Su-35S vs EF Typhoon/Rafale/Super Hornet

Austin wrote:

ahmedfire wrote:but effective, Silent hornet has internal payload for missiles .

Well if you design a internal payload system for Flanker like SH , Put some RAM and call it Silent Flanker it wont become a PAK-FA.

Silent Hornet lacks the shape to be truly LO , since its not designed from scratch for such.

At best it would be able to maintain its so called 1 m2 RCS if it flies at certain angle at the target relative to radar.

If SH 1 m2 it will be good when RCS for Flanker 5 m2 , i think this is advantage .

ahmedfire wrote:If SH 1 m2 it will be good when RCS for Flanker 5 m2 , i think this is adventage .

In an ideal situation yes , if it has the radar to look further and an equal weapons system to match.

But war is less then ideal situation , even PAK-FA or F-22 cant gurantee they would be able to maintain a low RCS in all regiems of flight against all known threats.

Austin wrote:

ahmedfire wrote:If SH 1 m2 it will be good when RCS for Flanker 5 m2 , i think this is adventage .

In an ideal situation yes , if it has the radar to look further and an equal weapons system to match.

But war is less then ideal situation , even PAK-FA or F-22 cant gurantee they would be able to maintain a low RCS in all regiems of flight against all known threats.

I mean theoriticaly F-18 has anice adventage , it will not end the fight but important to see first then fire first, flanker in the other side had alarge radar then larger detection range like beacon that catch SH from safe range as i think .

True in theory Silent Hornet has a good advantage.

But remember in theory i can solve Russian demographic problem and can add few 100 off springs to reduce their woes

ahmedfire wrote:

Austin wrote:

ahmedfire wrote:but effective, Silent hornet has internal payload for missiles .

Well if you design a internal payload system for Flanker like SH , Put some RAM and call it Silent Flanker it wont become a PAK-FA.

Silent Hornet lacks the shape to be truly LO , since its not designed from scratch for such.

At best it would be able to maintain its so called 1 m2 RCS if it flies at certain angle at the target relative to radar.

If SH 1 m2 it will be good when RCS for Flanker 5 m2 , i think this is adventage .

The lower RCS is an advantage, but not as large as initially seems. Remember you need to have a signature 16 times less to half the detection range. There is no way a Silent Hornet will ever operate with 16 times lower RCS than a Su-35 in combat. And the Su-35 has radar detection advantage that outweighs that in any case.

Austin wrote:True in theory Silent Hornet has a good advantage.

But remember in theory i can solve Russian demographic problem and can add few 100 off springs to reduce their woes

I think i get it , but explain more

The lower RCS is an advantage, but not as large as initially seems. Remember you need to have a signature 16 times less to half the detection range. There is no way a Silent Hornet will ever operate with 16 times lower RCS than a Su-35 in combat. And the Su-35 has radar detection advantage that outweighs that in any case.

ok lower RCS on SH will counter high detection range to flanker radar , SH has AESA radar that is adventage against jamming contrary to flanker radar , so lower RCS with AESA radar are first steps to win in an air- air fight as i think ,

High flanker radar energy is adventage ,but also disadventage as the flanker will be like sun in the sky ,evry one will see it , so asilent attack against flanker using ir missiles will be ahigh risk against it .

The lower RCS does not counter the radar range advantage as it stands. Now we are talking about pure paper numbers, but that refers to radar range as much as rcs.
When I mean Flanker radars, I mean Bars, Irbis, and the NIIP AESA.

Now, certainly passive detection means are available, but that doesn't change the advantage of having a radar that gives you farther reach. Su-27 could do silent attack well before Hornet could, because of IRST.

but effective, Silent hornet has internal payload for missiles

Internal payload ? From what i remeber the only Super Hornet hypothetical grow map ,presented moreover for MMRCA , foreseen nothing more than a re-designed conformal fuel tanks and a big central,supposedly" less observable, weapons bay capable to host at maximum four AMRAAMs.

ahmedfire have you any informations on a different version from this,already highly vaporous, one ?

mean theoriticaly F-18 has anice adventage , it will not end the fight but important to see first then fire first,

Is incredible to find ,in 2012 ,similar misconceptions (generated by ignorant fan-boy's phantasies, founded on the basis of at best "amateurish" employments of RCS figures refered to supercritioal perfect head-on radar wave inception angles as if them was instead the average RCS figures for a typical multi-angle many vs many enagegements) ,still so spreaded .

