A10 has weapons
The growler too lol it carries two armaams
Uhh… no, growler carries 3 ALQ-99s as well as the AESA in the nose and the 2 ES pods on the wingtips, that’s 5 DRFM systems (radar doesn’t count) that can deal with the rafales datalink, radar and then some on top of that
Comparing a dedicated EW platform to a rafale that only has a single offensive jammer which is the AESA in the nose with the rest of the equipment being for self protection isnt really fair, since one is made to disable RF functionality in an area and one is to stay alive against various threats
TLDR; Rafales EW suite is not better than the growler because it lacks multiple offensive EW modules and is mostly designed for self protection
I think SPJs for certain aircraft would be much better than dedicated EW platforms, especially because the amount of key binds an EW aircraft would need would be mental
Rafale has multiple AESA jammer antennas housed throughout the airframes providing spherical coverage, they’re just conformal so its not as obvious as the ones on the wingtip pods of the Growler.
No, the ALQ-99 are far more powerful iirc, they would be much better than Rafales one on one
If we get NGJ pods, then growler could jam a whole flight of rafales
1 Like
ALQ-99 do not seem to be AESA like the antennas on the Rafale and seems to only go up to 20Ghz which means it cannot jam the Pantsir (40Ghz) nor can it specifically send directional beams.
How could it not send directional beams? Even very old radar can point at stuff?
And 20 ghz should be enough to jam Rafale no? As well as anything else that flies?
It requires AESA to send directional beams for jamming equipments, older jamming equipments such as the ALQ-99 simply jam in every sector rather than more powerful directional beams also reducing chance of intercept making it harder for home-on jam missiles to lock into. ALQ-99 would be more susceptible to being locked onto than AESA jammers.
But yes the ALQ-99 is otherwise capable of jamming frequencies that most radars ingame operate on except for the fact that AESA radars can change frequency. So they can decide to operate at higher frequencies to coverages that the ALQ-99 does not jam such as K-band. The ALQ-99 would be outdated in that regard.
If they add ALQ-99 into the game, then there would be a report that the RBE2 can switch frequency to K-band to avoid being jammed at all.
Growlers carry 2 different blocks of ALQ-99, one for high band and one for low/medium band applications, i believe the EF-111 combined them but none the less that’s why ALQ-99 is “capped” at 20 Ghz.
One of the major advantages of having a DRFM module is to counteract frequency hopping, every band you jump too can be stored within the memory and lit up again
Explain more?
Explain what more?
Regardless of high-band and low/medium band, the high band is still capped to 20Ghz correct?
can APG-77 or APG-81 do this?
and against other AESA fighters, wouldnt rafale struggle since it has a much weaker radar to jam with?
Most likely yes.
Yes and no. It depends on the features of the AESA radars. Also, the Rafale would have IRST/TV that can’t be jammed and can provide firing solutions. And it’s a double-edged sword to be jamming as the Rafale can fire missiles through RWR on your radar when it is on or even jamming.
2 Likes
so you have to be sure its jammed thoroughly with DRFM and in LPI mode (if they can do it at same time), to protect from home on jam launches?
We dont know but the high band jammer transmitters are much bigger than the low and medium band transmitters so its probably higher
All the fire solutions brought by IRST and IIR can be dealt with as midcourse datalink is still vulnerable to EW
Jamming and LPI don’t coincide with eachother, since you need FMCW and beam dispersion for LPI (which means the radar doesn’t have a main lobe, its “beam formed” sidelobes are actually the transmitting beams)
1 Like
What if it’s one of those jets with the special datalink like F-22 or F-35