Stealthy Robots Stalk The T-50

[amalakas]

The B-1 was canceled and resurrected within a few years.

Indeed..................

 

[Tang0]

The B-1 was canceled and resurrected within a few years.

The B-1 was canceled in the development phase. Re-starting a production line 5 years down the road would be much, much more complicated.

In the case of the B-1, a couple hundred engineers needed to be rousted from other projects in the same company. In the case of the F-22, thousands of skilled laborers from 44 states and dozens of different subcontractors would need to be cajoled from other work. The assembly line will be mothballed, but that does not mean all the skilled labor will have survived the recession with a job, or that the subcontractors will use the same methods or equipment.

The B1-B was obsolete for its intended role almost as soon as it made it off the production line. It was Reagan era defense contractor welfare and little more. Political maneuvering to show that Regan was "Tough on Defense". (As opposed to decorated Naval officer Carter...)

That said, it has filled a useful niche in Afghanistan, with longer loiter times than the F-16's but better avionics than the 52's.

Logically speaking, the USAF would have been better off with an expanded and accelerated B2/ATB program and no B-1. (Considering the situation in 1979) Given the economies of scale, the hundred or so B-1B's could have been replaced with 20 more B-2's. The lost conventional capability could have been covered with an expanded B-52 upgrade program.

 

[nightcrawler]

What is called stealth in modern fighter and bomber aircraft is actually an attempt to delay not just detection but the ability to lock on an engage by an enemy air defence system or interceptor aircraft.
A Stealthy plane is not radar invisible at all.
The stealthy plane uses its physical shape and surface coatings to reduce the high frequency radar waves of the enemies sensors and weapons to reduce the range at which you can be both detected and engaged.
The point is that only high frequency radar waves are that are short enough to even detect shape will be effected by the shape of the aircraft.
This is OK because traditionally short wave radar is used for terminal guidance (ie for AMRAAM and SPARROW etc etc) either from the missile itself (AMRAAM) or from the launch platform (SPARROW), and the same for ground launched radar guided missiles like HAWK and PATRIOT.
High frequency radar gives the precise position of the target whereas longer range radar will create a larger return somewhere inside which is the target... good enough for detection but simply not accurate enough (in the past) for terminal guidance.

What I am trying to say is that the US has the stealth, but it still uses its old weapons that its own stealth was designed to work against like AMRAAM.

The Russians have fitted long wave AESA antenna arrays within the leading edges of the wings of both the T-50 and the Su-35 which will not be effected by the thin coatings of RAM or the shaping of the aircraft like F-35 and F-22 and B-2.

The US method of finding stealth targets is with high power broadcasts of AESA radars... hardly the best method!

Even if they find each other the US has the AMRAAM which is guided by high frequency radar... the very sensor stealth is designed to work against.
The Russians have a range of BVR IR guided missiles and will no doubt expand that to include IIR guided weapons too.
Add to that the US plans to have their F-22s flying high and at supersonic speeds the IR signals from supersonic leading edges will make them targets rather than hunters.

The comments about the T-50 being a developed Su-27 are interesting because to me the F-22 looks like the F-15 and the F-15 was also used to develop some things for the F-22 like the AESA radar. Such development (installing new stuff in older models developed from new stuff to go in new planes is a world standard practise... all of the US's previous generation fighters are getting AESA radars for example and this is normal).
More Ironically the F-15 is based on the Mig-25 so the F-22s lineage goes back even further than the T-50s.
The YF-23 was new and innovative and was rejected for the greatly modified Mig-25 that is the F-22.

The T-50 is designed to kill F-22s and with its 5 AESA radar antennas (2 wing mounted L and N band, plus three nose mounted X band AESA radars with one facing forward and two facing sideways) it should have a good chance of detecting enemy aircraft before they detect it. It has a much wider range of AAMs to be at its disposal which should give it an advantage in most situations.
It will be tied into an air defence network that it will cooperate with better than any previous Soviet or Russian aircraft before it.

