F-35 vs Russian Air Defence

Well almost all radars could detect them... the question is at what distance and what reliability...

Imagine you have a network of 30 or more radars scattered all around the place all connected up in a network... an IADS... and only one radar is scanning for targets, but all radars are listening for radar returns... with precise control of the signal being sent up and accurate time keeping at all the sites so they are all on the same time scale when the signal from the emitting radar hits the F-35 in flight and the surface of the F-35 scatters the signal in all directions except the direction the signal came from... most of those other 29 radar will get signals from the primary radar from the F-35 as well as emissions directly from that radar... the radar that sends the signal might get a very very weak radar return itself but basic triangulation will tell you where the F-35 actually is, so now instead of a general wide area scan you can now direct 30 radar at the location of that F-35 and direct fine precise tracking beams at it that would be much much harder to hide from and the air defence network will be alerted to the presence and location of that F-35, now if it is operating at lower altitudes... which it most probably will because it doesn't supercruise so would get little advantage to flying high... any Pantsir system that detects it optically can engage it in total radar silence... the F-35 will detect the attack but what can it do... its DIRCMs system can't blind a Pantsir missile because it is not IR guided... the F-35 pilot will likely be left with the choice to die or eject...

LMFS wrote:

kvs wrote:All of these early warning "radars" look over the horizon by design.  They bounce their signal off the ionosphere and the surface.   This way they outgoing signal
can follow the curvature of the Earth for thousands of kilometers.   The reflected signal does the same thing, bouncing between the surface and the ionosphere.

With modern computer resources, it makes sense to design such "radars" with a set of frequency bands and doing "tomography" on the backscatter.  
In the 1950s and 1960s it was just the analog return signal that they could use.   That is why there was a preference for a few frequencies.  

I thought this effect required very long wavelengths to operate. But maybe modern processing can take advantage of both high and low band components of the return and get the same effect as an OTH-B?? When you say "tomography", you refer professing all the frequencies received right? Otherwise I cannot make sense of the term.

The reflection from the ionosphere is due the the presence of ions and is not fundamentally frequency dependent. Some frequencies will scatter
more efficiently. But that is neither here nor there. Modern high sensitivity amps (GaN) together with computer processing allows real time
analysis of backscatter from a wide range of frequencies with varying efficiencies of scatter. This is a species of tomography since tomography
is the reconstruction of some scanned shape from either transmitted or scattered waves. Seismic tomography is an example.

User "SOC" was arguing in the Voronezh thread some years ago that this radar could not be a OTH-B (backscatter) radar but maybe OTH-SW (surface wave) radar that could be made smaller but had nevertheless the disadvantage of having shadow zones caused by mountains...

All radars work on backscatter. SOC has to be more specific before being credible. A passive detector requires a strong signal from the target or from a source
behind the target (e.g. solar occultation). Phased array early warning radars are not passive detectors. They use a more efficient EM wavelengths to
detect far objects. But that range is not as limited these days as it was back in the 1960s.

George1 wrote:so Russian radars can detect F-35?

The key detail is that they can differentiate them from actual ICBM launches. The days of flocks of geese confusing these systems are
over. And this is not just apocryphal BS, then it was incompetence back the early 1980s that would result in any confusion.

I remember the Americans thought the Soviets were attacking with a massive launch... till they realised it was a problem with a decimal point being in the wrong place... their massive attack turned out to be the moon rising... fortunately their other sensors didn't indicate an attack so they assumed it was a malfunction...

Ar, this nasty russians again, using the moon for their aggression!

kvs wrote:The reflection from the ionosphere is due the the presence of ions and is not fundamentally frequency dependent.   Some frequencies will scatter
more efficiently.  But that is neither here nor there.    Modern high sensitivity amps (GaN) together with computer processing allows real time
analysis of backscatter from a wide range of frequencies with varying efficiencies of scatter.    This is a species of tomography since tomography
is the reconstruction of some scanned shape from either transmitted or scattered waves.   Seismic tomography is an example.

Ok thanks kvs. I understand the reflection of electromagnetic waves on conductive layers, just thought the phenomenon was not really effective outside such frequencies. But maybe new technology and specially processing can change such accepted realities. Will keep an eye on the issue.

