At the same time there's a reason most radars use the high frequency - because it's more accurate. The lower frequencies allow for greater range for ground based radars and also are better able to detect stealth craft. As said above the lower frequencies are also less accurate with lower ability to discern tiny differences thus creating a much larger 'source area' or larger blip. To exaggerate like detection via ear versus eye, the other has a lot higher ability to discern precise angles of direction. Also the lower frequencies are actually more sensitive to jamming. This keeps coming up repeatedly, the tradeoff of being able to better see stealth aircraft gains you range but at the cost of accuracy and with increased sensitivity. The Globaleye is also very new, I think UAE is their first customer and it's still partially in development. I'd be interested to know if the US foreign ministry and CIA have been having discussions with Saab and Swedish Defense Ministry regarding Globaleye's limited ability to detect stealth aircraft. We still remember when the Soviets wanted to buy extremely deep going submarines from a Finnish company and CIA and US officials gave it green light and once the prototype was finished they said "uhh.. you know what? That thing can reach our sea floor cables in the Atlantic. Tell you what, stop working on it ASAP and dismantle the team". On the positive side the Globaleye and Gripen would come with Saab's towed jammer pod as well as a Lightweight Air-launched Decoy Missile. I suppose these two tricks could help extend the survivability of both the Globaleyes and Gripens but again I'm also kind of cautious as to how long an AWACS could survive in the air when we're talking about a full complement being just 2 AWACS and 60+ Gripens.
it's weird that they would only get two. SAAB does mention they can't build many a year. I think it was only 2-4 per year. I have no idea if the globaleye has the system the hawkeye does where the fighters it is working with can launch their semi-active radar guided missiles (radar guided missiles that don't have onboard radar. they guide off the firing planes radar). The hawkeye can take over the radar guidance of those missiles leaving the fighter to continue on with whatever including evasion. Maybe it is only 2 as part of that deal. If the globaleye can take over missile guidance 2 planes might be enough since they are supposed to have an endurance of 11 hours in the air. depends really on how many missiles it can guide too (if it can do that. I suspect it might have that capability.) You would think they would want 3 or 4 of them to have a rotation going and 24 hour coverage (not neccessarily 24/7) and also be doing maintenance on 1 while the others are in flight or on standby (for multiple engagement zones).
All SARH missiles have the ability to home in on the radar returns that are from other sources. Some ARH missiles can be fired in that mode too and many of them only use their own radar for the final intercept anyway. I had to research this stuff earlier. The F-18 and F-35 etc. actually have a system which allows one pilot to fire a missile from another fighter that is in superior position. I also recall that most pilots don't usually make that many decisions on their own but get a lot of guidance from ground or so where the actions are coordinated with the big picture and best possible representation of the battlespace. SARH missiles cannot be "fire and forget" unless someone is lighting up the target. The HARM and other anti-radiation missiles are the exception in that they actively home in on the source of radiation such as a radar emitter or jammer etc. but ARH and SARH don't require the target to keep it's radar on as it's illuminated from elsewhere. SARH just doesn't mind where the radiation is coming from originally, be it AWACS, another fighter or a ground station. ARH is the fire and forget tool, it can calculate an expected trajectory and close in with it's radar off and once it reaches it's final approach distance it turns the radar on and hopefully the enemy has reached roughly that area. ARH can have the ability to receive mid-flight corrections for reaching the intercept area before turning it's radar on as long as someone can see that it's target is changing course. Just two Globaleyes are on the bid and that has all kinds of issues like you said. One bad landing and you only have one. Any need for maintenance and you only have one. They have a big radar on them, they're going to be targeted a lot because they are a priority target but they're also a thin target because, really, just two? Just how long can you expect two planes to survive? Then again they may be able to certainly cause some casualties to the enemy while they're in the air and their abilities are useful in times that lead towards a conflict in revealing submarines, detecting ground movements and so on. ------------------- Finnish Air Forces top ranking officers just discussed on the Defense Forces' podcast that a single F-18C Hornet can take out "some 10 enemy planes", extending that "60 multi-role fighters could credibly take on 600 enemy fighters". They argue that operating them defensively gives a homefield advantage and they also discuss 'relative performance' - meaning the performance of both the equipment, the training and abilities of the personnel and other factors are compared in relation to the expected opponent. They add that for the Hornet the relative performance is 'quite good' but starting to decline as the performances of the neighboring countries are improved. They also mention that defensive advantages include being able to operate in presence of friendly anti-air systems which further support the fighters' actions and provide additional cover. https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli...600-viholliskonetta-vastaan/7915424#gs.emulvo