I think it would be operating at a huge disadvantage over enemy territory but as a defensive fighter I think it will be unbeatable because that is what it is designed for.

There will certainly be stealthy unmanned aircraft in 5-10 years time but the claim that the T-50 will be obsolete by then suggests that everyone should cancel the F-35 program too perhaps... yet that is not happening either.

If the T-50 is obsolete in 5-10 years then all aircraft are obsolete in 5-10 years, which of course is clearly rubbish.

The role of the T-50 is air control, which is a role currently effectively carried out by Su-27s and there have been no problems to date with that situation.
When they start upgrading to Su-35s and T-50s they will be even better off.
UAVs and UCAVs are important but ask the Serbs about how easy it is to shoot them down and look at the prices for UAVs and UCAVs and you realise they are not that cheap yet they are easy kills if you can operate your airforce or air defence network. In the Kosovo campaign the Serbs were able to fly along side UAVs in helos and shoot them down with rifle calibre machine guns... they are the future but they are not the only answer... alone they are useless.

frm a Russian Blog

 

[Tang0]

More Ironically the F-15 is based on the Mig-25 so the F-22s lineage goes back even further than the T-50s.
The YF-23 was new and innovative and was rejected for the greatly modified Mig-25 that is the F-22.

Three words: Load Of Crap
Mig-25:

F-15:

The only thing I see in common is two engines and big air intakes.
Mig-25: Nuclear armed high-speed interceptor with very slow turn rate.

F-15: Highly maneuverable air-superiority aircraft

F-22:

Stealth air superiority aircraft, also has two engines.

Yeah, no similarity that I can see beyond the cosmetic requirements of any supersonic twin engine fighter. See the SU-27 for refrence:

Do you think that is an MIG-25 clone? Because it shares about as many MIG-25 design points as the F-15 and F-22.

Besides which, the F-15 RFP(Request for Proposal) initial paper design was completed in 1965, while the mig-25 was still in prototype phase and any information about it would have been top secret. The reason the RFP was released is that they thought the MIG-25 would be an agile air-superiority aircraft, so the air force asked for a heavy twin engine air-superiority aircraft, not understanding that the MIG-25 was built almost entirely for speed.

 

[amalakas]

not understanding that the MIG-25 was built almost entirely for speed.

Almost ??? the damn thing is a seat between two engines with some wiring to fire nuclear tipped missiles.... !!!!!!

 

[Kinetic]

September 14, 2010: The Russian answer to the American F-22, the T-50, first flew earlier this year, and has made 18 flights so far this year. The T-50 is a prototype, and the Russians are still doing a lot of tinkering. While the T-50 is the stealthiest aircraft the Russians have, it is not nearly as stealthy as the F-22, or even the F-35 or B-2. The Russians are apparently going to emphasize maneuverability instead of stealth. But they are having problem perfecting the engines for the T-50, and the defensive electronics. This puts the T-50 at a big disadvantage against the F-22 or F-35, which try to detect enemy aircraft at long distance, without being spotted, and then fire a radar guided missile (like AMRAAM).

The T-50 is not an entirely new design, like the F-22. The T-50 was developed from the Su-27, which it is to eventually replace. As part of this process, another development aircraft, the Su-35, was created. This aircraft first flew two years ago. The Su-35 contains a lot of the technologies that are going into the T-50. It was three years ago that, the Russian Air Force showed off the first of two flyable prototypes of the Su-35. It was less than four years ago, that Russia announced its long promised Su-35 fighter, was back in development again. The Su-35 is an enhanced Su-30 (itself a development of the Cold War era Su-27), and has been in development for over a decade. At one point, it was called the Su-37, but the name was changed back to Su-35. A dozen or more Su-35 prototypes have been built, and apparently no two are identical. This is typical for Russian aircraft development. They prefer to produce many incremental improvements, rather than make a huge jump to a very different new model. Thus you can trace an evolution from the Su-27 to the T-50.

