Yeah basically, but integrated into an aircraft and with the ends of each antenna array flush together to reduce RCS.
Probably too expensive or cause some kind of interference that makes it impossible
Nah i’m going to LARP as a Chinese design bureau online to scare the US into making it real
the maximal electronically Vectorable beam angle on Phased array antennas is ±60° because if you try to make a beam that goes past that then it’ll get distorted to the point where you won’t receive a usable range or even a usable signal from it
you could however fill the the whole plane with smaller AESA Radars if you don’t care about RCS, have a lot of money spare and are happy with being a Gigantic Lighthouse that blinds every RWR within a Hundred km, possibly even showing which direction and orientation you’re flying in depending on the Frequencies each of your radars have
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Its quite distorted that the beamwidth is just above 5° for a 42 element array, while its 2.4° boresighted.
Powerwise you lose around 30% range
Its worse: All ESAs loose signal strength the further away they get from boresight, its not a sudden cutoff like on MSAs. Beyond 45°-60° the loss gets so large its generally not worth it anymore.
both images from On the use of AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) Radar and IRST (InfraRed Search&Track) System to Detect and Track Low Observable Threats | MATEC Web of Conferences
after all Electronics never fix a Mechanical problem
gimbals are here to stay, at least for the good radars
Phased array isn’t the Miracle people seem to make it out to be
I’ve read that and also tried to search stuff myself about specifically gripen C and D variants and I couldn’t find anything that would hint on it being able to see AESA signals. They can track missiles in proximity for sure, but I couldn’t find anything that would explain how it supposed to deal with AESA. Also from what I could find that AI you mentioned is just a support system that only provide info in more presentable way jet already have. And it also have modification to be ready for the further upgrades in the future when they are such RWR will be ready but nothing about it being able to deal with radars that can change frequency multiple times a second today.
Do you have anything more that would explain how that should work? Because so far I am still convinced radar of the question is silent(I know some jets, including upcoming ones, have things to detect missile itself, but it have nothing to do with the missile or jet signals)
About the LPI (notice its literally called “low probability of intercept”, which implies intercept being possible, no?)
Radar cannot be silent by nature, it returns always have to be above the noise floor, which means the target will always receive an even stronger signal.
The only thing AESA can do is jump frequencies and scan in such ways to reduce the chance of the RWR classifying those random spikes as hostile radar
That makes a lot of sense to me. It’s more trying to outplay the RWR you might encounter, as opposed to just always being invisible.
It sure is possible to intercept, I just haven’t seen anything that would give me a solid(kinda) proof that’s possible to do in real time for small RWR on a jet. From what I know current race to deal with AESA is still on.
You can probably filter out the background radiation and assume anything new is part of some unknown threat.
The thing is background radiation is not constant and there are new things all the time, world today is filled with tons of any kind of signals which makes it really hard to find “new part”
Well there’s noise and there’s spikes in the noise that you can take note of and assume as a hostile, especially if they’re repetitive in a nature that’s not natural.
There are spikes in a background noise too and in case of AESA they are intentionally made not repetitive
Yea you can have false positives, but I’m sure software is good enough to filter certain things out or bring them back to attention, especially if you can triangulate where it’s coming from.
Either way, it seems to me the only way AESA evades detection is by trying to mimic background radiation by being random with its pulses and frequencies, but it’s not 100% fool proof and might not even be the default behavior anyway.
Yeah, you will need some type of advanced processing to ensure some spike isnt just some random airliners weather radar, or Tom microwaving an egg.
On the other hand, as far as I’m aware, LPI modes are usually seperate from the radars main modes since they also constrain how much information they can get. Think of stuff like dwell time and revisiting known tracks.
If you hit a target too often or for too long, that might be too suspicious, yet on the other hand not doing so reduces chance of detecting targets, the accuracy of those that are detected, tracks getting more outdated, the list probably goes on
How do we know which jet can do that and which not though? I assume that jets that are able to see AESA on RWR(I am still not convinced though) should be pretty modern, at least more modern then period where first AESA were introduced. Which in specific cases like very early F-2 should make it invisible, probably including AAM-4 thanks to it seeker special modulation
equally how do we know which jets have LPI modes, and what they do different compared to the normal modes?
Honestly to me the entire LPI stuff should just be ignored by the devs
Then choice is to make AESA either completely invisible or completely fictional.
Because what other features we can get from it? Jamming? Soviet sucks in that field so neither can anyone else do that. Drawing high-res ground map? No reason to implement with current gameplay. Ground target scanning? Most of the weapons that could work with that are above ±50km and I doubt we will ever see that. Simultaneous tracking? Doubt we will be able to launch multiple sparrows. Same for ARH we already have with TWS.
Unless I am missing something