I would guess the F-35 would be out mostly due to operational cost and logistics. which the operational cost is driven up by the logistics issues. The only real advantage I see to picking the newer F-18s is it probably won't take as much training (because of similarity) and the variation in weapons it can carry. The Gripen sounds pretty good. I don't know anything about the Typhoon or Rafale. I would say top 2 are probably the Gripen and Typhoon. Not just on the aircraft themselves but because both SAAB and (eurofighter? the company that makes the typhoon) both seem to want Finland to have at least some of the industry to be able to support the fighter if chosen. which you know Lockheed and the U.S. won't do that for the F-35. Not sure on that with the F-18 either. It sounds like SAAB and Eurofighter want the contract, Boeing maybe. From what little I'm seeing on Dassualt's and Lockheeds end they could care less. Also another part of the logistics strike against the F-35. Probably won't be ready by the time Finland wants it (production numbers). The operational cost is part of the budget they set for this. Guess Lockheed has a page on it but they don't actually say much on the supply and industrial (in Finland) aspect. https://www.f35.com/global/participation/finland
When we bought the F-18C and D we assembled all the C models here in Finland. I'm also told by reliable sources that some improvements to F-18's software or so were developed here. With the F-18 there exists a 'support desk' which means they have a simulator and a test pilot ready at all times for emergencies - if you get an emergency they'll replicate the situation with their pilot and give real-time assistance. Finland's invitation to tender was very thorough and included request for the potential suppliers to include in the offers any possibility for industrial or technological cooperation that would be a part of the package. Typhoon's types of performances and mission design are not the types that Finland is after. It is ideal for the UK to patrol the vast oceans around it and so, for similar reasons it's great for Spain, Germany and Italy too, they're all looking out to the sea instead of towards land and more than one of them have interests with former colonies, far flung island territories and so on. Rafale is French and while it has some nice abilities and performance it has no advantages in the bid. It simply doesn't stand out in any way. The French also have a infamous reputation when it comes to ability to actually deliver what is promised and things like logistics and technical details of maintenance. Cooperation with them tends to usually result in a flustercuck trainwreck. We got the French company's nuclear plant and it's been delayed by what? A decade or more and it ended up rising from "seems reasonable" to "the most expensive construction projects ever" list. Sure it doesn't rival the ISS or so but really. The three contenders F-35, F-18E/F + Growler and Gripen + Globaleye are all quite different from one another. F-18E/F with Growlers is combat proven design and has high survivability and is a great package and we can leverage existing logistics and infrastructure since it's so similar with C/D models. F-35A is expensive but we can afford 60+ of them if we were to choose them. It has some almost unrivaled features among all the world's fighters but also some weaknesses such as the runway length requirement. It has been expensive but that's to be expected from truly revolutionary aircraft that is pushing the edge in aerospace science and stealth. They are now finishing up a large program which improves the operating cost efficiency significantly. Simply, it's so young that they're barely out of toothing problems and only beginning the process of improving efficiencies through rationalization and optimization. Which is a big point to drive home - Gripen was first introduced only a few years after F-18C/D. It's essentially very similar to F-18E/F in terms of just using an 80's airframe design and installing all the latest systems and improvements to it but F-18E/F flew it's first flight 7 years after Gripen and is thus a newer airframe and slightly more modern technology. Gripen certainly looks good but is it going too far with it's emphasis for simply being the cheapest alternative in the market? Does it actually stand up to Su-27 and Su-30 in an all out air war? Finnish Air Force officers note that the F-18C is able to take out roughly 10 Russian fighters per loss of one plane. Indeed when we bought it in 1995 it already had the ability to simultaneously fire at 8 targets simultaneously which was a massive relative performance advantage, Russian planes were offered back then but they had maintenance issues - 30% of the fleet would be undergoing maintenance at all times - and they could only fire at two targets simultaneously, making them essentially 'point interceptors'. What we're looking for is not cost saving in itself but that our fighters will be able to take out a number of enemies and still have a good chance of returning home. If we just go for a cheap alternative - how many planes can we even take out? Russians do have their own tricks up their sleeves, they've got incredible engineers and scientists too even if they lack the funding. If they manage to take out all the intercepting planes every few times we'll run out of planes in couple of weeks or less. So, I really don't know how they stack up against each other. I do know they've had all the planes here and have been doing extensive tests and they know what we're up against and what those planes need to be able to do. They're some really experienced and patriotic folks up there and they'll choose a good fighter for us soon enough! Everyone is campaigning hard but now that we had this big airshow at Kauhava there was one thing I noticed. Every other contender was trying to make a big show of themselves except for the F-35 which wasn't even present. What does this mean - I can only speculate. Similarly, Saab had massive presence, from one angle it looked like half the area was taken up by Saab alone. What does this mean? Time will tell I suppose. Edit: The F-35A now costs 78M $ a piece. The F-18E/F costs 66M $ a piece. The Gripen C (the older one) costs 30-60M $ a piece. For comparison Su-35 costs 40-65M $ domestically and 84M $ exported. So, if we're just talking about price - is that an awful lot for full aspect stealth? There has been a strong misinformation campaign going on by Russia especially targeting the F-35 but really, it's possibly the most advanced fighter and a stealth fighter to boot with multiple advanced versions of it and they all work and perform tremendously well. Simply, if you're going to get a stealth fighter you're going to have to pay extra. This was never questioned by anyone. Certainly it's not physically possible to add hi-tech features to the feature list of an aircraft and expect the price to go down. Sure the operating costs are also higher but really, we're looking for a plane to fight a war with against massive onslaught of the Russian Air Forces. We're looking for some three squadrons of fighters to go against an enemy that has over 4,000 aircraft. We cannot go the "win the economy through attrition" route against a Russian invasion. Instead we just throw a lot of money at whatever is guaranteed to cause heavy casualties and is hard to kill. Anything that is likely to suffer heavy losses is something that we won't be able to replace if this causes our defenses to collapse. If we choose Gripen then it's because they have tested it and see that it is such a plane that can be expected to reasonably survive prolonged encounter with the full might of Russian Air Forces.