The Russians want to sell their "Fifth Generation Fighter" (the T-50, which they admit is not true 5th Gen) to China, India and other foreign customers. There is already a deal for India to develop its own version of the T-50, while contributing some technologies (like lightweight materials) to the basic design. The Indians have announced that their version of the T-50 will be a two seater with longer range than the single seat Russian model. Russia now has the billions of dollars it will take to carry out the T-50 development program. India has become a partner, contributing cash, technology and manufacturing capability.

The T-50 is a 34 ton fighter that is more maneuverable than the 33 ton, Su-27, has much better electronics and is stealthy. It can cruise at above the speed of sound. It also costs at least fifty percent more than the Su-27. That would be some $60 million (for a barebones model, at least 50 percent more with all the options), about what a top-of-the-line F-16 costs. The Su-27 was originally developed to match the F-15, which is larger than the single engine F-16.

Russia is promising a fighter with a life of 6,000 flight hours, and engines good for 4,000 hours. Russia promises world-class avionics, plus a very pilot-friendly cockpit. The use of many thrusters and fly-by-wire will produce an aircraft even more maneuverable than earlier Su-30s (which have been extremely agile).

The T-50 is not meant to be a direct rival for the F-22, because the Russian aircraft is not as stealthy. But if the maneuverability and advanced electronics live up to the promises, the aircraft would be more than a match for every fighter out there except the F-22. If such an T-50 was sold for well under $100 million each, there would be a lot of buyers. Russia says it will begin production, and sales, in five years. That may be too ambitious, but for the moment, the T-50 is the only potential competitor for the F-22 in development. But, as with the F-22, development expenses are increasing, and it looks like the T-50 will cost at least $120 each (including a share of the development cost), but only if 500 or more are manufactured. Only 182 F-22s were built because of the high cost. American developers are now seeking to apply their stealth, and other, technologies, to the development of combat UAVs. Thus by the time the T-50 enters service, in 5-10 years, it may already be made obsolete by cheaper, unmanned, stealthy fighters.

The same worthless propaganda from strategypage. No explanation, nothing, just came to some conclusion.

 

[gambit]

frm a Russian Blog

Sure...You tell your friend...

What is called stealth in modern fighter and bomber aircraft is actually an attempt to delay not just detection but the ability to lock on an engage by an enemy air defence system or interceptor aircraft.

Too vague. What is called 'stealth' is properly known as 'low radar observability' or 'low radar reflectivity'. Since radar is the most productive sensor we have today, any body that is 'low radar reflective' will REDUCE the distance in which said body become a statistical certainty.

A Stealthy plane is not radar invisible at all.

The US never claimed that our 'stealth' aircrafts are 'invisible' to radar. The word 'stealth' or 'invisible' are casual, not technical, terms, for media and public consumption.

The stealthy plane uses its physical shape and surface coatings to reduce the high frequency radar waves of the enemies sensors and weapons to reduce the range at which you can be both detected and engaged.
The point is that only high frequency radar waves are that are short enough to even detect shape will be effected by the shape of the aircraft.
This is OK because traditionally short wave radar is used for terminal guidance (ie for AMRAAM and SPARROW etc etc) either from the missile itself (AMRAAM) or from the launch platform (SPARROW), and the same for ground launched radar guided missiles like HAWK and PATRIOT.
High frequency radar gives the precise position of the target whereas longer range radar will create a larger return somewhere inside which is the target... good enough for detection but simply not accurate enough (in the past) for terminal guidance.

A grossly flawed understanding of basic radar detection. The phrase 'high frequency' is meaningless. The correct descriptors are: decimetric (m), centimetric (cm), and millimetric (mm). They are wavelength descriptors. A wavelength can be measured from several points...From crest to crest, or trough to trough, or from zero to zero crossings. For example...

Frequency Vs Wavelength

The distance between the peaks of two consecutive cycles is measured in meters.

