F-35 electronic warfare capability affected by production quality

The Senate is concerned about the F-35s electronic warfare ability in relation to production quality affecting apertures on the airframe, Reuters reports.

Apertures are a tough thing to design for stealth aircraft. The aircraft has to be stealthy, yet let antennas and radar detectors peak through the skin without creating adverse radar concerns.

The F-35 has 10 apertures that pertain to radar detection as can be seen from this graphic.



As a comparison, the F-22--sometimes described as an antenna farm--has around 30 apertures on the airframe.

Production quality has nagged the F-35 program even while proponents complain more aircraft need to be built per year. The problem with building a higher quantity of F-35s is that what is currently being built are "mistake-jets" because of production knowledge immaturity.

The electronic warfare concern may have been one of the classified issues mentioned in last years DOD "quick-look" report" pointing to a variety of F-35 troubles.

Electronic warfare is an interesting term with the F-35. It has no wide field of view self-defense jamming equipment. One of the assumptions is that the narrow-band and narrow field of view radar in the nose will perform some jamming functions. Due to the cooling issues and sustained power with AESA radars, this is probably not a very reliable function. The aircraft will have narrow-band, mostly nose-on low-observable capability and some expendable decoys. A towed decoy--combat proven in ALLIED FORCE 1999--is not expected until Block 4. Whenever that happens.

A paper on predicted F-35 survivability can be read here.

Low observable

An optical sensor (visual spectrum and non-visual spectrum) dream.

Yet another example of combat risk to the F-35 design. Not easy to solve without a redesign.

And: I have always been curious about those that wrongly claim the F-35 will be able to do anti-access work.

Fun term for the day

Riddle me this Batman. What says it is stealthy but not healthy?

And, the key term for you'all today is "conventional edges"...Google in 3....2.....1

......as it pertains to the F-35 program.

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New APA paper--China's J-20 fighter has the potential to be a VLO design

Air Power Australia (APA) has just released a lengthy preliminary study on the low observable potential of the Chinese J-20 fighter aircraft. Some parts of it can only be understood by engineers.

The parts that can be understood by a non-engineer reveal the following.

1.The U.S. leadership has very little credibility in their statements about the potential threat of this aircraft. One may believe that the J-20 does qualify as a “capability surprise”.

2.The U.S. does not know the current ability of Chinese engineering skill in the area of low observable materials (radar absorbent skin and radar absorbent material).

3.The rules of low observable aircraft design are shaping, shaping, shaping and material. The APA paper looks at the shaping of the J-20 aircraft. The APA paper also takes a look at the potential effects of known radar absorbent material with the J-20 design.

4.APA has determined that the J-20 has the potential to be a very-low-observable (VLO) design if China can make it so. In this area of concern, the J-20 design has growth potential.

"In conclusion, this study has established through Physical Optics simulation across nine frequency bands, that no fundamental obstacles exist in the shaping design of the J-20 prototype, which would preclude its development into a genuine Very Low Observable design."

All of this is important because the U.S. has ended production of the F-22. Out-going U.S. Secretary of Defense Gates theory that the U.S. will have several hundred “fifth-generation” fighter aircraft in the 2020’s holds no water. In any event, if the J-20 is successful, it will be produced in a number that will make the 120 or so combat coded F-22s just not enough to secure future U.S. air superiority needs.

Some will say the authors of the APA paper don’t have access to the classified information involved in such programs. This is true. However, just because a program is classified, does not mean the engineers get to ignore the laws of physics.