User "SOC" was arguing in the Voronezh thread some years ago that this radar could not be a OTH-B (backscatter) radar but maybe OTH-SW (surface wave) radar that could be made smaller but had nevertheless the disadvantage of having shadow zones caused by mountains...

All radars work on backscatter.   SOC has to be more specific before being credible.   A passive detector requires a strong signal from the target or from a source
behind the target (e.g. solar occultation).    Phased array early warning radars are not passive detectors.    They use a more efficient EM wavelengths to
detect far objects.   But that range is not as limited these days as it was back in the 1960s.
[/quote]
I need to look deeper this surface-wave type. I thought it was meant to operate only in naval surveillance and not on land...

Short wave radio operates over a rather wide range of frequencies and it uses scattering off the ionosphere. But the full potential
of ion reflection has not been tapped. Ionization is substantial down to 70 km (upper mesosphere) in the high latitudes due to
auroral belt electron precipitation. And galactic cosmic rays (GCR) ionize a layer at around 13 km spanning from the geomagnetic poles
to the subtropics (the high latitude confinement is not as severe as for auroral belt electrons since GCR have GeV energies when
they impact the atmosphere and disintegrate into a cascade of particles as in particle accelerator experiments). Since these
ionization layers occur at much higher densities than the ionosphere, the efficiency of scatter from smaller wavelengths increases.
But even wavelengths shorter than the mean distance between ions in the low density ionosphere will still scatter since we are
dealing with substantial layer thickness and not a single ion.

High sensitivity phase array "radars" coupled with massive available real time computational resources enable new approaches to scatter
waves of various frequencies from regions of the atmosphere not previously used for this purpose. Russian upper atmosphere science
is rather strong especially when dealing with EM aspects and ionization. Various critics with zero education in this area simply have
no clue what is possible. Their only metric is how much money is spent. But the US itself is an utter failure in this regard since it
has numerous large scale projects that "ran out of money" (due to corruption) and were never finished.

Feeling bored I am going to do a S-400 vs F-35 discussion here.

https://topwar.ru/176554-kljuchevoe-sobytie-v-nebe-nad-astrahanskoj-oblastju-naturnye-ispytanija-zur-9m317ma-podtverdili-unikalnuju-osobennost-otechestvennyh-zrk.html

the 9M317MA missile can autonomously track a 0.3m2 target from 35kms away. So with that in consideration 35(.0001 ÷ 0.3) ^.25 a .0001m2 target can be tracked at a 4.73km range by itself.



http://www.1728.org/angsize.htm

If we assume that the radar beam angle 120 degrees with a 4.73km distance the size of the entire radar beam horizontal angle would be 16.73kms with 5.5kms covered and if the Elevation angle is the same or smaller the 1.6km height can be covered.



However the 9M96MD and 40N6 are as new as the Buk-M3 missile I have demonstrated and they are bigger meaning their host radars are more powerful in tracking performance. Also more than half their flight profiles is cruising above the F-35s flight ceiling means they wont be seeing .0001m2 but instead they will be seeing the topside of a huge reflective surface area which I predict would give reflections 1000 times more in size. In other words it would not come as a surprise if these SAM missiles can autonomously track stealth aircrafts 100km+ by themselves



I am at a conclusion that the low frequency radars can guide these missiles to the F-35 even when the F-35 is demonstrated as a 5.5km tall, 1.6km wide and 200 meter depth aerial target the host radars on the missiles are powerful enough to do the rest of the work to self autonomously guide itself to the F-35. So if the F-35 is demonstrated as .001m2 target from front to bottom ventral RCS in fire control frequencies, lower frequencies can make it 10 times bigger and with consideration of the Advertised Nebo-M 480(0.01 ÷ 1) ^.25 a .01m2 target can be tracked at a 151.78km range. Nioby in developement will exceed the Nebo-M in performance. The F-35 has a glide bomb rack with an internal carriage of 8 storm breakers meaning the S-400 with short and medium range air defenses cant be overwhelmed which reduces the F-35 to use air to surface missiles in its inventory that require an internal carriage of 2 air to ground missiles to be fired at farther ranges than the glide bombs. and with EW systems present near those SAMs those air to ground missiles might be heading somewhere else than the SAMs it is targeting.

Any thoughts here?