The Unfair Advantage of the F-35

hi there is no aircraft more divisive than the F-35 some love it some hate it and since the haters tend to be nause here well let's do a video about the F35 strong [Music] points F35 is probably the most talked about military procurement program in history but when you peel off the pr from Loy Martin the US Air Force U the Press coverage and the online noise you are left with a relatively limited number of features that can really make the difference by making the difference I affecting the actual operation and giving a distinct advantage over whoever doesn't have the availability of a fifth generation platform in this video we are not talking about the logistics of the system the geopolitics associated with it um there is a lot to say about the subjects but it is a story for another time today we talk about how good this aircraft is at destroying the opponent today we discuss the four key advantages that the f25 and aircraft like it have when confronted with four generation platforms or the current air defenses you know when I hear that the aircraft is a flying computer it is invisible it is tremendously effective I cringe this is marketing speak and nonsense how being a flying computer helps with Effectiveness so let's make some clarity with the help of the available open source information and some common sense stealth is the thing this aircraft is famous for and maybe today it is probably the least relevant it is a well-known subject but just to quickly recap it consists of a combination of geometric shaping and radar absorbing materials that reduce the radar reflection of the aircraft stealth also includes reduction of infrared emissions for the same purpose it is a massive subject and we have already covered it in detail on this channel just go and look for the videos the advantage is pretty obvious the detection of the aircraft is delayed and it can get closer to the Target than it would otherwise do without stealth so the stealth aircraft can in principle offend without undergoing a reaction I always thought that stealth blurs the distinction between offense and defense def but I'm digressing the F35 is today probably the most advanced fighter aircraft in terms of stealth for example the aircraft composite skin is an integrated radar absorbing material rum Coatings historically are quite delicate and prone to damage but the F-35 seems to have resolved the issues for the most part the F35 skin panels are radical Improvement in this sense they are believed to be Hardy and quite effective and in fact the aircraft seems to rely quite a lot on RS rather than on geometric steal the aircraft also features several infrared signature reduction solutions for example the serrated nozzle the cold air flow flowing around the nozzle itself and the recirculation of fuel in area warmed by atmospheric friction usually there is a number thrown around about the aircraft RCS of 0.001 square m that is the aircraft on radar is as conspicuous as an insect this is basically nonsense not only the real numbers are closely guarded secret but they are much more than a number in fact the radar cross-section varies with the attitude of the aircraft in general an aircraft is more stealed from the frontal Arc and less from the side and the back we should be taking of a RCS profile or a radar signature from all the aspects rather than a single number there are several simulation made by amateurs on the internet that can give you a reasonably approximate idea of what is going on and how RCS profile looks like why is this important from the operational perspective well not being seen till when you are quite close to the Target is indeed an easy to understand Advantage operationally within the NATO Doctrine this is considered essential the NATO and American Doctrine is quite rigid the first thing to do is to acquire their dominance and the first step to acquire their dominance is to destroy the opponents their defenses to do so it is necessary to penetrate in the airspace contested by the semi defenses and attack them stealth and low observability in general are an important advantage in this context however not everything is hanky Dory the last couple of decades have seen the development of a series of Technologies to contrast Health from B static raders to low frequency systems to the increased Reliance on passive and Optical sensors the jury still out about their effective but the future is becoming more and more uncertain for stealth because the whole world is at work to contrast this technology the F35 intelligence gathering capabilities are one of the areas where it seems we have a lot of information but in reality we know very little everyone knows that the aircraft is a flying computer but what this means is never clarified in fact we know how many antennas do exist on the F35 their location we have pictures of the boxes processing the signal and yet we know nothing about the actual capabilities we are told that they are exceptional and in fact the number of dedicated electronic intelligence Platforms in the Air Force inventory may be reduced because the requirement is covered at least in part by the F35 sensors however we don't know on how many channels the aircraft can listen on what what is the sensitivity of the receivers that is how weak are the signals that can be received we don't know how many signals can be processed at the same time these are computationally intensive jobs which are crucial to fuse the data from other sensors other aircraft and recognize the target we don't know how good the system is at coping with low probability of intercept Technologies and so on there is no doubt it is satisfactory at least for the Air Force but we don't know the real