No…
Just No…
I have no doubt that AESA was well within their capabilities and we even see AESA radars being adopted in other areas, like the AESA Seaspray radar built by Ferranti (same people who built the Blue VIxen and ECR-90) being built in 2002 and was even adopted by the US Coastguard for their C-130s :D
So no. it wasnt that they couldnt build AESA radars, it was a decision to wait until the technology fully and completely matured
It’s BV because of a source showing it was a modified BV, allowing us to get rid of the F-16D radar that it had before.
But over the past year, more sources and information have been found and they probably could implement some or more of the features of the BV. If nothing else, GMTI
I have the specific quote about the decision somewhere in this thread.
The EFT does not have NO AESA’s, they just dont have it as their primary fire control sensor because they did not trust first gen ESA’s for the job at the time.
Hence why i commented CAPTOR-M likely being in the same class as V004/RBE2, not in the same class as the RBE2-AA.
Power output is kind of irrelevant, since iirc -ESA can put that power down more efficiently and effectively. CAPTOR-M can have all the workarounds, but in the end it is a mimicry of ESA radars and lacks the fundamental advantages.
F-22 AESA and Rafale PESA readily beat the CAPTOR-M in about every category anyways. APG-77 is from 1990’s too…
What can they do that CAPTOR-M Cannot then?
LPI, scan speed, significantly better multi-target and mixed mode operation, better at conducting EW, resist jamming much better, and very precise beam control.
There is an open bug report for the Foxhunter to get this. I wouldnt be surprised if CAPTOR-M also had the option.
The energy radiated by the antenna is generated by the ET963 coupled cavity Traveling Wave Tube (TWT) made by Leonardo in Italy. The device is able to provide enough power for the radar to transmit at peak power levels above 9-10kW while operating at voltages of 30-50kV. The average transmit power is stated to be around 1-2kW. In order to manage emissions to stay in a Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) profile, the radiated power is kept as low as possible in the respective operating modes. The average mean time between failures (MTBF) is stated to be around 600 hours - source
Granted, but that doesnt necessarily mean the CAPTOR-M is bad
Why?
CAPTOR-M was fully able to do this using interleaving. Tracking up to 20 air and/or ground targets at once
Have a source for that? EFT was fairly renowned for its EW suite iirc
have a source for that? Again, EFT was known to have a very good EW suite. Im sure that went both ways.
The digitized signals from the antennas are analysed in the receiver unit, a component jointly manufactured by Leonardo UK and Hensoldt in Germany. It has three distinct receiving channels, making it the first fighter radar in NATO to do so. Each of the channels has its own set of tasks: the first channel is assigned with target acquisition, the second channel is responsible for track management in both air and ground modes and the third data channel is employed for screening and classifying Electronic Warfare (EW) sources and suppression of side lobes, improving the radars electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM) capacity. The ECCM channel also enables the radar to carry out jammer mapping, a function allowing the identification of EW threats that are targeting the aircraft.
And what exactly does this do? And any reason to suggest the CAPTOR-M was bad at this?
Considering CAPTOR-M’s stated peak speed of 333°/s and P-scan capabiltieis, ima guess its beam accuracy is quite good tbh. Maybe not as good as an ESA, but more than enough for the time period.
Another analogy would be the APG-63 vs AWG-9. iirc a good RIO with the AWG-9 was better than an APG-63 despite the APG-63 being a lot more advanced.
Yup, I imagine it was on-par with most AESA in that respect. (at least to as significant a degree as possible for an M-Scan)
Yeah, a Good radar is only as valuable as the systsms or the operator using them.
According to this source, the CAPTOR-Ms CPU was so good it was later adopted for the F-35:
The LRU hardware is powered by standardized CPUs which are also used on other components of the Eurofighter. The processors found on the CAPTOR-C are of the 68020 series designed by Motorola. They were first marketed in the 1980s, thus providing inadequate performance in certain operating modes. The chips were later replaced with more modern PowerPC-4 processors for Tranche 2 (CAPTOR-M equipped) aircraft. The PowerPC CPU has found wide applications in other fighter aircraft as well, such as the F-35. The radar has seen a significant performance boost as a result of this hardware upgrade. A prime example to demonstrate the performance increase is the SAR mapping mode. The quality of the radar images has been improved from a 1-meter resolution down to 30 centimeters for CAPTOR-M. - Source
Oh! Thats the second source ive seen claim the CAPTOR-M has 30cm accueacy for SAR!
I found a link to this blog on a forum and the person in that claimed it was written by one of the engineers that worked on the CAPTOR-M. No idea if its true or not, but so far has tracked rather well with other sources.
This is two different systems, though LPI does in effect, and is used to describe both
The APG-77 has the additional opportunity as an ESA to use a synthetic signal that spreads the radiated power over a wider part of the frequency spectrum simultaneously; lowering the apparent power in any one band, this is possible due to the multitude of T/R modules and that the emitted signal can be digital synthetized from these returns due to the electronics on board to act as if it was a much stronger emission in any particular band.
The CAPTOR-M since it only has a single TWT can only reduce the power output to maintain sufficient Signal to Noise to maintain a trackfile.
They both effectively reduce the probability of detection but the former is much more effective than the latter, though it can be worked around, but far less useful detail is recoverable and it leads to an increased number of false positive hits to the RWR, due to changes in the background level of radiation being the discriminating factor for throwing an LPI detection warning.
I’m fairly certain the the APG-77 would also be able to use similar “minimal radiated power” mode for any given track as well, as it seems like relatively easy thing to implement that would have an outsized impact on detection range, but as to how it could be mechanized for the APG-77 I don’t know.
Depending on the specific layout of the targets the energy may be able to be spent more efficiently on volumes known to (or likely to) contain threats which increases the likelihood that they will be tracked, also it can be done near instantaneously without interrupting other operations of the radar by an ESA where the M-Scan needs to scan the entire search volume reducing effective dwell time for any given contact, and this adversely impacts the point where it would become saturated at longer ranges.
But for this to actually ever be relevant IRL things would be well into the opening stages of WWIII at that point, so the reduced performance is much less relevant to any sort of realistic scenario and so remains an edge case.
not to the same level as true -ESA. CAPTOR-M should be slightly worse at this than a PESA (due to electronic steering) and outright worse than an AESA.
i am talking about the ability of the radar itself to carry out EW operations. and same thing for jamming, an AESA radar is inherently harder to jam than an M-scan radar. precise beam control allows for better LPI and better use of power.
isnt it just a motorola CPU that was good so they used it for both? also, F-35 seems to have an upgraded version anyways.
For T2 onwards it uses a different CPU, the F-35 adopted the same CPU
PowerPC is Apple-IBM-Motorola from wiki.
and do you have proof F-35 used the same one?
Only this source which has tracked true so far
well it seems they are replacing the old one (improved PowerPC probably) with a new one called ICP that has 25x the processing power.
Youre always talking bad about euro chill man rafale aint gonna let you fly