I was inspired by Russian claims on RCS. It's actually fairly simple and I will explain how I figured it out:
- The F-35 without shaping techniques should be at 5dB
- With shaping techniques anything between -20-30dB reduction is physically possible imo. Resulting in -25dB overall performance
-RAS and RAM allow for another -25dB reduction, resulting in a total of -50dB which is very conservative my any merits.
Ok now here it what happens when operating against the Bavar-373:
- S-band to X-band reduces shaping performance by at least 5dB. Resulting in -45dB overall performance.
- S-band to X-band reduces RAS/RAM performance by around 20dB. Resulting in -25dB overall performance.
- Ground aspect and non-optimized angles peaking at the sides at least degrades the -25dB to 3x that RCS area resulting in -20dB overall performance
- ECCM capabilities of such modern AESAs bring effectively no significant performance reductions when ECCM is applied. So the grand total stays at -20dB, while it would again improve to -25-30dB on legacy radars.
Now whats the performance of the Bavar-373 acquisition radar against a -20dB target from the released value (+ some assumptions)?
85km.
However in real world conditions this value changes: The subsonic very optimized F-117 with newest and best RAM/RAS may achieve that effectively -20dB but the F-35 is more likely to land at -10dB which results in 150km radar performance.
Conclusions is: If we assume that ideal applied stealth allows for -50dB improved RCS reduction (0,00001, smaller than a pea) and 10dB less for the less optimized supersonic F-35 with total execution of -40dB, resulting at -20dB against the Bavar-373 acquisition radar, then it kills the target at 150km.
Luckily for the Bavar-373, it has upper echelon battalion level radar assets with Meraj-4 and potentially Iranian-Nebo. These will detect the -10dB target at over 200km max. engagement range (Meraj-4) and over 300km (Iranian-Nebo). Not to talk about even higher echelon assets like Ghadir etc.
These can allow for a launch up with mid-course updates until the target comes within the range of the Bavar-373 battery level assets. In all situations the F-35 will be painted by 3-4 and more radars from different angles and some of them are extremely difficult to locate and turn away the peak aspects from.
Russians claim effective values of -5dB for F-22(F-35) which likely is because they talk about VHF-band assets. If that is the case and the Bavar-373 has the Iranian-Nebo supporting it, the range would become that max value of 200km.
So it can be said:
- Bavar-373 has a range of 85km against an ideal stealth asset (a kind of super F-117).
- 150km against a non-ideal one in the class of the F-35
- 200km, its max. range, if being supported by the Iranian-Nebo as acquisition radar.
As those radars have very high ECCM capabilities, the range reduction penalty due to successful and highly intensive ECM would be negligible or at best 20% from my estimations.
@T-72B
As a battalion maybe. A normal S-300PMU2 battery can engage 6 targets, as the Bavar-373.