extent the aircraft has on board a quite large Solid State Storage to preserve plenty of Digital Data including the data gathered by the integrated electronic warfare system a asq 239 these data are used by the aircraft system for the so-called Sensor Fusion or better closed loop Sensor Fusion together with radar data to paint an electronic image of the electronic Battlefield in the block four there will be a full integration of the optical systems in the fusion I suspect that death is integrated already but eots is not or or so they say active and passive sensors provide a list of candidate targets these are just waveforms received from the opponent's emissions these waveforms are separated Amplified converted into digital records and then analyzed both the time domain and the frequency domain are used because the waveform shape and its frequency content can tell us a lot about the target they can tell us where it is where it is going and crucially give away hints about what it really is and eventually also details like the stores hanging below the wings anyway it is obviously crucial to be capable of telling a civilian Raider or an airliner from an actual trap what I just told you is a massive simplification of a tormented difficult process that requires an entire logistic infrastructure to be sustained for example let's make a totally hypothetical case let's suppose that a flight of f35s flies in neutral airspace but near the area of a conflict involving a potential opponent this potential opponent has a large and dense network of air defenses including for example an S400 system and we obviously talking about the conflict between Lenin and Malta I have to point out in the interest of the viewers in the channel That currently there are very friendly relationships between lonstein and malter M7 is just being the job of the flight is indeed to collect the electronic emissions of the S400 and identify its electronic signature if the system Raiders are emitting the aircraft is capable of receiving those emissions and characterize them actually before going on please note that every weapon system with a radar has a pce time and a wartime emission mode peace time modes are simplified subsets of the wartime modes exactly to avoid the system characterization by an opponent however we are in a conflict and the S400 will be operating almost at full capability so potentially it is possible to collect and analyze the full range of its features the parameters we are going to collect are the frequencies at which it is operating and how it is switching from a frequency to another this is called frequency agility and every modern system has this capability in some form being able to chase the emission while it hops from one frequency to another it is a difficulty task and it is one of the parameters that make an elent system good or bad it is actually impossible to chase a random hopping but what you can do is to listen to many different channels at the same time receiving the emission when it happens on the channel being listened to if the frequency hopping is not random then it is important to identify the patterns to follow the emission on the different frequencies up until recently this required a rather bulky Electronics but the F3 5 seems to feature a relatively small package with great capabilities or at least this is what we are told considering what a softw defined radio dongle can do well I actually have very very few reasons to doubt it another element that needs to be measure is the pulse repetition frequency and the associated pulse length raders work emitting a pulse of energy and then switching off to receive the reflection the radar frequency refers to the pools carrier frequency the number of discrete pulses in a second is the prf this is much lower than the radar frequency the carrier frequency and my vary from the hundreds to the tens of thousands per second the prf is strictly linked to the radar performance it determines the maximum range of detection the ability to identify low power Reflections the ability to use the Doppler shift of the frequency to identify moving targets and the incertitude in determining the distance the how and why it is like this is complex and maybe one day we'll talk about it but it is a crucial parameter to know because it gives away some of the radar performance every modern radar can vary its prf and PSE length according to several different patterns to optimize its performances and understanding how it is done is an important element of electronic intelligence a third element that we may want to collect is the waveform shape of the emitted signal the standard pulls is a sinusoidal electromagnetic wave hence it is a single pure frequency signal however to extract information from the received Echo useful to determine the nature of a Target you may want to emit waveforms that are not a pure sinusoid this technique is called non-cooperative Target recognition a non sinusoidal waveform causes a frequency spread of the signal reducing its power efficiency and making the detection more complicated but on the other side the configuration in the time domain of the received waveform can tell us about the target identity we already discussed this subject in the past so I won't go in depth what matters now is that the elent system on the F35 must be equipped to receive and record this type of signal and we know it is but this is not the end in fact the combination of all the parameters above may vary if our S400 Rader is simply searching the airspace or it is tracking a target with a view of sending one of or two missiles after it the type of emissions May greatly vary in frequency and prf and Agility so sometimes the F35 will maneuver to provoke the S400 