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FLYBOYJ said:But that is an internal expense to deliver a product wmaxt. Where the thievery lies is in the spares market. When a government contractor ups spares prices 1000% well, they should be shot!
wmaxt said:FLYBOYJ said:But that is an internal expense to deliver a product wmaxt. Where the thievery lies is in the spares market. When a government contractor ups spares prices 1000% well, they should be shot!
I agree, unless it becomes a 1 off item without tooling remaining. In construction we have "Time and Materials" clause for things like that.
wmaxt
Sapfire-25 fire control Radar. Search range 100km. Tracking range 75km. Contained in nose forward of avionics compartment housing RSBN-6S short range navigational radar, SP50 ILS, RVUM radio altimeter and ARK10 radio compass (among other things).How effective was the Mig-25's radar. How far out could it detect enemy aircraft and such not.
The first flights which began in May 1944 (1-12), were made to investigate the performance of the power plant, launching units, launch conditions and longitudinal stability.Dr Wurster and Willi Messerschmitt were both certain that Enzian was a viable unit, but the project was cancelled early in 1945, officially coming to a halt on 17th January when a general order stopping work on all projects was issued.
Okay so it's unresolved. It'd be interesting to get a handle on this...wasn't there a radar operator or tech on the site somewhere?I was under the impression pulse-doppler radars used a pulse and doppler effect rather than outright signal strength to "paint targets" with, overcoming distance and countermeasures obstacles differently.
Pulse-doppler radar is used to track targets, yes. But what are generally referred to as "fire-control" radars use the continuous wave principle. That is, they emit a steady, focused, high powered wave that continuously illuminates a target for missiles to lock onto, and in the case of passive homing missiles like the AIM-7, to "track". The missile basically follows the radar wave to the target. Most modern fighter radars employ both functions anyway. Some shipboard radars do too.
Most newer radar guided missiles have built-in active tracking/homing radar that works by pulse-doppler, so this could all just be confusion due to context.
Yes but early fighters like the F-104 and MiG 21 used fire control radars in conjunction with both (often narrow aspect) IR seeker heads and radar linked gunsights in combat. They didn't use radar homing missiles at all. These are typically very short range systems however, since continuous signal strength has a wide range of problems over large distances, namely it disperses and is refracted easily by nothing more than atmosphere and weather.Infrared missiles (IR) use thermal detectors to track an enemy's heat signature. It's not radar.
Yes there is. Me.vanir said:Okay so it's unresolved. It'd be interesting to get a handle on this...wasn't there a radar operator or tech on the site somewhere?
Absolutely true. Early pulse and pulse-doppler radars were and are used for tracking targets as I said. The target lock of an IR missile still depends on acquiring a thermal lock though. No heat signature, no kill. The pulse-doppler radar of the aircraft has nothing to do with the actual missile lock, only the tracking of the target by the aircraft.vanir said:Yes but early fighters like the F-104 and MiG 21 used fire control radars in conjunction with both (often narrow aspect) IR seeker heads and radar linked gunsights in combat. They didn't use radar homing missiles at all. These are typically very short range systems however, since continuous signal strength has a wide range of problems over large distances, namely it disperses and is refracted easily by nothing more than atmosphere and weather.
Yes, early test results were highly dubious. Ya got me there.vanir said:Early US testing with radar homing missiles was of dubious accuracy, again accepted by military doctrine at ranges of around 5-10km at best until the advent of the pulse-doppler/AIM-7 system.
The F4B I think used early fire control radar in conjunction with AIM-7's but their success rate was marginal compared to early AIM-9's. Pilots celebrated the introduction of the F4N for its ability to use the medium range missiles with some degree of accuracy, aside from the obvious benefits of lookdown-shootdown capability which the earlier fire control radar did not have.
This suggests to me the pulse-doppler and early fire control radar use completely different signals to guide SA radar homing missiles with.
Well, like I said, modern active scan homing missiles mostly use pulse-doppler, and modern combat aircraft tend to employ multi-function radar systems utilizing both pulse-doppler and continuous wave (bore sighting) capability. Continuous wave radars do require a very high power setting over a narrow bandwidth to prevent dispersion. That's correct.vanir said:I mean it seems to me with a bit of imagination, a pulse doppler would be different to fire control radar tracking systems in the way its guides missiles thus:
continuous signal strength, disperses widely over short distances and is refracted easily, missile guidence heads (SARH), need to be set not too sensitively so as not to go chasing every cloud that reflects a bit of signal or shooting off when a cold weather patch is crossed. Short range is best (ie. falcon missiles)
pulse-doppler effect, radar pulses are combined with avionics software to identify and range targets across a wider band of signal dispersion, less likely to follow refractions of signals that don't add up to primary target-lock ranging, guidence heads (SARH) can be set more sensitively. Long range should present fewer troubles (ie. sparrow missiles).
But importantly radar search ranges prior to and after the adoption of pulse doppler tracking systems was not significantly altered. Generally when I read "fire control radar" as opposed to "pulse doppler radar" the text is describing the way weapons are delivered by that aircraft's avionics.