane, after a few seconds, your radar loses track and you can't guide missiles to target.
2. ECCM exist on both side, but not to the same level of effectiveness, VLO airplane will always have a significant advantage
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Radar burn-through is massive lopsided in the favor of the plane with lower radar cross-section.

4. In terms of intercepted energy, it favors RWR over the radar, but in terms of available information, radars are far better because other than the direction of threats, they can also provide vital information such as distance to target, target velocity, heading, and radar are better overall for NCTR.
Besides, a fighter with its radar offline is effectively invisible to adversary RWR and radar information can be transferred through data link, so you know what this means:
If you have a squadron of 10 non-VLO plane versus a squadron of 10 VLO planes, the VLO squadron can know the location of all non-VLO planes, whereas the non-VLO squadron only know the location of 1-2 VLO fighters who are emitting
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where did you find that fancy illustration of RCS (guesg it's born in a basement?)

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Moonlight, no offese met, but your points and illustrations are from a very outdated book. One can locate a moving tarrget (using inertial vs doppler), of course not as precisely as two aircrafts would. Modern jamming systems are designed to send extremely short patterns, shorter than frequency hopping emitters do.

That passive range method is known as motion analysis, it will be screwed up if adversary moving erratically, how can you analyzed doppler when your adversary frequency hoping and you don't know their transmitted frequency?
I don't think jammer send shorter pattern than the pulse length of radar

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Frequency hopping is way slower than DRFM can react. I agree on one point, it will be of lesser quality than using several planes.

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[USER="71228"]garryA[/USER]
Let me remind my original point once more: attack against an unaware enemy is and has always been the focus of air forces because it has a huge influence in success chances. It has been done and continues to be done with or without VLO, since it depends on many other factors and not only RCS, because the kill chain needs the use of radioelectric spectrum to detect / identify target and links for guidance, as well as moments during the attack where VLO is not guaranteed. Conversely, it is difficult that an advanced adversary will be caught unaware by a missile coming out of the blue and will therefore take action to counter the attack.

I am not discussing the whole range of tactics and means of aerial warfare nor denying the advantages of reduced RCS so I will not extend myself in the off-topic much further

Briefly to your points:
1. Weapons bay: true, it can be hidden from a given aspect but not to the IADS. In normal conditions at that moment the attacker would be at least detected by surveillance stations and the plane under attack could be informed.
2. Regarding ECCM: goal here is to fool the missile seeker at least during the end game, so burn-through distance not that relevant.


It is easier to make an attack that your enemy is unaware of when you fly in a stealth fighter, the sensor # shooter is the new trend,hence, while enemy can know someone is out there looking at them, that someone won't be the one attacking them. There are moment during the attack where stealth fighter will have higher signature, but that does not guarantee detection.
1.Why only conventional fighter side get to have support from IADS? If we account for IADS for both side, the conventional fighter will be attacked by SAM from 300-400 km before they have the chance to engage stealth fighters.
2. Burn through distance is relevant because that the distance that a radar can negate your jamming and thus, they can launch missiles against you without worrying that their missiles will go find birds. Besides, if missiles negate your jamming at 12 km, they will be harder to dodge than if they negate your jamming at 270 meters


Of course, the smaller the RCS the better, On a side note, it does not help if we use RCS data about LO/VLO planes which are not realistic and only represent claims in laboratory conditions at a very specific aspect and frequency.


where did you find that fancy illustration of RCS (guesg it's born in a basement?)

A metallic F-117 model (no RAM) was measured in Bremen anechoic chamber: as you can see above 2 Ghz then a value of -18 dBsm is feasible, next to it, are absorbing capability of some generic radar absorbing materials. Add them together, you can see that USAF claims are very plausible
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IMHO modern stealth fighter can be at least as good at F-117 which born decades earlier?

Interesting tidbit, P-18 detected F-117 at distance closer than 30 km, and F-117 only appeared once they switched to the lowest frequency setting.

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The thing is that. You will not know which missile have anti radiation warhead nor a warning unless they already launched.
Plus you should not confuse Anti radiation with HOJ. Though both are passive there are clear differences. Namely that the former is specifically designed to engage emitting target while the later is an operating mode using existing hardware.
You can easily see that Anti radiation missile seeker is designed with wideband antenna like spiral or conical and use interferometer method in extracting target angular position. while HOJ missile is basically your AMRAAM with HOJ mode.
and turning off radar is basically a loss of situational awareness. Your enemy may have mixed type of seeker, while the ARM one might be fooled, you might lost another IR or radar homer coming. This is why it's preferable to have towed decoy or an expendable decoy in ARM situation

You are right that HOJ is not the same as anti radiation missiles but IMHO, they can be countered the same way. Turning off radar is only one of the option at close range, at such distance missiles can be tracked by other sensor such as DAS.
But i get your point,
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Frequency hopping is way slower than DRFM can react.

How can frequency hopping be slower when it is acting while DRFM is reacting?.

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Taking sides: Italian defense industry rep attacks Franco-German fighter deal

Plans by France and Germany to team up on a next-generation fighter are an affront to Italy and will weaken the European Union, according to the head of an Italian defense industry association.

In a strong attack on the Future Air Combat System, or FCAS, deal, Guido Crosetto told Defense News that Italy would seek closer ties with the U.K. as a consequence, despite the U.K.’s pending exit from the EU.

“The fighter deal between Germany and France leaves all others on the margins. And since the only other country with equal industrial capabilities is Italy, the deal is clearly against Italy,” he said.

“Have France and Germany tried to get the Italy involved? It doesn’t look that way,” he added. “Additionally, if two European stakeholders strike deals together, how should the others react? This risks weakening the EU, while giving more justification to those trying to weaken the EU.”

Crosetto is the head of the Italian defense industry association AIAD.

Source:
DefenseNews.com

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And an influent and well respected politician, even if of a minor party.

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so nothing wrong with that right.. ? Italy can go Tempest with British while FCAS will be German-French with rest of EU.