to use tracking emissions or the S400 will try to scare the F35 Away by blasting it with radiation sorry sorry this is the editing gas there is a small mistake in fact the S400 among different modes it has also a mode of guiding some of the m missiles that can be launched by the system without changing the pattern of the emissions so basically the aircraft doesn't know that he's going to be fired upon on with the show it is a sort of complicated chess match whose outcome is measured by the information leaked and gathered and it is so secret that it is never celebrated in any news Outlet however Gathering the information is not enough when the aircraft lands this dat and need to be put to good use they will become part of the body of intelligence gathered around the world about different weapon systems they will be integrated in the potential opponent's order of battle contributing to a clearer picture this will be the raw material for the planning process in case of hostilities and it will be useful information for those who will be executing the plan but this is not the only work stream where this kind of information is needed every combat air aircraft today features some form of electronic warfare systems and some form of electronic support systems this system can identify a threat and protect the aircraft only because those electronic signatures have been added to digital libraries that support the systems the Jammers choose the most effective jamming strategy based on this information the presentation systems show a tactical situation based on the same information the protection and the situational awareness of the aircraft and the pilot depend heavily on the availability the correctness and the reliability of these information so the intelligence collected must be transformed in a format that could be consumed by the aircraft systems obviously the information should be available to aircraft other than the F35 so some form of translation will be needed so you understand that behind an aircraft feature there is an entire world that receives analyzes translates and redistributes it to all the parts interested it is an invisible but crucial job it requires highly trained and skilled people both in the military and in the civilian industry it requires infrastructures places where this analysis can happen it requires a highly secure communication infrastructure to distribute it and local competencies to put it to good use and integrate it in the combat system systems in this invisible Technical and organizational job recites one of the strong points of the Western Way of War and the F35 is quickly becoming key to it Network management is not what you think the us since when the network Centric Warfare was first theorized in the '90s has progressively taken steps to integrate the communications of all its assets this means different things in different contexts and it is a herculan job for example the Air Force has aircraft whose sole job is to translate one protocol into another to make ground and C based assets communicate with the aircraft and communicated in this context mostly means sharing information on a data link do you know how in video games you can have a God's view of the battle field the purpose of the data link is exactly that in principle the aircraft has a screen where the T iCal situation in the area is shown to the pilot and it helps decision making obviously this is not of any particular utility if the screen can't show data other than those collected by the aircraft alone possibility of exchanging data acts as a force multiplier in the context of a large Force package often awx are a key node in the network because they produce a lot of potentially high quality data the f25 from this point of view is another aircraft that produces high quality data the features we described before the other sensors and the sophisticated Sensor Fusion and Target recognition make the F35 an ideal producer of high quality data the system works around the concept of a track which is a from a conceptual point of view a record of logical information about anything that has been spotted by the aircraft the record on the F35 can contain data about the kinematics of a Target speed altitude access eration position but also the identification if it is a friend or a fo and other potentially very detailed data a flight of f45s exchange data on their dedicated data link which is called the model and they treat each other as if they were remote sensors working cooperatively they can produce very high quality tracks that provide the pilot with what he or she craves the most the situational awareness but the F35 can exchange this high quality and very reliable tracks with other aircraft which do not have the same sensors and intelligence capabilities more dated data links like the link 16 which is basically the NATO standard are older than the model with a lower throughput and they can exchange only much simpler information uh the F35 connected to the same data link though can broadcast its highquality battle space picture to other aircraft generally older and less advanced in terms of sensor the in a available to the for Gen aircraft won't be as comprehensive as the one available to the F35 but it is still much more than it used to be the F35 in this case can a listing principle coordinate a group of 4 gen aircraft from the front line when the mainstream media tell you that the F-35 can act as a quarterback for a formation of four generation aircraft so to become a Force multiplier probably they don't know but this is what they mean if you ask me this this is a key advantage of 4++ and fifg aircraft because to a different extent this information sharing capability is present and it is one of