With even only very small angle variation from those very narrow anglkes the RCS figure grow of some order of magnitude .
A. Davidenko, from the same Scientifical Institution that had developed the same Physics theoretical "allowing" architecture of modern stealth technologyand the basis and foundation of the same birth of the American Scietifical community of the sector,compute that the average multi angle RCS figure of an aircraft like F-22 .(the only tactically "exploitable" and indicative),is about 0,3 -0,4 square meters.

You can easily realise what is the situation with an aircraft ,as SH with an co-planar head-on RCS figure of 1 square meter

ok lower RCS on SH will counter high detection range to flanker radar , SH has AESA radar that is adventage against jamming contrary to flanker radar , so lower RCS with AESA radar are first steps to win in an air- air fight as i think ,

ahmedfire please try to reason with parameters and ratio between them , this is not F-16 . net , repeating some highly widespread low level platitudes will not aid the cause.
To ascertain range of detection and which aircraft see first the others between Super Hornet and SU-35S ,even only employing the known ....almost totally worthless.....head-on RCS figures of 1 m2 and 3 m2 for the foremer and the latter, repeating mere words like "AESA" or "lower RCS" can be highly deceiving.
Maybe,instaed ,that observing the detection figures of IRBIS and AN-APG-79 on graphs can lead you to inferences more well-grounded.









and

The radar cross section of a Mig-21 is much smaller than the RCS of an F-15, so I guess the best choice of aircraft to fight F-15s would be a Mig-21?

RCS is only a significant factor if you remain radar silent, if you have all weapons carried internally, and if you actually have a RCS so low that it will dramatically reduce the range at which the enemy can detect and track you.

The F-18 ticks none of those boxes.

RCS only matters if you are using radar and if you are using radar then the enemy will likely be alerted to your presence with a broad band detector.

Note LPI is not zero PI.

Equally the PESA on the Flanker has most of the features and advantages of AESA, without the main problems (Cost and heat generation).

ahmedfire have you any informations on a different version from this,already highly vaporous, one ?

I mean this ,

[/quote]



or even silent eagle

A. Davidenko, from the same Scientifical Institution that had developed the same Physics theoretical "allowing" architecture of modern stealth technologyand the basis and foundation of the same birth of the American Scietifical community of the sector,compute that the average multi angle RCS figure of an aircraft like F-22 .(the only tactically "exploitable" and indicative),is about 0,3 -0,4 square meters.

You can easily realise what is the situation with an aircraft ,as SH with an co-planar head-on RCS figure of 1 square meter

ok , i didn't said atypical number for rcs on SH or flanker ( i just guess ),

but you agree with me that SH or SE has lower than SU-35S, didn't u ?

u agree with me that this is an adventage in air - air combat , didn't u ?

ahmedfire please try to reason with parameters and ratio between them , this is not F-16 . net , repeating some highly widespread low level platitudes will not aid the cause.
To ascertain range of detection and which aircraft see first the others between Super Hornet and SU-35S ,even only employing the known ....almost totally worthless.....head-on RCS figures of 1 m2 and 3 m2 for the foremer and the latter, repeating mere words like "AESA" or "lower RCS" can be highly deceiving.
Maybe,instaed ,that observing the detection figures of IRBIS and AN-APG-79 on graphs can lead you to inferences more well-grounded

.

i said silent hornet or silent eagle not super hornet .

if RCS is not that importance ( except in 5th gen with stealthy design, ), why US going on projects like silent eagle ,silent hornet ( if produced) and F-35 with internal weapon bays to reduce the aircraft's radar cross section ?

The radar cross section of a Mig-21 is much smaller than the RCS of an F-15, so I guess the best choice of aircraft to fight F-15s would be a Mig-21?

give an example to aircrafts from the same modern generations and the answer will be Yes .

RCS is only a significant factor if you remain radar silent, if you have all weapons carried internally, and if you actually have a RCS so low that it will dramatically reduce the range at which the enemy can detect and track you.

