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World's most advanced fighter jet joins battle against ISIS in Syria for first time

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U.S. F-22 Raptor stealth jets provide kinetic situational awareness over Syria

F-22-closeup-during-refueling.jpg


Although they were not conceived to play this kind of role, F-22 Raptors have emerged as some of the U.S.-led Coalition’s most reliable combat assets in supporting coalition planes during air strikes in Syria and Iraq.

Even though the largest number of air strikes is carried out by other assets, it looks like the role played by the (once troubled) F-22 is pivotal to ensure the safety of the other aircraft involved in the air campaign: the Raptors act as “electronic warfare enabled sensor-rich multi-role aircraft” escorting strike packages into and out of the target area while gathering details about the enemy systems and spreading intelligence to other “networked” assets supporting the mission to improve the overall situational awareness.

“We are operating regularly in Iraq and Syria. The F-22’s advanced sensors and low-observable characteristics enable us to operate much closer to non-coalition surface-to-air missiles and fighter aircraft with little risk of detection,” said Lt. Col. J. (name withheld for security reasons) in a recent 380th Air Expeditionary Wing release. “We provide increased situational awareness for other coalition aircraft while simultaneously delivering precision air-to-ground weapons. This allows us to reduce the risk to our forces while mitigating the risk to civilian casualties, one of our highest priorities in this conflict. It is a true multirole aircraft.”

In simple words, the F-22 pilot leverage advanced onboard sensors, as the AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radar, to collect valuable details about the enemy Order of Battle, then they share the “picture” with attack planes, command and control assets, as well as Airborne Early Warning aircraft, while escorting other manned or unmanned aircraft towards the targets. As happened when they facilitated the retaliatory air strikes conducted by the Royal Jordanian Air Force F-16s after the burning alive of the pilot Maaz al-Kassasbeh captured on Dec. 24, 2014.

Needless to say, every now and then they can also attack their own targets using Precision Guided Munitions: two 1,000-lb GBU-32 JDAMs (Joint Direct Attack Munitions) or 8 GBU-39 small diameter bombs, “which have been successfully employed against key ISIL targets. [The SDB] is extremely accurate from very long distances and has the lowest collateral damage potential of any weapon in our inventory.”

Therefore, although this may not be what the F-22 was conceived for, the U.S.’s premier air superiority fighter is excelling in a new role: making other aircraft more survivable in contested airspaces like Syria and Iraq.

The Aviationist » U.S. F-22 Raptor stealth jets provide kinetic situational awareness over Syria
 
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Excellent illustration I will use to explain one of the many advantages of an AESA system over the current mechanically actuated dish/planar systems.

In the current mechanically actuated dish/planar system, the radar beam have a binary mode: on/off.

As the beam sweeps, the radar is in automatic search or surveillance operation. If the pilot turns the radar off, he is EM blind. He cannot surveil his area of watch, track suspects, or lock his weapons. For the current mechanically actuated dish/planar system, search/surveillance is the default operation. If the pilot switches to track, the search/surveillance operation does not go away. It is still there and is the foundation for track and lock operations. What happens is that the track operation draws upon the data of the search operation and the lock operation draws upon the data of the track operation.

The problem of resource allocation now occurs.

To put it simply, speculate that the system have 100 mb of memory. The search operation uses 50 mb. If the pilot select track, the remaining 50 mb is allocated to tracking and the more targets the pilot assigned to track, the less memory will be available per target. This often leads to target track lost even if the target or targets are within beam view. Keep in mind we are looking at 3D space dynamic targets here. This is why designers of the mechanically actuated dish/planar systems places memory limits, hardware and software based, on each mode of operation with search consuming the highest.

Target resolutions are:

- Altitude
- Speed
- Heading
- Aspect angle

Because of these hard memory limits, the granularity of target information varies from designer to designer. For example, instead of 100.001 km/h, the speed resolution is 100 km/h or even coarser. The granularity of the four target resolutions have direct effects on weapons data, as in designing missile guidance/navigation laws. The missile is much smaller than the parent launch aircraft, its resources are less, so if the missile relies on initial targeting information from the parent launch aircraft, the more precise those four target resolutions, the greater the probability of a kill. Resolution of .001 km/h is much better than .1 km/h.

