gambit
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Here is my take on just some of the Russian's claims about their junks...SU30 vs F35?
Its rit here.
Sukhoi Flankers - The Shifting Balance of Regional Air Power
But I have been pointed out that it is Australian propaganda. Although I dont fully agree
Yes...Produced by Russian industry at about a decade too late.The NIIP N011M BARS phased array is the most capable fighter radar produced by Russian industry and is designed to support the R-77M family of ramjet missiles.
Anyone can say something like this about his product. Notice there is no contrasting figures from non-Russian equipments. Why not?The NIIP Irbis-E is an evolution of the BARS using a 20 kW ganged TWT transmitter and increases range performance significantly.
No...It is not so 'evident'. I would like to know how did the Russians test their junks to make this claim. They do not even have a working F-117 equivalent model while we retired the aircraft.The depicted detection range curves are based on publicly disclosed Russian performance figures for co-altitude BVR engagements. It is evident that inside the 10-20 nautical miles envelope the radar will be able to challenge aircraft with quite good stealth characteristics. The curves for the Agat 9B-1103M and 9B-1348E seekers are based on the most recent Agat data release, and include the TMS320 equipped digital variant. The 9B-1101K has not been included (Author - NIIP, Phazotron, Agat data).
Now on to Mr. Kopp...
What Kopp omitted to disclose, may be because of writing space limitation, is that having active T/R modules is only half of the AESA operation equation, the other half is the software required to fully exploit the flexibility of these T/R modules. After all, if sheer radar transmit power is the only factor in any air-air engagements, then a PESA system is fully adequate, as Kopp correctly pointed out...Radar
The first of these is its massive radar bay, capable of fitting a 1 metre class X-band phased array antenna. In the long range BVR combat game, radar range is a key factor and for any given radar technology, the larger the aperture the better. While the current N011M/ME BARS (Panther) and Pero (Plume) upgrades use passive array technology which delivers less peak power than competing active arrays (AESA) it is only a matter of time before NIIP and Phazotron adapt commercial GaAs MMIC technology (98% of the total GaAs chip market) to build an AESA variant competitive against the AESAs in the latest Western evolved 3rd Gen fighters.
In radar detection, distance and array dimension (or aperture) has a direct relationship. Large early warning radars capable of reaching out thousands of km from shore are literally in tens of meters across in antenna aperture. So yes...If the intention is to detect one's opponent as far from one's self as possible then the larger array will have the advantage.With similar TR (Transmit-Receive) module performance, the fighter with the largest aperture size wins in this game - for instance the N011M has around twice the aperture size of the JSF AESA and F/A-18E/F's APG-79 and even with inferior TR module technology will be highly competitive.
But the reason why an Active Elect. Scan Array (AESA) is far more desirable is the fact that because each T/R module can be individually powered on/off and in clusters, an AESA antenna through a process called 'subarray partitioning' can become several antennas AT ONCE. One subarray can transmit at one freq, another subarray can be a jammer against enemy radar, another subarray can transmit in another freq, and another subarray can act as a data link to other aircrafts. All can be done at the same time. Frequency agility is when a radar will transmit in sequence different freqs to counteract ECM. Not only can an AESA system move from one freq to another, but ALL of its subarrays can perform freq. agility at the same time, making jamming a determined AESA antenna nearly impossible. As if that is not enough, a subarray's aperture can be dynamically resized as tactically needed. To prevent the subarrays from interfering each other's operations, they will be separated by a border of nontransmitting T/R modules. This capability is not possible unless there are appropriate avionics and softwares. The US is installing AESA systems into the F-15 and F-18 and here we have the Russians telling everyone that 'soon' they will be able to produce T/R modules.