The F-18 ticks none of those boxes.

i mean F-18 silent hornet , it doesn'e see light yet but the design is here , think about silent eagle instead of f-18 , silent eagle has all these adventages .

Note LPI is not zero PI.

yes but getting AESA with lpi is better than getting PESA , right ?

Equally the PESA on the Flanker has most of the features and advantages of AESA, without the main problems (Cost and heat generation).

features like what ?

Silent Eagle is vaporware at this point.

Silent Hornet is an attempt at exports, the USAF has no interest in it.

Both were halfhearted attempts at RCS reduction at the cost of other features, and, well, I suspect both will have zero customers. Price doesn't help them, from what i have seen of the estimates.

ahmedfire the first aircraft is exactly the proposed modification to Super Hornet offered to India and ,obviously it has NOT any type of internal weapon bay, but,as explained, it has only a central weapons bay, supposedly less observable than the same weapons it host when suspended on the pylons .

The second aircraft in your photo is a proposed modification to F-15 , it has NOTHING to do with "Silent Hornet"

but you agree with me that SH or SE has lower than SU-35S, didn't u ?

Not, i don't agree absolutely ; both aircraft in fact have a frontal RCS in a figure low enough that the weapon carried will define mainly theirs effective RCS.

u agree with me that this is an advantage in air - air combat , didn't u ?

Obviously not .What can represent an advantage is ,at limit the capability to track a particular aircraft before it track you ; or ,even more important , being capable to track a particular enemy before the opposite at a range where you can attempt an engagement with one of your weapon systems.

Silent Hornet would be still tracked much, much, much, earlier by the SU-35's Irbis than the opposite, simply because its airframe is almost equal and its central weapon bay could, at most, reduce of some square meters the effective RCS .
Moreover in typical many vs many air engagements against data-sharing aircraft (as those expected in conflicts between peer/near-peer opponents), with inbound enemy radar wave's coming from literally hundreds of very different inception angles, the effective RCS would be even some order of magnitude greater than that usually cited (for sensationalistic PR purposes) for the perfect Head-on angle .
Even for a VLO aircraft in those engagement the effective average area of diffraction will not be inferior to 0,3 -0,4 square meters , very ,very far from the merely academic RCS figures for supercritical narrow angles in a perfect co-planar head-on aspect so often ...and at blunder....cited.

if RCS is not that importance ( except in 5th gen with stealthy design, ), why US going on projects like silent eagle ,silent hornet ( if produced) and F-35 with internal weapon bays to reduce the aircraft's radar cross section ?

But it represent an advantage and also a strong one, the point is simply that this advantage ,in reality is VERY DIFFERENT from the laughable ideas and scenarios circulating commonly on those subjects.
Low/Very Low Observability provide an huge TACTICAL and POSITIONAL advantage over the enemy to the aircraft with similar a design ,it don't allow absolutely to a similar aircraft to travel over an head-on vector of interception toward a group of modern data sharing enemy aircraft remaining undetected before entering in the effective range of its missiles .

When someone refer to the capability of a similar aircraft to destroy the enemy without being seen ,it don't lie, but refer to the possibility , eventually ,for a VLO aircraft to exploit its tracking range advantage to effectively turn around the covering angle of the enemy radar's footprint , gaining so the capability to attack it from its blind angles ; it represent the exploitation of an huge positional tactical advantage ,this advantageous potential is diluted enormously at the growing of the number of the enemy networked aircraft and theirs positioning at particular angles in the three dimensions.

Law of diminished returns...

If you want a stealthy aircraft you can take two roads... redesign an existing type to make it low observable.

This has the advantage of relatively low cost initially because aircraft like the Mig-29 and Su-27 and F-15 and F-18 were not designed for low observability so going around and cleaning up the hot spots and corner reflectors is simple and the application of RAM is straight forward and the result could have a significant effect.

The problem is that no matter what you spend it will always be cheaper to go for a from scratch stealthy design.

Lets say the RCS of an Su-27 is 15m^2. Cleaning up the corners and reshaping parts of the aircraft and changes in some materials might dramatically reduce that to 5m^2. It might cost 10 million dollars for development.