Since search, track, and lock operations are so intricately tied-in to each other in the current mechanically actuated dish/planar system, this relationship is called 'coupling' and the opposite is 'decoupling'...

IEEE Xplore Abstract - Parameter optimisation in phased array radar
The flexibility of a phased array radar together with the decoupling of the search and tracking functions means that there are many more operating parameters compared with conventional track-while-scan radars. Decisions on the values of these parameters have to be made both at the design stage and in a changing operational situation. It is shown that the optimum choice of parameter values can be made which will ensure the achievement of a specified search performance for minimum mean power. The process of optimisation gives rise to powerful design concepts which can also be applied to adaptive radar management in the operational situation.
I try to avoid paywalled sources as much as possible and IEEE membership runs in the thousand$ per. But if I have to use it, I will make sure that the abstract contains the relevant keywords so the readers understand I am not making these things up. :enjoy:

Precisely because of the ability of an AESA antenna to generate true multiple beams, if the AESA system have 100 mb of memory, all 100 mb will be allocated to tracking the target or targets. Target resolutions will increase in granularity, producing much better targeting information to the weapons lock operation. Since there are true multiple beams, there is no need to have a broad and 'noisy' search beam. The result is that in the AESA system, the search, track, and lock operations are completely decoupled from each other, making the system overall more EM 'quiet', in a manner of speaking.

In a PESA system, since there is only one beam, there is no true decoupling of operations. The advantage of the PESA system over the mechanically actuated dish/planar system is that of faster beam direction changes. The PESA designer will have more flexibility but at best, only to half of what an AESA designer can do.

Decoupling operations is a driver in giving an AESA system more computing power and memory. Why only 100 mb ? Why not another CPU and 200 or even 500 mb of memory ? Keep in mind that these numbers are just to illustrate general ideas and operating principles. The exact design parameters are top secret, of course.

Air forces that can afford the AESA and have seen its capabilities under real world conditions are moving towards it. Those who have the cash are dismissing the PESA.
 
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Considering what is capable today... It should't be an issue, specially for such expensive components for AESA.
 
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Gambit,

Since we're on the subject of AESA radars, my fault I suppose, what's your opinion of the Raven ES-05's repositioner system:

But, an AESA’s somewhat narrow field of view can still be an issue.SAAB has come up with a ingenious solution to this problem—spin an angled AESA radar array around on a platter.

This system, which is called a repositioner, is ingenious as it allows the Gripen NG’s Raven ES-05 radar to gain another 40 degrees of scanning ability to either side of the aircraft’s nose. This is in addition to the 60 degrees AESA radar sets typically provide (120 degrees combined).


1529377362723343144.gif


Versus Selex's Captor-E's Swashplate as an AESA array design?


Is there an advantage of a repositioner over a swashplate? Or the converse? Or is it basically the same performance wise, but a different design philosophy?
 
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Gambit,

Since we're on the subject of AESA radars, my fault I suppose, what's your opinion of the Raven ES-05's repositioner system:

But, an AESA’s somewhat narrow field of view can still be an issue.SAAB has come up with a ingenious solution to this problem—spin an angled AESA radar array around on a platter.

This system, which is called a repositioner, is ingenious as it allows the Gripen NG’s Raven ES-05 radar to gain another 40 degrees of scanning ability to either side of the aircraft’s nose. This is in addition to the 60 degrees AESA radar sets typically provide (120 degrees combined).
You are giving a mechanical assist to the AESA antenna.

First...The AESA beam is created from combining multiple smaller beams from multiple T/R modules. The process is called 'wave superposition'...

