Posted on 01/01/2008 9:22:39 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
To protect Sukhoi secrets, IAF will switch off radars during exercise
Manu Pubby
Friday, December 28, 2007 at 0000 hrs
New Delhi, December 27: India’s defence ties with the US may be reaching new heights, but the Air Force is keen to protect the secrets of its latest fighting machine, the Su 30MKI, from probing eyes during the high profile ‘Red Flag’ exercise scheduled to take place at the Nellis airbase in US in August next year.
The Air Force is sending six Su 30s for the prestigious exercise — the first time the latest fighter from the Russian stable will visit North America — but has decided to keep the aircraft’s classified NO11M BARS radar switched off during the entire war game.
While alternative arrangements are being made to ensure that the performance of the fighters at the “world’s toughest aerial combat training exercise” does not get compromised, the IAF top brass is clear that the secret frequencies used by the BARS radar to track enemy targets and launch offensive weapons should not be exposed.
“The radar frequencies are top secret as they can be used to block vital functions of the fighter. While we have a good equation with the US, we have to be careful about the future,” a senior IAF officer said.
Perhaps, the IAF has not yet recovered from its experience at the Indra Dhanush exercise in UK earlier this year, where US and UK spy planes tried to snoop on the Su 30 MKI’s radar.
According to some reports, a US Air Force RC-135U electronic spy plane and a UK Air Force BAC 111 test plane equipped with radar detecting gear were snooping around the Waddington airbase during the two-week war game. However, the BARS radar was switched off during that exercise too.
Also, Russia is keen to protect the frequencies of its radar as it has just started getting global orders for the Su 30. “There are IPR related issues too as Russia would not want its radar frequencies to be revealed,” the IAF officer said.
The US is specially interested in the BARS radar as the Su 30s are becoming the mainstay fighter of the Chinese Air Force too.
Gonna be a fun time for those pilots!
The key to improving radar capability lay in electronic steering of the radar beam a technique that first began to be employed in ground based anti missile radars in the 1970s. Such radars employ a group of antennas in which the relative phases of the respective signals feeding the antennas are varied in such a way that the effective radiation pattern of the array is reinforced in a desired direction and suppressed in undesired directions. Such radars are referred to as phased array radars, since they employ an array of antennas that work using a shift in the signal phase.
By the early 1980s the technology had been mastered to an extent where it could be employed in airborne radars.
Electronic steering and shaping of a beam provides unprecedented beam agility - beam shape and direction can be digitally controlled by a computer within a matter of tens of milliseconds. Such beam agility makes it possible for one phased array radar to act as multiple radars each with its own beam shape and scan pattern! This is referred to as interleaving radar modes. The same radar can be tracking for airborne threats using one beam shape and scan pattern while searching for ground targets using another beam shape and scan pattern.
The Russian NIIP N-011M Bars radar fitted on the Su-30MKI and the NIIP Bars-29 radar proposed to be fitted on the MiG-29M2 being offered to the IAF are examples of phased array radars. The B-1B Bone has flown since the 1980s with an AN/APQ-164 radar, fitted with an electronically steered array. The B-1A Batwing also exploits this technology in its AN/APQ-181 multimode attack radar.
Phased array radars also referred to as passive array radars, represent a big leap forwards. Using beam steering they provide stealth, interleaving modes and reliability. However, the shift in phase of the radar signal comes at a cost. High-power phase control leads to losses in the signal and a consequent reduction in radar sensitivity. Typical total losses in early systems resulted in a factor of 10 reductions in radiated power; in modern systems these losses are still in the factor of 5 ranges.
*And suddenly their China's own satellites started achieving orbit...and worse, their nuclear missiles started to hit their targets!!
I don't doubt your expertise but question why we we would have selected a phased array radar for the AWACS (way back in the late 60's) if there had been an order of magnitude less power?
Seems an awfully large price to pay for a radar that is suppose to "control the battle space".
I'd be interested in any comments you may have.
All of those missiles are exposed...
The Russians have never really bothered about stealth.
That was a clipping from this website, and had no inputs from me:
http://kuku.sawf.org/Emerging+Technologies/2667.aspx
About the power loss, I think it is because of the method used to “electonically steer” the radar beam. Traditional radars have one powerful emitting source and a large reflector. The kinds with electronic steering comprise of an array of tiny emitters, and the size limitations of each element of the array results in the power loss, overall.
There is no way the SU30 can take an F-35 .. and I think the F-15 would even give it a run for it's money:
By the way, those are Raptors in the picture. The F-22, not the F-35. And yes, the F-22 would smoke the highly radar visible SU-35. The design of the SU-35 itselft is full of right angles. Bad for the radar cross-section.
The SU-35 is still one of the best planes flying and its radar is better than the one on the F-15.
I also understand they have a radar absorbing coating for the SU-35 tat works fairly well.
If you are in anything but a F-22 that plan is real trouble.
F-37 Talon once cataloged, how long till that info would be of us to us?
I still think the F-22 is the sexiest fighter I’ver ever seen.
I never worked on a radar whose frequencies were classified after the first time it was turned on.
Waveforms, frequency agility, receive (but not transmit) antenna patterns and signal processing may be classified, but not operating frequencies.
It’s LSM, what do you expect?
I recall an instance when there was a Russian freighter in Boston Harbor and we were asked not to transmit using a Navy radar on which we were installing a new waveform. That was only to delay the time it would take for the Russians to determine the new waveforms. (Hell, if we’d been at all enterprising, we would have started transmitting a library of bogus, but plausible waveforms. For all I know, the NSA did.)
If the Pentagon is at all enterprising, they’ve already gotten the source code (or the machine code, which can be reverse engineered) from one of Russia’s customers. If the Russians are at all realistic, they know that moment they sell a copy to any foreign country the design has been divulged.
Interesting, educational. Thanks.
BTW, every one should know that the aircraft in post 15 is a supposed FA-37, and is a movie prop (nonflying) from a television series (cancelled?).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.