the specific characteristics of the four Plus+ generation aircraft Euro Fighter Rafal grippin but also so high 35 all have this capability at different levels in different forms I personally would use them as the hmark of the 4 Plus+ generation while the fif generation has stealth but that's just my opinion now all of this is well and good but it's not really exceptional sure the F35 excels inal intelligence collection and information sharing but there is a further related feature that sets this aircraft apart in my opinion this feature is the key advantage that the F-35 may have in the modern battle space there are two guys in a room each one has a weapon and a light now turn off the light and make the room totally dark it's pretty obvious that the first one who turns the light on is dead the same applies in the electromagnetic Battlefield Arena emitting radiation of any type is giving the opponent the opportunity to study the emissions and locate the emitter as we said LPI technology makes the process more difficult but not impossible on the other hand to use modern weapons you need what is usually called a fire solution a geted weapon needs to be fed with information before it is launched and it may need guidance while on its way to the Target for example an active Rader homing airto a missile after having been woken up and self- tested needs to be fed with the instruction to navigate to the point where it can turn on its own radar and start the self guidance stage of the flight the First Essential step to generate a firing solution is knowing the target k cinematics well enough with enough Precision to efficiently guide the weapon toward the target the Seeker in an air to radar guided missile has a range of few kilometers and even less if it is fired against a low observability Target it cannot be fired in the generic direction of a Target hoping that the Seeker will acquire the right target the failure in this case is almost assured a GPS guided weapon that attx a radar installation or a common post must know the position with an accuracy of few meters because the weapon blast radius must overlap with the target position so we are in a conundrum here how to generate firing Solutions without emitting radiation and being identified well not all the sensors are active in fact many are passive the F35 and asq 239 in combination with the closed loop Sensor Fusion gives the aircraft the capability of passive targeting well what is the difference with other aircraft you may ask well the difference is that the F35 can provide the high quality tracks necessary for a fire solution in a completely passive way for example the angular resolution of many electromagnetic sensors in practice is not good enough for Passive targeting there may be a few degrees of incertitude that could geop paradiz the entire solution IA Rays used passively are much more accurate but still like Nona receivers they last a way to measure the distance a fixed Target can be triangulated by flying the aircraft around and acquiring multiple data points but a moving Target can be problematic particularly if it is another aircraft the F35 systems are designed to work in cooperation exchanging data through the model data link a flight of two or even better 4 f35s spread at a distance of a few T of kilometers can triangulate their tracks and exract information good enough to produce a comp completely passive firing solution actually the process is more complicated than a simple triangulation the movement of the aircraft of all the sensors involved and the movement of all the tracks involved need to be accounted so each aircraft intersects isochrone curves that Define the situation at a certain point in time and each aircraft being aware of the tracks generated by all the other aircraft can calculate the target position and kinematics with a very high accuracy every new track that is sted to the calculations lashes the error to the point where it is small enough to fire sure the aircraft is still emitting electromagnetic radiation with its data link but it is not emitting it toward the target the model is a directional data link that limits the emissions toward directions where it is not necessary and it is built incorporating those same LPI Technologies used for The Radars it is in theory still possible to detect it and learn that the f-35s are in the area but it is quite a hard proposition for the opponent systems so a group of f35s is in theory capable of attacking a Target without being detected and this is a big tactical Advantage this is probably the key Game Changer in the fifth generation operations it is clear that this is going to have a deep impact on operations tactics and training for example the concept of a wingman closely following its lead while it is no longer current but this will be the subject of another video thank you very much for getting this far in the video I really appreciate it and if you enjoyed it please do the usual YouTube stuff subscribe hit the Bell like it and so on and if you could consider supporting the channel on Patron or by being a member that would mean the world to me but also you will have access to the backstage you will have access to material that I produce and I make available only to those who support the channel you will have access to me if you have a question you want to discuss anything to all those who are already supporting the channel you are absolute Stars thank you very much you have no idea how important you are so this is everything thank you very much for watching and see you next time

Channel: Millennium 7 * HistoryTech

Views: 121,336

Keywords: Military

Id: KXcUQNG_Lcs

Length: 25min 18sec (1518 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 30 2023