...a frequency of 9680 kHz would be equivalent to a wavelength of 30.99 meters, which we would round to 31 meters. Thus, 9680 kHz, 9.68 MHz, and 31 meters all refer to the same operating frequency!

Long wavelengths or low freqs produces long pulses and when it comes to target information, such as speed, altitude, heading, and aspect angle, short pulses or high freqs are desirable. Radar detection works on the principle of 'finite pulse length' to calculate those important target information. The radar computer calculate the timing intervals between the trailing edge of one pulse to the leading edge of the next pulse, of what it transmit, against what it receive when those pulses impact a body and reflect. The shorter the pulses, outgoing to the body or echoes off the body, the smaller the time intervals between them, similar to slow motion videography where the higher the shutter speed, the more detailed the 'slo-mo' video.

A series of pulses is called a 'pulse train'. The pulse characteristic that is called 'finite pulse length' mean there is a leading and trailing edge to a pulse, but it also mean there is a finite amount of energy in each pulse. Finite energy equal to shorter distance traveled before the pulse is completely dead via 'atmospheric attenuation' or absorption by the many microscopic obstacles in the way, such as water molecules or simple dust particles. Therefore there is a trade off, shorter pulses produces higher target resolutions but at the expense of distance, whereas longer pulses travels further but at the expense of target resolutions.

Another important relationship is between wavelength, beamwidth, and antenna dimensions. Basically, the larger the array, and antenna is NOT necessarily the array, the tighter the beamwidth, and the greater the distance. The US Navy's Aegis radars are centimetric (ghz), those radars can reach out to hundreds of km., but each array is meters in diameter. For any wavelength, the smaller the array, the wider the beam. Missile's radars are also centimetric (ghz) but because of their small diameter arrays inside the small radomes, which give the antennas limited scan movements, missiles usually require some degrees of external guidance. That mean for a missile to be effective despite its small radar array, the missile MUST use the centimetric (ghz) bands, short pulses, and high pulse repetition freq (PRF).

US 'stealth' aircrafts are shaped against centimetric freqs, the bands that will produce the highest target resolutions. The millimetric freqs are too vulnerable to atmospheric losses to be of use outside of specialized applications.

What I am trying to say is that the US has the stealth, but it still uses its old weapons that its own stealth was designed to work against like AMRAAM.

This make no sense. The F-22's radar reflectivity has nothing to do with other aircrafts'. If others has higher radar reflectivity, the AMRAAM works upon that.

The Russians have fitted long wave AESA antenna arrays within the leading edges of the wings of both the T-50 and the Su-35 which will not be effected by the thin coatings of RAM or the shaping of the aircraft like F-35 and F-22 and B-2.

Regarding that important relationship between array dimensions, freq employed that affect beamwidth, the claim that the T-50's wing leading edge radars are effective against the F-22 is dubious at best precisely because of their small arrays.

The US method of finding stealth targets is with high power broadcasts of AESA radars... hardly the best method!

This make no sense. Why do we need to find any 'stealth' targets? No one else has the F-22 equivalent.

Even if they find each other the US has the AMRAAM which is guided by high frequency radar... the very sensor stealth is designed to work against.

The point being?

The Russians have a range of BVR IR guided missiles and will no doubt expand that to include IIR guided weapons too.

Infrared is passive sensor, meaning it relies on target characteristics to deduce target information. Currently, infrared can only give target direction, not radar-like resolutions such as speed, altitude, heading, and aspect angle. At best, complex IR arrays can produce target speed, hardly effective against a maneuvering fighter aircraft.

Add to that the US plans to have their F-22s flying high and at supersonic speeds the IR signals from supersonic leading edges will make them targets rather than hunters.

If leading edge IR emissions are so effective as claimed, then all missiles should have been IR equipped a long time ago. Fact is that such IR emissions are not consistent and insufficiently concentrated in a spatial environment.

