Another "F-117 Companion" thread and a bit of history!

a reply to: Zaphod58

tankers crews

a reply to: mightmight

Plenty of food for thought, but it has been a long time since the F-117. If the USAF had a jammer, it would be here by now. But the Pentagon has poured salt water into the USAF wounds.

In signals technology, there is the term information assurance. It is really common in the digital world, but it also exists in the analog domain. There are so many tricks you can do with radar to assure the returns are yours that I'm not really sure countermeasures make sense in modern aircraft. Plenty good for fighting second tier nations. So stealth is the way to go.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: wileel

The sighting reports of the actual aircraft were from people that were reliable. They were not connected to the program, but happened to be in the right place at the right time for it. There have only been a couple willing to talk that I've ever seen.

I absolutely agree this could have happed, and kind of feeds my idea that it may not be operational in the traditional sense but maybe it a test or demonstrator phase. The key would be to know where when and under what circumstance it was seen...
If this is a near future aircraft, its very plausible since it takes so long in test before we get our hands on them as full up aircraft.

originally posted by: gariac
a reply to: mightmight

Plenty of food for thought, but it has been a long time since the F-117. If the USAF had a jammer, it would be here by now. But the Pentagon has poured salt water into the USAF wounds.

In signals technology, there is the term information assurance. It is really common in the digital world, but it also exists in the analog domain. There are so many tricks you can do with radar to assure the returns are yours that I'm not really sure countermeasures make sense in modern aircraft. Plenty good for fighting second tier nations. So stealth is the way to go.

Well said...stealth is where its at, the whole sky is a big place to look for something VERY small. Counter measures are still widely used effectively for the treats we have faced in recent years but they have evolved...a bunch (esp on 5gen aircraft)...we don't need to necessarily jam everything all of the time

originally posted by: gariac
a reply to: mightmight

Plenty of food for thought, but it has been a long time since the F-117. If the USAF had a jammer, it would be here by now. But the Pentagon has poured salt water into the USAF wounds.

In signals technology, there is the term information assurance. It is really common in the digital world, but it also exists in the analog domain. There are so many tricks you can do with radar to assure the returns are yours that I'm not really sure countermeasures make sense in modern aircraft. Plenty good for fighting second tier nations. So stealth is the way to go.

I'm confused and need clarification.

so you say stealth is the way to go but at the same time that radar systems (presumably the enemies your talking about in this instance) can't be fooled because they have information assurance. to me that sounds contradictory and illogical to say both.

second thing I need clarification on. your first paragraph. you said if the airforce had a 'jammer' or ECMs that could thwart modern first tier radar systems, it would be here by now. but, if it was/is it would likely be classified wouldn't it? But, the way you wrote it, it would seem like youre implying that by 'being here by now' essentially the public would know about it (and presumably our enemies too) seems like a silly argument to present with more holes in it than a contemporary star wars movie plot.

I'm probably misreading your posts. I'm not the brightest guy on earth. I crazy though I think it's more like 'there's so many tricks you can do TO radar. '

another thing I ponder. is stealth and ECM limited to radar. also whatever happened to EW. I guess its a lot like bigfoot. absence of evidence IS evidence of absence...wait, no..hold on...uhhhh........how's that saying go again?

a reply to: wileel

how does that statement feed your propounding that if its been seen it must only be because its in testing or a demonstrator. i dont get how you made that leap in logic. help a brother out, I ain't smart enough to keep up here.

a reply to: wileel

I agree maybe modern ECM goes far beyond jamming things. besides no body likes getting jammed especially dark helmet. he hates raspberry. maybe there's other options available in the orchard that would be a better suter for EW and ECM technologies.

a reply to: BASSPLYR

Primitive radar uses a short chunk of a sine wave. You send it and look for the reflection. To spoof that system, you would return false signal that are the same width. Now the radar return does have a little Doppler on it, but if the pulse got stretched, that would sure be weird, so that return would be suspicious. OK, we have just performed very primitive analog information assurance.

chirp

In a basic signals and systems class, you next step up from a sine burst is a chirp. You vary the frequency of the zone wave with time. Detection requires a "matched filter" or convolutional filter, depending on how your look at things. But only you, well your radar, knows the parameters of this chirp. If the return looks squirrelly, it could be false.

Now suppose your radar is frequency agile. You now have more tricks up your sleeve. At some point, creating false targets will be difficult to do convincingly.

Thus just forget jamming and go stealth. Until the F-35 came along, the Navy never had stealthly aircraft. Probably the powers the be reached the same conclusion that I outlined.

a reply to: BASSPLYR

My understanding is certain kinds of Electronic Warfare and Stealth go hand-in-hand, and are definitely greater than the sum of parts. I also think we need to make a distinction between broadly Electronic Warfare and "false targets", one is a subset of the other, but there's more to Electronic Warfare than that.

