yes, along with the part where it crashed later lmao
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Pilot had a skill issue haha
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Is there any info on the development of the gripen and the use of computers to aid the overall design vs aircraft like the Mirage 2000 and F-16? It seems like it would be reasonable that the gripen has overall superior airframe performance over the mirage and F-16 since the airframe is much more modern. Maybe more modern computing makes the delta canard configuration possible to develop, resulting in the gripen, rafale, and eurofighter but sacrificing stealth.
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There might be information about how it was developed in their books that they publish. You’d have to ask someone like @blockhaj
From what I read in Saab’s JAS 39 design history documentation they did not seem to compare it to the F-16 or other designs, only to their own in-house design options which included a conventional non-canard-delta type design. Sustained turn rate and other factors didn’t seem to be very important to them. Not as much as instant turn rate, short takeoffs, etc. They were also concerned with cost.
A lot of cost-cutting measures and simplifications were made to the design such as using an already available engine (The F/A-18’s)… and it being so small to fit their requirements.
It should be noted that canard-delta design doesn’t sacrifice stealth. That’s simply untrue in a lot of respects. With the exception of the KF-21 Boramae the Rafale is presumably the lowest RCS 4th generation fighter in the world and the latest block of F/A-18E/F comes a close third behind those two.
The introduction of fly-by-wire flight technologies allowed the use of a negative static stability which solved many issues with delta aircraft. The canard, which can deflect to create large down or upward movements (and also reduce the forward lift to make the aircraft statically stable all of a sudden), is what made the configuration attractive. It prevents the issue of deep stall as with the F-16 which does not have sufficiently large elevators to avoid deep stall. Tailed designs also exacerbate the issue in this case because losing the lift from the elevators to force pitch-down actually creates higher instability margin whereas canard has the opposite effect. Larger elevators with sufficient torquing motion are required such as on the Su-27, F-35, etc.
The canard-delta design allows them to save size, weight, make an airframe that lasts longer without sacrificing too much in the way of performance (albeit depending on what metric we are discussing)… While it is a cost-cutting measure, or done simply to meet size and weight restrictions. Meanwhile, the “heavy fighters” of the world continue to dominate. They’re useful for their specific purposes but stealth aircraft are quickly taking over as costs to procure them are coming down.
Since stealth is of more importance than flight performance (in regards to maneuverability) we are seeing more and more designs focusing less on dogfight performance. Top speed, acceleration, etc are important… stealth is also important. We are seeing designs such as the Chengdu J-20 appear which benefit from cost, weight savings, etc as I said… but introduce stealth as a primary design feature.
On the other hand, radar is getting more and more powerful, and if I remember correctly there is a german company that claims it can reliably track an F-22 and F-35 at far BVR ranges. That’s a ground based system though so Stealth can still make a big difference in A2A engagements without ground cover.
I wonder if Stealth will lose it’s value once radars can reliably track them from within an aircrafts airframe, and then I wonder what the focus will be set on next.
That’s part of the reason why I think electronic warfare is the way to go, getting better at jamming and disturbing enemy radars.
Not to say stealth fighters like F22/F35 can’t do that too
Sure they can do that, too.
But in my opinion stealth limits the design of an aircraft and usually has a negative impact on performance and combat roles. Reducing RCS is one thing, but making a plane stealth is usually really restrictive. So unless there is an easy way to build something aerodynamically efficient while keeping stealth it’s always going to have drawbacks.
Is some speculation that the new radar being fitted to the RAF typhoons currently might be able to track F22s. At least at a reasonable distance. But not much info available
I’ve always been of the opinion that ground based detection systems will always catch-up with and overtake any stealth technology advances on aircraft.
It’s certainly going to be the best air radar in the world, but the advances in radar jamming are the big edge I think. Blinding the enemy is much better than hiding from them.
stealth isn’t mainly about not being tracked, its the fact that they can’t get locked that is the main point.
I’ll see if i can find it again but i saw a documentary on it a while back.
search/track radars use a much lower radar frequency and can thus easier see stealth aircraft, but the lock and a vast majority of missiles use a high frequency radar signal that has a very hard time seeing and locking onto stealth aircraft.
To my knowledge this has never been demonstrated and is highly unlikely.
Stealth has greater room for improvement than does radar tracking capability… one of them is far cheaper and easier to do as well. I don’t think stealth will be going away any time soon… it will only improve.
F-35 is already good at this.
The problem with low frequency is yeah i can pick up stealth aircraft but i also picks up so much clutter its hard to tell what one is the stealth aircraft
absolutely true, but AI and machine learning is making it easier and easier for computers to filter out that noise.
Maybe but then the stealth might just get better and then the AI is useless we will see
There is sadly no english translation for the site so you probably need to use an external translator if you don’t speak german:
It’s an interesting concept and a different idea to detect planes compared to “standard” radar. It’s clearly still early in it’s development cycle and has a lot of drawbacks but in the current infrastructure in Europe a system like this can probably be deployed nearly everywhere.
I only remembered reading about it when it was reported a couple year ago, so I might have confused some things, I still think it’s an interesting system that might make stealth irrelevant at some point.
The Hensoldt company has been carrying out initial development work on a passive radar since 2006.[1] The company presented the first passive sensor system called Twinvis for the first time at the ILA 2018 in Berlin. A military and a civilian variant were presented.[2] Several million euros of own funds were invested in the development. Furthermore, various studies were developed in collaboration with the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, among others.[3] Since then, the system has been intensively tested by the manufacturer. However, no copy has yet been sold on a large scale, although there are said to be several military and civilian interested parties, including the police. The latter hopes to use the system to track down smugglers who operate across borders with aircraft and drones and intend to remain undetected.[4] According to reports, two demonstration systems were delivered to the Federal Office for Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology and In-Service Support.[1]
In 2019, a Twinvis sensor cluster consisting of two sensors was set up on the Polish Baltic Sea coast. As part of the NATO Science and Technology Organization (STO) radio measurement campaign taking place there, Twinvis reliably detected air and sea targets, such as ships, ultralight aircraft and combat aircraft, as well as ballistic and anti-aircraft missiles. The monitoring ranges were up to 300 kilometers. Furthermore, the live data from the Twinvis cluster was fed into the Polish MilRad network and analyzed in a nearby air traffic control center.[5]
In September 2019, Hensoldt confirmed that the TwInvis system was able to detect two F-35 stealth aircraft in Brandenburg airspace in April 2018 as they took off from Berlin to fly back to the USA after visiting the ILA 2018.[6] The Lockheed Corporation countered that the F-35s were equipped with radar reflectors on the way back and flew with their transponders switched on, making them quite easy to detect.[7]
The counter argument that they had the radar reflectors on doesn’t really affect this type of radar, right?
From what I can understand it doesn’t seem to work on the same radar frequencies as the other systems and doesn’t emit any radar waves.
It seems they actually used the local FM and DAB waves from radio stations to locate and track the F-35’s so I am intrigued if the transponders or radar reflectors even aided in their detection.
Either way it’s probably in Lockheeds interest to talk it down so they can keep selling their invisible planes to more customers, even if it did help, other radar systems couldn’t track it with those transponders turned on so it’s still a step-up vs the standard radar systems.
don’t ask me i just posted the translation
Yep, I think in that dogfight with German typhoons Vs F22s the F22 pilots were rather surprised by the ECM on the Typhoon and they couldn’t fire until they were much closer than normal. About 50km.
Yes, very much so