For example...

Investigation of the radiance from the leading edge of a wing

The present analysis of wing leading-edge radiance assumes that the optical axis of the sensor aligns with the chord line of the wing, and that the leading edge falls within the instantaneous field-of-view of the sensor. Wing radiance rapidly decreases with increasing angular dependence of surface emissivity. A sharp leading edge and a wedgelike shape minimize grey-body radiation from a wing. IR radiation is shown to strongly depend on the angular dependence of emissivity.

For the highlighted, it mean the IR sensor's position is best head-on, else IR radiance decreases as angular difference between sensor and wing increases.

The comments about the T-50 being a developed Su-27 are interesting because to me the F-22 looks like the F-15...

Then you should see an optometrist ASAP.

...and the F-15 was also used to develop some things for the F-22 like the AESA radar.

Nonsense. Radar development is not dependent upon airframe development.

Such development (installing new stuff in older models developed from new stuff to go in new planes is a world standard practise... all of the US's previous generation fighters are getting AESA radars for example and this is normal).

Which will increase the lethality of these older US fighters.

More Ironically the F-15 is based on the Mig-25 so the F-22s lineage goes back even further than the T-50s.

The F-15 was NOT based upon the MIG-25. Belenko's defection with one MIG-25 debunked this.

The YF-23 was new and innovative and was rejected for the greatly modified Mig-25 that is the F-22.

Utter BS.

The T-50 is designed to kill F-22s and with its 5 AESA radar antennas (2 wing mounted L and N band, plus three nose mounted X band AESA radars with one facing forward and two facing sideways) it should have a good chance of detecting enemy aircraft before they detect it. It has a much wider range of AAMs to be at its disposal which should give it an advantage in most situations.
It will be tied into an air defence network that it will cooperate with better than any previous Soviet or Russian aircraft before it.

See previous explanations on radar detection. Finding the F-22 with those small antennas is a dream.

 

[amalakas]

See previous explanations on radar detection. Finding the F-22 with those small antennas is a dream.

You were doing fine until you got to that point. Here we go again.

Oh also you mentioned something about the Amraam and why would the US try to fight stealth planes, noone else has an F22 more or less.

Right well....

1) Although none knows the RCS of the T-50, IF comparable or less to the F-35, then the US clearly begin to have a tactical problem.
In that case Consider:
The F22 is armed with Aim-120s, if they are enough to hit the T-50 then hey are enough to hit the F-35, which in a circular way means that LM is lying about the LO performance of the F35. Because the LM is saying that an F35 would not be able to shoot down another F35 with an AiM-120 in a head on scenario. ( Check my Flag, check who our next door neigbours are and you can piece together where and how I know this)

2) Estimates on the capability of the Russians to produce effective LO technologies should not be so negative. The russian institute of science has developed a number of materials and methods of reducing the EM and IR reflectability and emission of surfaces. These have been applied in a project to reduce the RCS of the Flanker family. They claim that they have reduced this to half of what it was before. If their claim stands, and they managed to reduce the RCS of such an "unfriendly to LO" aircraft by half, then to an already LO design such as the T-50 their efforts combined may give results not immediately visible to the observers eye (like ours)

3) The "small" Lerx and Leading edge L-band antennas effectiveness is a point nor here nor there. First of all they increase the coverage around the plane, second, even if the resolution of the radar is not such to provide targeting info of the quality Gambit deems useful, the capability of L-band radars to pick up (detect, not track or target) LO targets earlier than X-band radars stands, meaning the pilot knows something is out there.
Now the T-50 pilot would have the further option of using the OLS sensor to verify something is out there, and if both sensors tell him something is out there but his X-band doesn' t, what walks like a duck and swims like a duck, is probably a LO aircraft at range.

4) The US (aside what Gambit says) Must now begin to think about strategies and tactics to reveal, track, target and bring down LO aircraft. Tactics that so far have dismissed as unecessary or they may have actively discouraged their development to push the F35 to customers.