To reduce the RCS by the same margin again will not be possible because all the obvious problems have been dealt with.

All the cheaper and easier fixes have been performed, so any further reductions are going to be very expensive or require significant changes in design... and remember this is a clean aircraft, so putting weapons on the aircraft is going to make any more expensive changes pointless.

If you want LO then modify existing aircraft is an option, but for a real stealth aircraft you need to incorporate features at such a basic level it is much cheaper to start from scratch.

The thing is too that stealth is not always needed... the F-22 and F-35 and PAK FA have the capacity to carry external weapon pylons for use against threats when stealth is no longer critical. All three aircraft with external weapons are no longer stealthy... all that money and time on making them stealthy is rendered useless for situations where weapon capacity is more useful than stealth.

Stealth is not a waste of money or time, but a minor advantage in RCS will not have a huge effect in combat where so many other factors come in to play.

Su-35s might be operating with Mig-35s which have smaller RCS and also AESA radars, and they will be operating within a net centric environment including ground, air, and space based radars.

This Silent Hornet is like the Silent Eagle... they are paper offers for export that so far have not gotten any interest from the USAF or the USN. Why would they want to spend money on these programs when they are struggling to get the F-35 into service? The Silent Hornet and Silent Eagle are unlikely to be all that much cheaper than the F-35 unless there is a chance that either is ordered in the numbers the F-35 is currently on order for.

Neither the USAF nor the USN will risk a full stealth 5th gen F-35 program, on the risk of 4+++ generation Hornets and Eagles.

If at the end of the day the PAK FA turns out to be expensive, then a more radical upgrade of the Flanker is possible... rotate the engine intakes 90 degrees and place them together to create an S shaped intake with radar blockers to dramatically reduce RCS from the front. Creating an internal weapon bay between the engines for the internal carriage of compact next gen AAMs, and conformal missile positions on the belly to minimise drag and RCS while still maintaining weapon numbers... would be two simple changes that would significantly reduce the RCS.

The AESA being developed for the PAK FA could also be fitted into the Flankers nose to further improve performance if required.

Very simply anything they could possibly do to the Hornet or Eagle, they can do to the Flanker... if they wanted to.

Garry :

Irbis-e has no LPI adventage that AESA has ,

Also the Beamsteering Agility is better in AESA ( which reach to 100000000 part of asecond ),

Did anyone believe the RCS numbers that globalsecurity published ?, he put avery low numbers , even cruise missiles ( or stelth cruise missiles ) havn't got these numbers , Did F-15SE or SU-30silent has (after rcs reduction ) rcs lower than acruise missile ? and according to my studying in radar books , we can't put aconstant rcs number for any aircraft , as aexample we can't say f-15se rcs is 0.5 m2 ,this is wrong coz we didn't say at which conditions like distane between target and detection radar , frequency used, power density that is intercepted by the target and scattered power density in the range , front and sides , here we can say aright RCS number ,but Scientifically all these numbers that published are wrong .

LPI is a contentious issue....
According to some, it is more marketing gimmick than huge real advantage.

LPI works best with old style ESM systems that will detect the radar pulse, but because it is not particularly strong, or very long it will be dismissed as noise.

PESAs have been in Russian AF service since the mid 1980s and are a very mature technology.

The Russians have invested a lot of money in AESAs and I am pretty sure that by 2020 that the Flankers will have AESA radar antennas.

The problem right now is that they don't offer generational improvements over PESA radars yet cost an order of magnitude more.

Very simply the PESA enjoys electronic scanning rates, low sidelobes (which is what anti radiation missiles home in on) and the ability to change signal frequency electronically.

The combination of a PESA and an IRST offer LPI capability where the angular information from an IRST mean not scanning to find the target is required. A short ranging pulse of a fraction of a second can determine distance and flight speed and direction in relation to the aircraft.

Such a pulse could be missed or ignored by older ESM systems as noise... there will be lots of pulses bouncing around the place.

GarryB wrote:The problem right now is that they don't offer generational improvements over PESA radars yet cost an order of magnitude more.