Superposition of Waves

As the main beam sweeps to the side, the smaller beams or sidelobes gets 'squished' and begins to contaminate the main beam. Hence, the 120 degrees logical, not physical, sweep limit. You can certainly make the beam greater than 120 degree either side, but your scope will be filled with white noise.

All that 'repositioner' does is rotate the antenna to a different mechanical position so that the area of interest that once was close to that 120 degree limit is now within that limit.

Personally, I do not see significant tactical advantages to have moving machineries, no matter how briefly, inside the radome. In an air-ground operation when there is a need to peer inside a border without trespassing said border, such a feature may be useful, but in an air-air operation, I do not see any significant tactical gain.
 
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F-22 Raptor is plagued with problems, you can't call it most advanced when it isn't a reliable fighter jet and don't deny it since its issues are very known otherwise USAF would order more. F-22 is a failure and its production is discontinued since 2011.

You have all information on wikipedia if you don't have time to do research around web.

Typhoon is a beast, F-22 is a beast with dull fangs and teeth and lack of off it too.

Typhoon is far more reliable, it has much wider armarment/weapon options, F-22 needs two external fuel tanks to match Typhoons range, can F-22 use Meteor or IRST-T or KEPD 350 or Storm Shadow or Paveway II to IV? No, Typhoon can...

Typhoon is far more versatile and reliable than F-22...

You got to be kidding me. Typhoon is not even in the same generation as a raptor. I'll take f-22 over typhoon any day of the week.
 
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U.S. F-22 Raptor stealth jets provide kinetic situational awareness over Syria

F-22-closeup-during-refueling.jpg


Although they were not conceived to play this kind of role, F-22 Raptors have emerged as some of the U.S.-led Coalition’s most reliable combat assets in supporting coalition planes during air strikes in Syria and Iraq.

Even though the largest number of air strikes is carried out by other assets, it looks like the role played by the (once troubled) F-22 is pivotal to ensure the safety of the other aircraft involved in the air campaign: the Raptors act as “electronic warfare enabled sensor-rich multi-role aircraft” escorting strike packages into and out of the target area while gathering details about the enemy systems and spreading intelligence to other “networked” assets supporting the mission to improve the overall situational awareness.

“We are operating regularly in Iraq and Syria. The F-22’s advanced sensors and low-observable characteristics enable us to operate much closer to non-coalition surface-to-air missiles and fighter aircraft with little risk of detection,” said Lt. Col. J. (name withheld for security reasons) in a recent 380th Air Expeditionary Wing release. “We provide increased situational awareness for other coalition aircraft while simultaneously delivering precision air-to-ground weapons. This allows us to reduce the risk to our forces while mitigating the risk to civilian casualties, one of our highest priorities in this conflict. It is a true multirole aircraft.”

In simple words, the F-22 pilot leverage advanced onboard sensors, as the AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radar, to collect valuable details about the enemy Order of Battle, then they share the “picture” with attack planes, command and control assets, as well as Airborne Early Warning aircraft, while escorting other manned or unmanned aircraft towards the targets. As happened when they facilitated the retaliatory air strikes conducted by the Royal Jordanian Air Force F-16s after the burning alive of the pilot Maaz al-Kassasbeh captured on Dec. 24, 2014.

Needless to say, every now and then they can also attack their own targets using Precision Guided Munitions: two 1,000-lb GBU-32 JDAMs (Joint Direct Attack Munitions) or 8 GBU-39 small diameter bombs, “which have been successfully employed against key ISIL targets. [The SDB] is extremely accurate from very long distances and has the lowest collateral damage potential of any weapon in our inventory.”

Therefore, although this may not be what the F-22 was conceived for, the U.S.’s premier air superiority fighter is excelling in a new role: making other aircraft more survivable in contested airspaces like Syria and Iraq.

The Aviationist » U.S. F-22 Raptor stealth jets provide kinetic situational awareness over Syria

They're using the F-22 for this sort of role... now imagine what an F-35 can do, a craft designed for this role.
 
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Lol more like World's ugliest fighter jet right next with Tejas.
 
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