Even the U.S. air force hates the f-35. It probably would have turned out fine if the marines (who wanted single engine and STOVL) were developing their own aircraft. Both the air force and navy wanted two engines (mostly for safety reasons of one engine goes out you still have one). it's not built for air superiority. And apparently for it to work with non-f-35s (say if it wants to communicate with an f-18) theres no way to do it without compromising it's stealth. and for it to be stealth on an air or air/ground intercept mission it can only carry 4 missiles or 2 missiles and 2 bombs. I have heard that the block II and III versions are much better than the original production version in performance. The pentagon switches between hating it (because of budget over runs, I think it's estimated to be something like 1.5 trillion dollars by the end of the program) or loving it. It's almost always going to be stuck as a first strike softening unit. Go in and take out AA while other aircraft do the actual strikes. Both the U.S. navy and airforce were considering lowering how many f-35s they got for the latest version of the f-18 (advanced super hornet. So H? maybe. not sure what it's designation would be for the navy) and the "new" F-15 Silent Eagle (for the air force) to bridge the gap till the 6th generation fighters come out in 2060 or so. Both services are already looking past the F-35. Now doing a JSF between just the navy and air force probably would have worked.
Indeed, there's a big difference between being able to fire 4 missiles or being able to fire 8 to 12 or so. That said mounting stuff on external pylons won't immediately result in the same radar cross section as regular fighter having the same payload. Stealth isn't on/off. Even non-stealth aircraft can successfully close in on enemy undetected. Stealth fighters can do it so much easier. But arguing about the actual details is impossible for I don't have the faintest clue of what the actual detection ranges are and how much ECM etc. impact it, how much weather and the angle of the plane etc. affect it and all. Just glad that the people who are making the decision are the ones who have access to all of that information - instead of politicians.
As I see more stuff it sounds like the F-35 could be great for other countries. But for the U.S. it is a terrible aircraft. Because apparently the marine and Navy versions (B and C so doesn't matter for Finland) can't sustain supersonic speeds because it degrades the stealth material. And instead of fixing it the Pentagon is just putting a operational limit on how long supersonic can be held. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a32304032/f-35-supersonic-flight/
Supersonic flight has it's uses but it's not and end all thing. With thrust vector control you can indeed have some maneuverability with it but it more or less turns you into a dart as the control surfaces lose airflow. For US there are a number of situations where you might actually want to fly from a distant place to a given region as fast as possible - and now that's one thing it can't do. But in general it's also good to note that the top speeds of all the new fighters have been coming down since the 70's and not going up. In general it seemed to me that going at those very fast speeds ate fuel like mad and also resulted in high maintenance costs and short lived airframes because really when you are punching against such volumes of air the plane is being punished a lot, all sorts of tremors, vibrations and such. It's little wonder that it would also start to peel off the stealth skin. It's not as much a "just solve it" but it could be a general physical limitation; the outermost skin has to be stealth, the stealth materials have to be certain way and flying at supersonic speeds produces these shocks on the outermost surface as well as the airframe in specific points. Over here we don't have much room to be flying at supersonic speeds for long, I think the average width of our 1100km tall country is only around 300km or so and the widest part is like ~450km. Not a lot of room to be maneuvering at supersonic speeds for long durations. Also for the US I suppose it's difficult to assess just how useful a single plane in the arsenal is when everyone wants it to be a different thing. Certainly the US Air Force needs a first strike fighter that can take out air defenses with minimal casualties and also a stealth air superiority fighter. And it seems to be doing these jobs quite nicely - it's more the general purpose heavy close air support and strategic bombing that it kind of sucks in. I mean it can carry extra loads when it no longer has to fear being spotted by radars and the strike package ones can always be picketed by air superiority ones. But it's not a B-52 and it's in a way endemic of the US military planning that any new expensive toy would be expected to be pushed to so many uses as opposed to just accepting that this one is a multi-role stealth fighter geared for suppressing air defenses and providing stealth air superiority but also capable of limited ground strikes and then just build something like a new B-20 that just has a shit ton of ordnance and reasonably cheap maintenance costs and unit cost so that you can have enough of them. And then if you also need something like a plane that can both do supersonic strikes and intercepting then you needed a new plane for that too. But for some reason few people have been that interested in supersonic interceptors or strike craft for the past decades, hinting that the supersonic ability is not generally all that useful.