It begins with the radar equation. Detection range is the cubic root of RCS, thus reducing RCS by a factor of 10 will reduce detection range by 44%. However, note that the reason why detection range is the cubic root of a whole bunch of variables is because:

i. A radar "beam" even by the best phased array radar will not be a perfect "pencil" beam, instead it will spread out with distance.
ii. This will then occur again as it is reflected back at the transmitter.

In other words it's r^2 * r^2 = r^4.

However, with jamming the signal does not need to return. So a reduced RCS aircraft the return signal is a lot smaller, then a jammer only needs to send a signal one way to the transceiver to raise the noise floor above the much diminished return signal.

Of course, a phased array radar is much more difficult to jam, because sidelobes are small so AFAIK the jammer must be within the main lobe of the radar, which means the jammer must be in the same direction as the aircraft it's trying to hide, which means the jammer would give away the azimith of the attack but not the distance. This may be why jamming is often integrated onto stealth attack aircraft themselves. On the other hand, this could also be done from multiple, false, directions, so the adversary does not know which attack direction is real.

But of course, the so called companion (I am not convinced this exists) would have been before phased array radars were as ubiquitous as they are today and the type of jamming I am describing could have been much more effective with multiple aircraft doing the job.

You also can use DRFM to simply re-transmit a captured radar signal to create a false target behind the real target. I am assuming that creating a false target in front of the real target is more difficult since each radar pulse can simply be made unique and you can't send a false return before that unique signal reaches you. Anyway, if you coordinate it well enough you could probably coordinate a false attack over time, or these could be put into low cost drones to fake an attack.

Anyway, I'm sure there are many, many different kinds of jamming other than those I have described here.

I also need to point out the US 5th generation fighters are not merely stealth aircraft. There's a reason why the F/A/E-35 has vaunted electronic attack capabilities (and towed decoys, but shhhhh they don't talk about that).

For starters, the F-35’s APG-81 radar is no longer just a radar. “It’s a multi-functional array” that automatically fuses information from “thousands of radars” in the aircraft, O’Bryan explains. And rather than the familiar sweeping cone, the F-35’s beam is more like a laser, able to focus on a specific target or on multiple targets (the exact number is classified) with ten times the power of an EA-6B Prowler, he says. Furthermore, a formation of four F-35s can alternate transmission of the jamming signal among themselves, again automatically. And with stealth capability, one or all four of the aircraft can operate from inside the target’s firing range.

“You start with 10 times more power, and if you are much closer and you are alternating signals between four airplanes with a stealth data link between them, you can do that jamming in a coherent, cooperative manner. The signal, the technique, everything is done for [the pilot].”

Equally important, where fourth generation radar are able to detect the arrival of a threat with plus or minus 30 degrees accuracy, the F-35 can pinpoint the threat to within plus or minus one degree, an advantage that is narrowed further with the assistance of a formation of four aircraft sharing that threat trajectory, he says.

www.slideshare.net...

The F-35 EW system provides radar warning [enhanced to provide analysis, identification and tracing of emitting radars] and multispectral countermeasures for self-defence against both radar and infrared guided threats. In addition to these capabilities, it is also capable of electronic surveillance, including geo-location of radars. This allows the F-35 to evade, jam, or attack them, either autonomously or as part of a networked effort. The enhanced capabilities of the ASQ-239 [and integration with the F-35’s other systems] allow it to perform SIG/NT [signals intelligence] electronic collection. The aircraft‘s stealth capabilities make it possible for an F-35 to undertake passive detection and SIGINT while operating closer to an emitter with less vulnerability. For the use of active deception jamming, the F-35‘s stealth design also allows false target generation and range-gate stealing with less use of power.

i.imgur.com...

(emphasis mine)

ASIDE: Each of the >3000 F-35's built will also be collecting signals intelligence whenever they fly then based off this data the EA and threat libraries could be upgraded. I suppose it's important to forward deploy them near Russia then. God I love Attack jets.

More information on the F-35s Electronic Warfare capabilities here. It is a must read.

There's also a reason why NGJ exists and why RAAF went with the F/A-18G Growler (and later NGJ - which will eventually have greater frequency range and power than the AN/APG-81) even though almost the entire fast jet fleet will be F-35's (F/A/E-35A, I call it that because it's a fighter, an attack jet, electronic warfare aircraft, hell also a reconnaissance aircraft and communications gateway integrated in such a way that it's greater than the sum of each part). But there's also a lot more a Growler can do than the F-35 in terms of electronic warfare, even though integrating jamming on the attack aircraft itself makes a lot of sense - not all Electronic Warfare relates to defending attack aircraft. Jamming cell phones for example.

Come to think of it, whilst the F-35 does have robust electronic warfare capabilities I still find it interesting that RAAF still sees the need for a dedicated jammer aircraft as does the USN, yet the USAF doesn't and instead will rely on the USN. Perhaps it's a different doctrine, simply sharing resources with the USN, or perhaps here is the clue:

Elder said a lot of EW projects “are in the black world” which means that US advances in EW may not be obvious. He said USAF’s air operations centers do a good job of coordinating the disparate EW efforts and are moving toward achieving even better synergies between them.

www.airforcemag.com...

