EuroDASS also has sub 1° accuracy in azimuth, but its somewhat unknown how the capabilities are for elevation as it doesnt have any apparent antenna in the tailfin.
For jamming there are three AESA jammers, two facing forward and one facing aft
The towed decoys arent decoys in the traditional sense, but jammers away from the aircraft to counter home-on-jam
My question would more be if they EFTs electronics could handle the additional rails. More flares/chaff is never bad
To be honest, in the EW system, I would like to raise the hand of Rafale’s SPECTRA.
It’s not much publicity at EF. However, Rafale’s SPECTRA is an important selling point.
electronics most likely can. its a standardised bus system. the software wont display it though
Some bits on PIRATE that I’ve found from various sources:
Brief History:
It’s based on the ADAD (Air Defence Alerting Device) IRST before that but improves on it in every way. This system already had good performance.
Which has an unclassified report here.
It is almost entirely software limited, with exceptional range and I think the best of any IRST with comparable range to CAPTOR-M.
It took 15 years to develop the first production model and it first entered service on Italian Tranche 1 block 5 EF’s, but since it first appeared it has still been developed. The most recent major upgrade was a 2013 software update which made it truly comparable to CAPTOR-M in range and utility.
Upgrades continue to this day and the Gripen E’s SKYWARD-G is based on the same design but downsized with naturally worse performance.
Utility:
It functions usually in a TWS mode and uses kinematic ranging which is entirely passive with an overall higher angular resolution that CAPTOR-M but a worse distance resolution. Bounds are around 150 x 60 but I haven’t found a number anywhere but wikipedia which is an estimate.
The system is fully capable of identifying, tracking and targeting ground targets.
It functions as a UV MAWS from frontal aspect across its entire FoV and is fully anf flawlessly able to differentiate between missiles, clutter, flares (as clutter) and aircraft.
It will not track things it does not consider to be ‘aircraft-like’ unless slaved, which raises the question of helicopters, however as ADAD flawlessly identified helicopters vs clutter this is a non-issue. It functions independently in conjunction with the radar and MAWS to aid determination of type, range, speed, vector etc.
Its range should be somewhere around 150km at optimum, many have seen the Austrian source I posted saying 150km at optimum is possible, this was from 2008, in 2013 the aforementioned software upgrade went through which allowed it to perform at optimum, as the main limitation has been processing and software as the system is so sensitive (0.01 degree kelvin).
Also the range has always been touted as ‘comparable to that of weapons carried’, which would include AIM-120C based on the introduction dates.
That said in-game we should get at least 80km in all-weather though 93km is indicated by RAND for the same conditions and 150km at optimum.
The system displays an image of what it is tracking to the pilot on their HMS/HMD, in-game I would hope this would allow that to be put onto an MFD as it functions similarly to an ultra-long range camera in addition to increasing detection distance, all aircraft detected should be ‘spotted’ as they would in visual range, alternatively it should allow the player to see the loadout of an aircraft from ~50km.
The system immediately classifies everything it detects (sub-1 second) into several threat bands based on threat level, this is done from a bank of known characteristics (E.G RCS, thermal signature, radiation emission), as well as independent ones IR signature, speed, vector etcetera.
Anti-Stealth performance:
A big priority in PIRATE’s (can’t believe i made that typo) development, in-fact the only priority was its optimisation against future stealth aircraft expected to be fielded by the soviets. This can be seen based on the way it searches for radiation and why it took 15 years to develop just the hardware. Many IRST systems search simply for high thermal signatures, this can be seen in-game on aircraft which can for example lock-onto flares, which PIRATE will ignore.
PIRATE however, searches for minute differences (as mentioned up to 0.01 degree kelvin) in background radiation. This was done for fear of Soviet aircraft becoming undetectable via radar.
As a result the system is optimised against stealth aircraft as their coating creates more friction (particularly for fear of the soviets but F-22’s are also indicated as being able to be detected at ‘significant distance’ though I have no idea if their coating also creates skin-friction).
Due to the way it searches thermal shielding actually worsens the overall IR signature for PIRATE’s purposes as the software finds it easier to see the ‘black hole’ created by thermal shielding making it easier to identify targets.
I would put money on this being the best IRST system we will see in-game until the F-22 receives an IRST and figures are released for said IRST system.
Firstly due to absolute range, secondly due to sensititvity and its classification performance which is known, and thirdly due to being a passive system it will not alert what few fighters that do have LWS will.