Which the air Force already has an aircraft capable of the stealthy first strike. Well 2 really. The f-117 and the f-22. So really what needed was something to replace f-16s and 15s. Which air superiority (for the 15) it can't do. And apparently the 'beast mode' (all the external ordinance) is not developed yet. Navy didn't have any stealthy first strike. Marines may not really need the stealth (aside from the ones assigned to aircraft carriers. But they would be flying the C version.) Seems most of the performance issues have been fixed (like an early I think block 1 f-35 losing in a dogfight to an f-16) so f-35 is now around what an f-18 can do. If it has to dogfight. But all the services (not just U.S.) are not just using the f-35. They are pairing the stealth fighters with 4th generation aircraft because the stealth fighters (f-22 as well) have terrible payload. Not what they can carry but the amount. So I wouldn't be to surprised if Finalnd, if they really want the f-35 end up doing something like 16-24 f-35s and larger order of a different aircraft.
I don't see us having two types of planes spread over three squadrons. On such small scales the maintenance and logistics costs for two lines of parts, two lines of engineer skills etc., all of it would cost a lot of money - there would be little savings to be made that way. Also if the F-35 didn't have an advantage due to it's stealth and other features we simply won't be getting it at all and likewise if it has a real advantage then we'll get all 60+ fighters of that type and no other type. If another plane is expected to perform better with three to four squadrons than three squadrons of F-35 then we'll choose all fighters of that type. It certainly will be an interesting decision and I don't think we'll even be learning all of the details for years to come considering they are based on military secrets. They know what they're doing.
It's worth keeping in mind that the American military has effectively infinite money. That's not to say they waste it on purpose or anything, but they can absolutely afford to throw things at the wall and see what sticks, even if the things in question are quarter-billion-dollar jets.
This is true - some countries just have to play it safe. Think of Sweden - playing it safe. Radical weird experiments of, say, put nuclear reactors on supersonic nuclear bombers and have laser turrets manned by sharks? No, Saab ain't gonna try that. The US, China and Russia? The US and Russia already tried it and China is currently hiring shark trainers. In fact the US also tried polar bears and penguins for the turrets and then there was that prototype that was going to counter the nuclear supersonic shark turret plane just in case it was going to be the next big thing. That the US was actually planning to do stuff like the Sea Dragon or but a orbital battlecruiser on LEO armed with Casaba Howitzers speaks volumes. That said the US attracts and cultivates a ridiculous amount of sheer engineering talent and the system of a billion subcontractors each getting paid and then some guarantees a system where if it can be done they'll figure a way to do it. Not that this alone makes every concept conceptually valid but the US is de facto unrivaled in military technology and they also have quantity. Few other countries can calmly state that they can not only fight on multiple fronts but also win on all those fronts with practically zero casualties. That's because of not just building lots of cheap crap or relying on volume and power of saturation but thinking about the survivability onion: Not being seen is the ultimate armor. And when you see the enemy, you need to be able to hit them. Where others have simple calculated that "if a Stormtrooper has 1% chance of hitting the enemy we'll just employ 100 Stormtroopers against them. Which only gets you around 64% probability to actually hit so add 100 more and you get a whopping 87% chance to hit. Or you could have one guy that has 80% chance to hit. And make that guy invisible to the enemy, whoop! Then complain that the invisible guy with 80% chance to hit cost as much as four Stormtroopers.
