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Even those who fly Rafale for their life don't call it stealthy. It's a definitive statement. So it's quite clear that ACT is a no-go against modern AESA radars:
"Goa: Speaking over the reports of Chinese 6th Generation fighter plane, French air wing commander Guillaume Denis of French Navy’s Charles de Gaulle said its only on papers and is a bit of a dream right now. He said, “6th (generation aircraft) is a bit of a dream right now but when it comes to 5th generation under Rafale. Rafale is a subjective topic.
Rafale is not stealthy, but it has been built from the very scratch...to be able to do all the missions at the same time, which is one of the features of the 5th-generation aircraft, we are able to upgrade it every two years. Rafale’s Meteor air to air missile is probably one of the best missiles you can find in the world. Right now it (6th generation aircraft) is only on paper.”
Source:
'Bit of a dream right now...', French air wing commander on reports of Chinese 6th generation aircraft
It's pretty common knowledge that Rafale (or any plane that carries stores externally) isn't stealthy in the sense of how you define stealth on 5th gen fighters. Just ask in any discussion space with level-headed aviation experts, even French ones. Even the KF-21 with recessed storage for AAMs isn't strictly considered a stealth aircraft because of that reason - even the Koreans admit it isn't.
Even if you're only up against pre-AESA sensors, spoofing multiple sensors from different angles in the real world is extremely problematic. In the real world, no plane flies solo like in Ace Combat games. A B2 might still fly solo or in highly spaced formations when conducting nuclear strike but fighters certainly won't. Imagine a strike package of 6 Rafales flying in formation, each plane can only send a spoofed signal back in the general direction of a probing radar (cuz these small transmitters don't have the power to inject frequencies into specific transmitters at long range like FCRs or NGJ can*) which means the ACT signal of one aircraft will interfere with the other (which might be carrying a different loadout, therefore has a different signal). An enemy sensor might only be seeing one Rafale by itself, but would be fed with the signatures of 3 others that it isn't even looking at. You end up causing more harm than good.
You can't ask the Rafales to change their formation or the angle they're presenting to a given sensor every time a new sensor comes into view. This is extremely complicated to properly manage without messing up. And that's if we don't even talk about AESAs. This is why ACT is considered an ECM/ESM (self-defence) technique and not some type of stealth-generator. Use ACT to turn a Rafale stealthy is like saying I'll fill all drop-tanks with chaff and poke a hole in them so I'm constantly deploying chaff so no missile can hit me. LOL.
ACT is simply a technique that can momentarily spoof certain active sensors. In today's world where the main FCRs are large AESAs, that would be limited to the seekers of AAM/SAMs. But even that will become difficult as missiles with 60+ TRM AESA seekers will become commonplace in the next decade. Unlike FCRs where the TRMs have to conduct multiple roles, an AAM seeker has only one job: maintain lock on the target no matter what. So they will be tailored with ECCMs of such frequency-agility that it becomes impossible to spoof them with a smaller transmitter with fewer TRMs (meaning less frequency-agility of your own, even if you somehow figure out their algorithm).
At that point, a lot of current-gen integrated SPJs (including Rafale's emitters) will become obsolete and aircraft that rely on them for self-protection will no longer be considered survivable as frontline fighters unless flying inside the bubble of a podded escort jammer. The key will be to evade detection entirely and obtain look-first/shoot-first so that the problem of dealing with these next-gen AAMs is for the enemy to figure out.
In the event that you do get detected & fired upon by such missiles, it might very well come down to usage of high-power jammers which, instead of trying to lower your specific SNR so you drop below ambient, instead raise the surrounding ambient SNR in your vicinity to such a degree, with spikes all over the place, that the missile won't know which spike to lock on to anymore. This is how traditional jamming is done (except now with a lot more power than what a typical SPJ can muster). It isn't stealthy, but if you get fired upon it means your stealth has already failed so the last-ditch defence becomes worth it.
But, just because it can potentially save you from 1 capable (or just lucky) sensor doesn't mean you expose yourself to a 100 sensors by carrying a pod externally, which would destroy your passive stealth to begin with. Instead you will need to incorporate that level of capability internally...and your plane's electrical output must be high enough to support such a function under its own power. 4th/4.5 gen jets cannot. That's why pods have their own power supply.
Only upcoming 6th gens (and maybe F-35) will have that capacity.
Of course, anyone can take a line that says Rafale avionics will be relevant against 5th gen (which can really mean that it remains able to exploit non-stealth aspect angles like sides, rear of some 5th gen jets or take advantage of opportune moments like when they open weapon bays, or perhaps alluding to IRST detection) out of context to think it can use ACT to fool 5th gens. Except, if it can do that, it
would be stealthy - which would contradict what the officer himself said not once but twice.
After all, one only sees what they want to see.
*
The active, electronically scanned array (AESA) developed for long-range, high-accuracy radar also brings radio frequency-injection (data streams of algorithms fired into an enemy antenna) to the battlefield as a weapon. The radar in the F-22 and F-35 can be used for the task in limited frequency bands. But AESA antennas are being redesigned to cover a far greater frequency range and are expected to be a key element of the U.S. Navy’s Next-Generation Jammer, an example of sophisticated electronic attack entering the tactical battlefield.
www.eurasiantimes.com
“MMRCA should have gone through. It was a blunder not going for it. It would have brought world-class manufacturing facilities to India and skill development. The French were backpaddling on the transfer of technology that HAL could not meet standards. It was a delaying strategy, and India should have dealt with it firmly,” Air Marshal Matheswaran told the EurAsian Times.