Very simply the PESA enjoys electronic scanning rates, low sidelobes (which is what anti radiation missiles home in on) and the ability to change signal frequency electronically.

The AESA does offer pretty significant advantages over the PESA:  very low levels of receiver noise, you can control amplitude and phase for individual elements, and you can simultaneously transmit different beams of different frequency by basically dividing your array into different segments, treating them as separate systems.  Plus, the design of the AESA makes it even more reliable from a few aspects (namely maintenance and component degradation) than the PESA, which is still far more reliable than a traditional mechanically-steered array.

Both AESA and PESA systems also offer reduced RCS and ridiculous beam agility compared to older systems as well.

On a more serious note ,we can say that Sukhoi ,with the domestic SU-35S, has aimed very high (being capable to counter western "fifth generation" aircraft).
 

The analysis of the amount of work already performed allows a conclusion that Su-35/Su-35S has a much better flight and technical characteristics compared to the analogue aircraft in service, and the installed onboard equipment allows it to solve a wider range of tasks defined by the tactical and technical mission. The potential characteristics incorporated in the aircraft will enable it to exceed all tactical fighters of the generation 4 and 4 + (Rafale and EF 2000 type, upgraded fighter jets such as F-15, F-16, F-18 and Mirage 2000), and to counteract the F-22A, as well as F-35A tactical fighter.

http://sukhoi.org/eng/news/company/?id=4301

At today the production rate is mantained at a lower level pace to wait for the test's completion and system validation of some ancillary optronic and DAS avionic components.

AESA does offer pretty significant advantages over the PESA: very low levels of receiver noise, you can control amplitude and phase for individual elements, and you can simultaneously transmit different beams of different frequency by basically dividing your array into different segments

SOM ,as you well know , this technique has as consequence two important drawbacks : a significative dilution of angular azimuth and elevation reliability on aperiodic scan cycles and a substantial reduction of the overall tracking range.

LPI is ,obviously a very relative capability the efficiency of which is defined by the overall level and ,even more, the architecture of the enemy RWR systems ; it had a strong value in the early years of its introduction ,when "LPI" radars could exploit an initial technological surprise and the presence in majority of likely opposing Air Forces of outdated ,often export versions, of old RWR designs .
Naturally this initial technological "momentum" had progressively vanished in the last years and at today (taking into consideration only the most up to date systems and techiques) we can say that the traditional dynamic equilibrium between radar and RWR has been restablished.

In any instance SOM ,in English, exist a good book on the subject which i have read some years ago in its first edition (even if with some sections and computations obviously and voluntarily a bit "warped"   ) called : "Detecting and Classifying Low Probability of Intercept Radar" by Phillip E. Pace , by today should be published a second edition of this same book.

LPI works best with old style ESM systems that will detect the radar pulse, but because it is not particularly strong, or very long it will be dismissed as noise.

Agree , but as RWR go advanced more than past , also LPI tech did

and in all cases ,to have lpi is better than the other who don't has it .

The combination of a PESA and an IRST offer LPI capability where the angular information from an IRST mean not scanning to find the target is required. A short ranging pulse of a fraction of a second can determine distance and flight speed and direction in relation to the aircraft.

In the case of su-35 vs f-18sh the sukhoi IRST no doubt will be killer to hornet , just as MKI did with eagle

Out in the middle of the ocean, over water with no surface or subsurface vessels... only aircraft, then LPI radar will be critical because the only way to work out what is around you is to use your radar to find things... and because the radar picture changes by the minute you really need to use it quite a bit to maintain a current radar picture.

With LPI then you can do that without revealing your position as easily as a lighthouse would reveal itself on a dark clear night.

The point is however that the other side can use tactics to negate any disadvantage active radar illumination might create.

An Su-35S with a large powerful radar could be scanning the airspace looking for threats. It will also be looking with IRST which is totally passive but it can also be listening with its wing mounted L band radar for datalink signals too.

An F-22 flying 400km away will detect that large powerful radar signal and the position of that Su-35S will be stored and passed to other friendly aircraft in the airspace... VIA DATALINK.

The Su-35S can detect that datalink signal and will work out from the lack of a radar signal from its big powerful nose mounted X band radar that it is not a normal aircraft and from the signals from its wing mounted L band AESA that there is something there...