The article also mentions that the USAF is behind on EW.

Also I think it would be great fun to make a DIY radar system, probably not legal though. EDIT: Nope.

BUILD YOUR OWN RADAR SYSTEM

DEFCON 19: Build your own Synthetic Aperture Radar

a reply to: C0bzz

Just to drive the previous point home:

The Barracuda can refer to its data-banks of known emissions and identify the source vehicle or store it for future classification. Other features are false target generation and range-gate stealing, offensive EW is possible, a towed RF decoy is also a part of the package as is a MJU-68/B Flares system.

www.airdominance.nl...

The F-35A aint no F-117. It's a F-117 and "companion" aircraft rolled into one (and more).

I also forgot to mention that reduced RCS works well with inserting false targets behind the real target, because then the potential adversary may not be able to detect the real target, only the false one.

It's also possible in future much more sophisticated EW techniques could be added. NGJ was originally supposed to be integrated with the F-35, and there's some talk of somehow getting into enemy datalinks.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: wileel

how does that statement feed your propounding that if its been seen it must only be because its in testing or a demonstrator. i dont get how you made that leap in logic. help a brother out, I ain't smart enough to keep up here.

No worries, this thing is twisting all over the place and there are some folks here way smarter than me.
I didn't say is MUST be, just to hold on some reservation that is could be test or something. The right place right time was reinforcing my comment that I believe it would be too hard to keep the project completely black for this long for exactly that reason. People end up in the right place at the right time occasionally and then the cat starts to sneak out of the bag.

I was just saying that without the circumstance of the sightings we cant make the same leap in the other directions and say it IS an operation system in use. For example if it was seen over Nevada vs over Iran (yes I know...using broad strokes), the circumstances it was seen can say a lot

a reply to: wileel

They were seen in an operational capacity. My understanding is they didn't build many, but they reached FOC and were used.

a reply to: C0bzz

Some one has done their homework and this is only 35 side...we also have 22's.
The amount of info already in the public eye is...well...more than should be put out there.

a reply to: wileel

Neither one is going as well as they hoped from what I understand. They've seen some success, but not as much as they hoped, or claimed they could do, big surprise.

I wonder if 'companion' is throwing everyone off scent?

All the data I read on the war, the F-117 used Ravens for EW and when they didn't use them, they didn't use EW. Lists of aircraft used, non redacted, hours of pilots description of the war, their mission, non mention EW other than EF-111.

I understand what Top Secret means, but it's just not there, they operate entirely without a companion.

So we have another platform that operates around the F-117, I don't think it is directly linked to the F-117 mission, I think it operates on its own doing what it does, probably just listening and looking, sig int in a hot battle space, could include BDA.

a reply to: C0bzz

I also forgot to mention that reduced RCS works well with inserting false targets behind the real target, because then the potential adversary may not be able to detect the real target, only the false one. 

If you are stealthy, wouldn't you just sniff the enemy radar and laugh at the fool. Why generate a fake return at all? Or in other words, it only makes sense to generate false returns when you are returning a real one.

The high-end fight, of course, will be even harder. Traditional “stand-off” jammers aren’t stealth aircraft, so they rely on keeping their distance from anti-aircraft threats. That keeps getting harder and more dangerous as Russian-made surface-to-air missiles grow in range, with the latest round for the S-400 Triumpf system claiming a reach of 250 miles. The old Air Force Compass Call and the new EC-X, the old Navy Prowler and the new Growler, are all at risk. (So are other support planes such as AWACS).

That’s why the US needs “penetrating” jammers, Bacon said: stealth aircraft that are harder – though hardly impossible – to target and which can slip into enemy airspace to conduct electronic warfare at shorter ranges.

breakingdefense.com...

Seems to me that there is a clear need for a (modern) companion.

a reply to: gariac

Good point, I don't know the real reason.

Speculation:
- Divert enemy attention.
- Supporting another stealth aircraft in the same flight. Meaning the jammer is a "stealth" aircraft, but it isn't being stealthy at that moment, instead has decided to support another F-35 in the same flight that isn't transmitting.
- I'm wondering whether it could be done to the point where adversary SAM's launch missiles at targets that don't really exist?
- Keep doing it constantly, so the adversary does not know if it's a real attack or a fake attack. When it's time to get out of there, revert back to stealth mode.
- Surely if the enemy thinks an attack is inbound, they are likely to turn on more radars (which can then be detected, targeted, and destroyed).

This is real Sun Tzu stuff we're talking about here.

Your speculations are closer to reality than you might think....

Once again good stuff being posted here!

originally posted by: gariac
a reply to: C0bzz

I also forgot to mention that reduced RCS works well with inserting false targets behind the real target, because then the potential adversary may not be able to detect the real target, only the false one. 

If you are stealthy, wouldn't you just sniff the enemy radar and laugh at the fool. Why generate a fake return at all?

Not all assets are as stealthy as others, and if you get an adversary to expend one missile on a phantom that's cool.