And if you come to think about it, "stealth" Ucavs are much easier and cheaper to produce, I wonder how the F22 and the F35 will reveal those ones when they start flying around.

I would invest more on some ADM-160 derivatives ( J maybe) and maybe 100 more F22s than the F-35, but hey that's just silly ol'me

My opinion is that we are looking at some very interesting times ahead.

 

[kevis]

January 27, 2010: The UAE has ordered two Falaj 2 class patrol boats from Italian builder Frontiersman. These ships are 55 meters 170 feet long, have a crew of 28 and a top speed of 36 kilometers an hour. The main armament is an autoloading 76mm gun, plus machine-guns. Displacing less than a thousand tons, the ships are designed to be stealthy . The ships themselves have air and surface search radars. These ships are designed to patrol the Persian Gulf, usually for smugglers, and, in wartime, for armed Iranian speedboats.

Facebook applications

 

[Tang0]

Infrared is passive sensor, meaning it relies on target characteristics to deduce target information. Currently, infrared can only give target direction, not radar-like resolutions such as speed, altitude, heading, and aspect angle. At best, complex IR arrays can produce target speed, hardly effective against a maneuvering fighter aircraft.


If leading edge IR emissions are so effective as claimed, then all missiles should have been IR equipped a long time ago. Fact is that such IR emissions are not consistent and insufficiently concentrated in a spatial environment.

For example...

Investigation of the radiance from the leading edge of a wing

For the highlighted, it mean the IR sensor's position is best head-on, else IR radiance decreases as angular difference between sensor and wing increases.

I think you downplay IR sensors here too extensively.

Leading edge IR emissions are dependent on the conditions of the boundary layer near the leading edge at any given point in time. Our understanding of turbulence is still....Weak.

“I am an old man now, and when I die and go to heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightenment. One is quantum electrodynamics, and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am rather optimistic.”
-Horace Lamb
But that holds little relevance to the success of Infrared Homing Missile as a whole.

The AIM-9 series of missiles is most widely produced western air-to-air weapon in the world, with over 110,000 produced and 270 confirmed air-to-air kills.
Raytheon AIM-9 Sidewinder

There is probably a reason that it has seen such success, while the successes of radar-guided Air-To-Air missile has been mixed. (To Date, according to Wikipedia, the AIM-120 has 9 confirmed air-to-air kills... While the AIM-7 has about had about a 10%-40% success ratio 10% for Vietnam era, 40% for post gulf war)

Why? Because no matter how you want to play it, LBT (Low-Bypass-Turbofan) exhaust is really, really, hot. There are various ways of mitigating this, but they essentially amount to spreading the heat signature out (Platypus exhaust, etc Have Blue and the F-117A: evolution ... - Google Books) , so as to present a larger less intense target. Hopefully the algorithm of the heat seeker will be tailored for non-stealth and take the easy bait of flares, but in the modern world this is not guaranteed.

On the other hand, trying to cram a phased array radar into a missile, and then make the subsystems able to survive launch and harsh environments is really, really hard. With the addition of modern stealth techniques, it is becoming a steadily less appealing design option.

Specifically:

At best, complex IR arrays can produce target speed, hardly effective against a maneuvering fighter aircraft.

I think some people at Raytheon might just disagree with you on this one....

 

[amalakas]

I think you downplay IR sensors here too extensively.

Leading edge IR emissions are dependent on the conditions of the boundary layer near the leading edge at any given point in time. Our understanding of turbulence is still....Weak.

“I am an old man now, and when I die and go to heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightenment. One is quantum electrodynamics, and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am rather optimistic.”
-Horace Lamb
But that holds little relevance to the success of Infrared Homing Missile as a whole.

