There's the obvious 360 degree all around coverage, which are readily mentioned.

 

What I did not see mentioned are potential for.

- Improvements in detecting stealth airplanes.

- Improvements in Jamming.

- Improvements in signal processing.

- Improvements in signal processing shared among planes in the same formation.

 

And what would sticking 360 degree radar on a missile do?

 

 

 

An air to air missile which will turn around just after you have evaded it or even making high speed yoyo's to engage.

Problem there is that AAMs expend all their fuel very shortly after launch. If they miss, they would lose so much energy turning around that they would simply "fall" out of the sky after the first attempt. They would need some kind of looooong burn sustained motor or a second stage that fires after the energy robbing turn.

-DA

 

 

Nil content my left foot!.

Herald

 

*Now* you've posted some content.  However, surely there must be ways of doing it, as there are aircraft with multiple antennas around the airframe, are there not?

 

When you have two separate systems putting out phase interference you have to work out beam geometry and clean up the sidelobes for starters. This is a classic bolo with own radars and own active jammer systems or same telemetry links, same platform, as you are all too aware, WP.

 

Often it comes down to simple point geometries and scan schemes. The antenna has to be moved or the radio beams pointed away from each other so that radio beams as they scan through the same volume of space don't cross each other.  Or you can develop an electronic phase canceler thbat acts as a noise gate.

 

Citation 

 

Citation 

 

Discussion 

 

Its sounds so easy. It isn't, which is why the American aircraft AESA radars are so phenomenal and why the SPY 3 is taking so damn long to perfect.

 

Herald

.

 

Herald

 

I believe the original ATF was suposed to have conformal AESA radars on the wings shoulders, but they give up this idea because the price would be to high.

Price was more important than size. I guess.

The price was probably for developing and testing the design, which would have been a first of it's kind.  The odds of unforeseen problems developing and producing delays would have been very high and would have negatively effected the entire project schedule.  Given the problems that they were already facing they probably decided that this was one potential headache they could do without.

Ahhh, thank you.  Now that you point this out, I do recall reading about some fighters that carry self-protection jammers, but using them blanks out their own AI radar because of destructive interference entering through sidelobes.  Obviously a problem in general, but particularly so while in the process of trying to track a target or especially while in the process of firing and guiding a missile towards a target!  I guess it's safe to say that working this problem out so you can jam the threat without jamming your own radar (and your wingman's!) is definitely quite an important consideration during design of both the radar and the jammer.  Seems like a strong rationale for why you would want the two design teams to be fully interactive right from the beginning, instead of hoping to kluge on an add-in jammer system later on.  Sure you may be able to hang a nifty pod from KNIRTI or ELTA, but I guess that doesn't mean everything is automatically going to work together without a hitch.

the $64,0000 rhetorical question is:

does air based CEC where one hunts and another jams (at a distance) still suffer from tyhe same degree of problem.  ie is the interference substantially localised or does it diminish exponentially when the tasks are discretely handled by different aircraft.

ie a variation of the hand-off theme. 

Gagh, TYPOS! Inverse square law and Heddy Lamarr.

 

 

curious as to your views on the Lambert Guidance System...  pro's and con's.

 

It will work against a Nodong, but not against a Topol for one thing. Any variable that changes the final velocity constraint (limit) of the chaser makes the problem of matching the velocity increment over tau an external telemetry update problem for you until you exhaust fuel at which moment you are left with the potential energy that you have to manage carefully to meet your predict point where you greet whatever you planned to rendezvous with.  As long as it is a two body or three body predictable velocity problem you can use it to make a rendezvous close, but you need some reserve energy advantage (fuel and burn time) and some way to finally guide in to make close rendezvous.

 

Its chief advantage is that it is an onboard guidance, doesn't require continuous point update (you aim at a window and match your terminal solved velocity to reach that window) and correct for velocity difference with clocked updated burns so its virtually spoofproof and jammer impregnable as a guidance. Its also SIMPLE since it can work purely with inertia guidance.alone without external referent as long as you have a CLOCK. 

 

Herald