Even if the F-22 does not communicate the information and remains electronically silent assuming the other F-22s in the flight group will make the same detection they have the location and likely identification of the Su-35S but aircraft don't operate on their own so they will have to start scanning the airspace.

If you had a narrow band scanner set to a specific frequency you might get single pulses every once in a while that appear to be noise. What it actually is is a scanning AESA antenna doing a scan in a range of frequencies that are jumping around randomly to look like noise but can be collected up and analysed like a normal radar scan.

A more modern broad band receiver will detect the wide range of signals and stitch them together too from the one source in one point in the sky. The signal is normally not very powerful but to get any signal return from 400km it will need to be more than the general background noise level otherwise the signal returning to the F-22 would be too hard to detect.


That is bad enough, but the engagement is not over water, it is over hostile territory where there are plenty of different types of sensor and system all trying to detect and locate these aircraft looking in a wide range of frequencies including radar, microwave, and even optical frequencies.

Introduce a jammer to improve the chances of the F-22s and an S-400 will shoot down the jammer. The effectiveness of jammers is determined largely by their power, which is turn is determined by their distance to the thing being jammed.

Jamming from 400km is just making yourself a target... you are emitting noise but are too far away to be effective.

Get close enough to be effective and get shot down.

EW will continue with one side and then the other having an advantage, but as shown by the Serbs that when Soviet equipment is used the way the Soviets intended it is quite effective in surviving. Their main problem was a lack of the full toolset and the numbers to take on NATO. Russia has most of the toolset already as even 1980s stuff would still be quite effective. In 5-10 years time after they have reequipped they will be in an even better position.

Not by accident, but by spending a lot of money... you don't get something for nothing and NATO and the US have spent more money than you or I could properly understand building a system to invade and conquer... you cannot counter than with sticks and stones. As shown in Vietnam and Somalia and Afghanistan and many other places the most powerful and best equipped force does not always win.

Is a fighter better than ours, let us say, the French Rafale? -

I would not really want to answer the following questions - it's a very philosophical question, but rather a matter of tactics ... But if you do not become personal, - regarding the French Rafale or the American aircraft F-xx - is something I'm still going to tell you. Our plane is classified as heavy fighters, accordingly, it may take a large amount of fuel - 11.5 tons, which is two tons more than can take Su -27. At about the same cost in fuel consumption it can last longer in a air battle. Another point, the Su-35 has a 14-point suspension, we can take on board eight tons of weapons.

There are other points, but I do not want to hurt anyone's feelings. Once again I want to stress the importance of the tactical use of the aircraft.

http://ria.ru/interview/20130622/945066770.html

Cyberspec wrote: Is a fighter better than ours, let us say, the French Rafale? -

I would not really want to answer the following questions - it's a very philosophical question, but rather a matter of tactics ... But if you do not become personal, - regarding the French Rafale or the American aircraft F-xx - is something I'm still going to tell you. Our plane is classified as heavy fighters, accordingly, it may take a large amount of fuel - 11.5 tons, which is two tons more than can take Su -27. At about the same cost in fuel consumption it can last longer in a air battle. Another point, the Su-35 has a 14-point suspension, we can take on board eight tons of weapons.

There are other points, but I do not want to hurt anyone's feelings. Once again I want to stress the importance of the tactical use of the aircraft.

http://ria.ru/interview/20130622/945066770.html

If the Rafale is better than the SU-35 ? It is very difficult to judge, as the Rafale is an excellent aircraft, as the SU-35, the difference is only the pilot's skills. Training, training, tactic, a good Phantom II's pilot could down a SU-35, Mig 29, Rafale, as a good Mig 17's pilot could down an F-22, F-35, Typhoon.
Didn't we see, during a recent US-Indian exercice, a Mig 21 bison outclassed F-15, and even if US dared, a Mig 21 bison could easily downed an F-22.
As The indian pilots are very well trained.
For me the SU-35 with a good pilot is able to overcome any western aircraft. Unfortunetly, the contrary is true too.
Could russians design a new aircraft like SU-35 without pilot abble to overcome any aircraft ? I know, I dream, but it would be helpfull