A lot of the technologies are the same though. Even civilian production need not depend on profits if you are state-running everything which is what Russia does. All aerospace manufacturers, defence or civilian, are part of UAC.
Military production is nowhere near as efficient as what's necessary for civilians. Car production goes into millions per year. Tank production is a few hundred.
If that was the case there would've been no need to equip the jet with L-band AESA arrays which are relatively large (spanning length of leading edge). Small dedicated antennas (which is how Western jets do it) would've been enough.
The Russians don't have many other sensors to depend upon. Their networked warfighting doesn't work. They plan to use the L-band to see objects which IFF can then interrogate at a much farther range than the X-band can. If the L-band isn't there, the IFF wouldn't know what to interrogate until its too late.
They will rely on primary fighter and AWACS radars for detection. Interrogation comes after.
Given the shape of the L-band radar, it's not going to do anything more than some low-range detection or long-range interrogation. One of the main advantages of L-band is it is easily hidden behind background noise, there's a lot of high power L-band in the sky, so it's best use case is still IFF, which can go undetected if the receiver is not tuned to it.
It should be usable for communication too, perhaps some limited EW, even jamming.
Hence the importance of VLO, EODAS, EOTS and loyal wingmen.
Okay, I'm not arguing against those. It's all necessary. But we were discussing how radar will be more important in the future.
My point is you can make do without all those, but not without radar. The best MAWS capability also comes with radar. And radar is advancing to new heights. There won't be just X band anymore, we will even have mmW and terahertz radars.
The West is gonna supply Ukraine with everything they need to defeat the Russians. At this point, with very minimal air presence, something like NASAMS is not really necessary to beat back the Russians. What's necessary is precise indirect fires - which is what HIMARS is delivering to devastating effect.
The Ukrainians have already taken the war to infrastructure that's been in Russian hands since 2014 (Kerch bridge) and sovereign Russian territory (Millerovo air base attack in Rostov) using less sophisticated means.
The Russians are losing the ground war due to logistics lines being pinched and stockpiles being destroyed by HIMARS. If they had the capability to carry out an air campaign, they would've done it by now - at least to take out the HIMARS and other artillery positions.
They have a very limited ability to operate beyond LoS of GCI stations, as the inputs they rely upon to operate beyond that are very sketchy and ad-hoc.
British Defense Minister Ben Wallace has claimed that Russian fighter pilots flying SU-34 fighters in Ukraine are using basic GPS receiver devices taped to the dashboards because of the poor quality of their inbuilt navigation systems. US Navy To Discard Its ‘Brand New’ Warships Designed To Hunt...
eurasiantimes.com
The Russians screwed up by first not bringing in infantry and ADS for their offensive on Kiev, followed by not bringing their infantry in the south. Everything that Ukraine has is useless to stop Russia had the Russians taken things far more seriously. The effect of HIMARS is overblown.
That GPS hackjob is for coordination with non-Russian forces on the ground who don't have access to Russian navigation. Let's not forget that pretty much all of the offensive is being conducted by PMC and militias, not the RAF. The pilots will be able to compensate for errors in positioning if both are carrying the same navigation system. Western propaganda ki jai.
Pretty much everything you are absorbing from Western sources is nonsense. You will have to make your own assessment after listening to bipartisan and partisan experts and relate it to the situation on the ground.
I don't get it - this was done by the Israelis decades ago. Even we have done it with BFSR AESA version. What's the big deal? It's a low power radar that doesn't need much cooling.
The gold standard is still fighter FCR.
Not in terms of size. BFSR is not inside a tank, it's in ambient air tempratures. Heat inside a tank is tremendous. Even if the Israelis did it early on, the Russians have caught up with AESA tech, my point. You were referring to how Russians are nowhere when it comes to AESA.
Not talking about no of targets, but about range.
Higher frequency presents you with diminishing returns at longer ranges. A Ka-band sensor to track something at 100 kms makes no sense.
A tank doesn't need 100Km though. Even if it can do that, there will be an instrumented range.
Fair enough - but single engine jets are kings of turn around times. That's why they are always the backbone of Air Defence regardless of whether you are US, India or China.
Turnaround for air policing and interception is quick for SE by design.
The F-35 can be used for air policing, but I bet it depends on whether it can actually fight the adversary when it comes down to it. Which is why Gen Hostage said without F-22s the F-35s are irrelevant. So, at least when it comes to Russia and China, the US expects to operate in a contested airspace. With China, parity is expected.