The AIM-9 series of missiles is most widely produced western air-to-air weapon in the world, with over 110,000 produced and 270 confirmed air-to-air kills.
Raytheon AIM-9 Sidewinder

There is probably a reason that it has seen such success, while the successes of radar-guided Air-To-Air missile has been mixed. (To Date, according to Wikipedia, the AIM-120 has 9 confirmed air-to-air kills... While the AIM-7 has about had about a 10%-40% success ratio 10% for Vietnam era, 40% for post gulf war)

Why? Because no matter how you want to play it, LBT (Low-Bypass-Turbofan) exhaust is really, really, hot. There are various ways of mitigating this, but they essentially amount to spreading the heat signature out (Platypus exhaust, etc Have Blue and the F-117A: evolution ... - Google Books) , so as to present a larger less intense target. Hopefully the algorithm of the heat seeker will be tailored for non-stealth and take the easy bait of flares, but in the modern world this is not guaranteed.

On the other hand, trying to cram a phased array radar into a missile, and then make the subsystems able to survive launch and harsh environments is really, really hard. With the addition of modern stealth techniques, it is becoming a steadily less appealing design option.

Specifically:

I think some people at Raytheon might just disagree with you on this one....

Besides the same doppler effect can be observed for IR signatures as well, granted it is difficult at the moment, but with sensitivity rising, soon (if not already) IR sensors will be able to deduce relative speed of the target to the seeker..

 

[gambit]

I think you downplay IR sensors here too extensively.

Leading edge IR emissions are dependent on the conditions of the boundary layer near the leading edge at any given point in time.

And surface area. Make a V with your palm where your thumb and fingertips are only about 4 inches apart. That is your grip on wing leading edge. With such a small surface area, sensor (mis)alignment, meaning the angle between its position and the wing, can deny the missile a consistent signal.

At best, complex IR arrays can produce target speed, hardly effective against a maneuvering fighter aircraft.

I think some people at Raytheon might just disagree with you on this one....

I know 'some people' at Raytheon. If there is a consistent IR source moving at some off-angle or across an IR sensor, then there is a 'pixel-by-pixel' algorithm to create target speed estimation. A violently maneuvering fighter will create difficulties for this algorithm.

 

[amalakas]

And surface area. Make a V with your palm where your thumb and fingertips are only about 4 inches apart. That is your grip on wing leading edge. With such a small surface area, sensor (mis)alignment, meaning the angle between its position and the wing, can deny the missile a consistent signal.


I know 'some people' at Raytheon. If there is a consistent IR source moving at some off-angle or across an IR sensor, then there is a 'pixel-by-pixel' algorithm to create target speed estimation. A violently maneuvering fighter will create difficulties for this algorithm.

Pixel-by-Pixel ? I think that is a bit "primitive approach these days... perhaps you guys are not told everything... ? just a thought

 

[Tang0]

And surface area. Make a V with your palm where your thumb and fingertips are only about 4 inches apart. That is your grip on wing leading edge. With such a small surface area, sensor (mis)alignment, meaning the angle between its position and the wing, can deny the missile a consistent signal.


I know 'some people' at Raytheon. If there is a consistent IR source moving at some off-angle or across an IR sensor, then there is a 'pixel-by-pixel' algorithm to create target speed estimation. A violently maneuvering fighter will create difficulties for this algorithm.

Yes, the really hot parts of the wing are fairly small, and if you are at the wrong angle, hard to spot. That said, if you can't see the leading edge well from a given angle, you can probably spot the exhaust....

Which leads us to the second bit:
Sure, but if the speed of the maneuvering is the problem, you can just increase the sampling rate. Admittedly this requires higher clock speeds on your embedded system and better sensors in general, but Moore's law applies as much to embedded systems as it does to laptop processors.

I think AIM-9X is a different story than older versions, but since the spec's are not released publicly, I have no idea what the system refresh of sampling rate are, but at the very least they have to be in the hundreds of hertz. You might have to do a lot more math in the background to get anything meaningful out of course sensors, but I don't see how any human-speed maneuvering would change things.

Meatbags are slow.