I mean, it matters when the 1 guy with 80% chance to hit and is invisible gets taken out by friendly fire because the brass didn't bother to tell their allies he was in the area.
Good point. I'm sure one F-35 can see another with no problem (because they can communicate without breaking their stealth so IFF works) but to communicate with something older they have to break their stealth (maybe an antenna pops out somewhere).
If you are ever going to fight a war then there will be friendly fire incidents. It's a complete and utter fallacy that this is somehow a speciality to the Americans or the blame of their command. It's not uncommon to see whole units open fire at each other and even call artillery upon one another. This is so common that there are tactical maneuvers that seek to exploit it. You have to also take into account that folks are in a war zone where the enemy could literally fire at you from any direction - and you're really, really tired. My grandfather said that the scary part was not when you were afraid that you might die but when you were so tired that you were afraid that you might not. Prolonged sleep deprivation causes eventually mild hallucinations, similar depreciation of functionality as being increasingly drunk and ultimately micro sleep which means that even as you're standing you may suddenly fall asleep for a little while. He lost his brother to friendly artillery while charging enemy positions. And battlefields are chaotic by nature. If I remember correctly in WW2 there was an instance when Japanese troops were waiting to embark to troop ships but the fleet mistook the island for an enemy fleet and shelled the troops waiting there - and tried to sink the island by firing torpedoes at it. Nevermind all the times that Russians fired whole barrages on their own or when FAF intercepted a ~100 fighter formation with just 4 fighters they could get away with it because half the formation was fighting against each other. Simply, one of the situations that is difficult is when you have thousands of moving pieces and you're advancing into enemy territory. Some of the units will be under radio silence so that they won't blow their cover and so on, others are moving so fast and changing directions that it's a physical impossibility to keep everyone 100% updated at all times.
Many modern fighters are equipped with directional (narrow beam from the Expanse) communications which allows you to establish a high-speed jamming resistant datalink between two nodes with minimal opportunity for outsiders to pick up the signal and thus not compromising radio silence or stealth. Rafale is to receive it now, I don't know about Gripen but I was under the impression that this is becoming increasingly standardized. F-35 has the most advanced system the MADL and the issue was that the system is so advanced and superior that the highest commanders didn't want it to be widely distributed at this point to all the craft, if I understood it right Link 16 is the general standard for US communications. I don't know the specifics but apparently the Link 16 and MADL are not yet fully supportive of one another and it would seeem that the Link 16 would need an upgrade at some point to enable it to fully communicate with MADL systems. I don't know the tech, the reasons or motivations and arguments that are being used for it all but the whole stealth fleet were to all be equipped with the MADL system while the conventional craft would continue using Link 16 but F-22's MADL upgrade was cancelled. I don't know what's going on and I won't argue that every military decision is always the optimal one but I would argue that they try to do their best and there are often very good arguments involved that are often undisclosed to the wider public. I could be wrong too, it could be that directional communications are just an emerging tech and spearheaded by the F-35 program and associated MADL and that most planes just can't do directional comms at this point. Technically you should be able to use directional comms with another craft that uses omnidirectional and this should not risk your position - merely the radiation from the omnidirectional one would reveal that it is communicating with someone. But I don't know much about Ku Bands and communication systems. Heck I can set up a serial or parallel data link but only with access to Google and Youtube...
Never said anything about Americans. Point being, even if you can't see them, it still only takes one incidental bullet to take out the invisible guy, when there's bullets flying every which way, you don't necessarily have to be visible to get caught between them. It's rare you'll end up getting caught by surprise by the enemy since they can't see you, it's usually your allies that catch you by surprise because -they- attack, when you weren't expecting them to, causing you to get caught in the crossfire. This happens most frequently when command decides not to mention to nearby allies that a stealth team is in the area, ostensibly to prevent the information from being leaked to the enemy, but that information safety has caused much confusion in the field. It's also much more damaging when you lose your invisible trooper than when you lose 200 1%ers. I mean, sure it sounds worse when you've lost 200 guys but if they were that worthless in the first place, it's actually a logistical win, you've soaked 200 enemy rounds at the cost of 200 1% odds to take out an enemy but gained 200 troopers less logistical cost. Whereas if you lose the 1 guy, you've lost a highly effective troop and gained next to nothing if he's not even been able to fire a shot yet.
If the invisible guy costs only 400% of the Stormtrooper cost then even when you lose him you are still winning both economically and demographically unless your enemy's population structure and economy surpass yours by a greater ratio than the ratio of their losses. More parameters are needed to evaluate which side is winning, the quantity or quality in this scenario.