It will provide extensive utility vs the 5th gens the EF will inevitably be shoehorned into fighting.
Was looking through my docs for PIRATE references.
Returned a good number of hits;
But obviously a keyword search will return more than just the PIRATE sensor, as was made clear in this doc hahah;
That looks like fun to sift through…
Though I have no idea what that second document is about
If you find anything to add from those that would be interesting.
I’m just going off of public stuff but I may consider an archives trip next time i’m down that way to see if there’s anything else I can find.
It’s clear from what I have found why the German pilots were quoted as saying they’d prefer PIRATE to ECRS.
I mean;
I hope for your sake, your cataloguing system is good.
Its a work in progress but it beats looking through docs individually.
As you can see;
May be a question out of left field, but is the the system on the stormer and ozelot similar to the pirate system in any way? As i always found it strange they were limited to 8km (on a good day) for planes.
They should not be limited to 8km
That’s a pretty bold claim given the Legion pod is just as, if not more modern than PIRATE. And aircraft in game already exist that could carry it
This isn’t a claim, this is entirely my opinion I have no source saying XYZ is better. I also used the word best for its subjectivity, as though Legion could beat PIRATE in range (who knows there are no figures but PIRATE is beating literally everything else we have figures for), PIRATE has its own advantages.
Legion is passive akin to PIRATE which is an advantage it will have over any other fighter bar Typhoon.
Irregardless of that, PIRATE is integrated into the airframe, Legion is also described as being ‘plug and play’ I have no proof but that generally suggests a lower level of systems fusion. Furthermore, as of the Director Operational Test and Evaluation report 2021 the pod had angle of attack limitations and could not be used within the entirety of the flight envelope. Thereby ‘gimping’ the aircrafts flight performance, PIRATE has no adverse effects/limitations.
Secondly Legion has virtually no performance figures available, so for the in-game portion that makes it pretty unlikely it will even be added due to lack of information, hence why for the F-22 portion I note ‘figures are released’. Meanwhile there is strong evidence suggesting at least 150-165km range for PIRATE vs fighter-sized targets and a minimum of 80-93km.
Thirdly, (and I may be reading too much into this), but Lockheed Martin seem to suggest it has vulnerabilities with range Lockheed Martin Are quoted here ‘In a press release, Lockheed Martin likens the range-finding ability to human binocular vision — in which two eyes, rather than one provide us with rapid depth perception and a 3D view of the world.’. This is the second mention I have found as to its range-accuracy from official representatives. Which essentially suggests pairing the systems alleviates issues PIRATE does not even have (publicly, who knows).
Whereas PIRATE whilst less precise than CAPTOR-M, has never had the suggestion put forward of using datalink between 2 Legion-equipped fighters to obtain precise firing solutions, as can be seen int that source.
Range-wise, this Superhornet development spokesman Captain Jason Denney is quoted as saying: ‘we’ve improved the optical design and the detector technology to get up with the 30 years of advancements, and then to provide some improved sensitivity and performance’. Which if anything implies that they worked more on its False-alarm rates.
He is also quoted as saying on its accuracy 'I can then tell generally which direction he’s going, but without knowing something about the range or something about the velocity, I gotta make some assumptions… ', here
Its not that Legion won’t have come a long way since Tomcat eyes but it is based on Tomcat Eyes (though that needed TCS to achieve its maximal performance which this naturally lacks) and most of the upgrades have been to reliability and software integration. Also to achieve precise, and long-range detection against bombers Tomcat Eyes required TCS, which Legion lacks.
Again, this isn’t an IRL comparison there are no figures for Legion, but its clear it isn’t quite finished and, based on available stuff on PIRATE and available stuff on IRST21/Legion, I’ll pretty confidently say I think PIRATE will be better.
(P.S pls no-one bite my head off this was a surface level flick)
How dare you voice your opinion, you shall be executed promptly. Always interesting learning about how complicated these system are.
The Eurofighter has 2 pesa jammers on the left wing, one foward and backwards. For elevation, there are two detectors in each wing
APA=Active Phased Array. Just explaining what the abbreviation means.
There are only 2 aesa radars
There are 3 in service, and 2 other prototypes.
ECRS MK.0, ECRS MK.1, ECRS MK.2 are in service, AMSAR (which i’m pretty sure is different to CAESAR) and CAESAR are prototypes/research arrays which were discarded.
“in service”
