Will China and Russia Make U.S. F-22 and F-35 Stealth Fighters Obsolete?
 

Will China and Russia Make U.S. F-22 and F-35 Stealth Fighters Obsolete?

Majumdar, Dave October 1, 2017


DARPA (Defence Adanced Research Projects Agency)—and companies like Raytheon and BAE Systems—are developing advanced new electronic warfare systems that would use artificial intelligence technology to automatically learn how to jam a previously unencountered signal. Currently, only dedicated electronic attack aircraft such as the Boeing EA-18G Growler can identify and jam an unknown threat emitter because it carries a trained electronic warfare officer onboard. Other tactical aircraft including the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter rely on preprogrammed threat libraries—which must be periodically updated—to counter hostile radars.

Now, this technology may find a welcome host in amored vehicles. That is jamming incoming ATGMs so as to cause the projectile to loose target acquisition.

In the future, however, new “cognitive” jammers will be able to identify and jam a signal autonomously. “Jammers must be smart enough to counter threat advances by instantaneously recognizing signals –even if they morph on the fly– and immediately generate the waveforms to effectively jam them,” said Dan Theisen, Raytheon’s director of Airborne Electronic Attack at the company’s Space and Airborne Systems division, in a statement. “Systems must be able to learn and react during an engagement; true, cognitive EW.”

True cognitive EW is the future in the air, on land, and in the sea.

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Re: Will China and Russia Make U.S. F-22 and F-35 Stealth Fighters Obsolete?
 

Good old fashioned wire guided atgm systems can't be jammed.

As far as the F-22 and F-35 being obsolete, even IF they can be detected by radar, which is not a jammer, are still very effective weapon systems. The only way I can see Russia and/or China making those systems obsolete is developing a 6th generation system fighter and considering currently Russia has not began production of a 5th gen fighter and China's J20 is being considered a 4+ gen fighter when compared to the F-22 and F-35. Still going to be a while before those systems are obsolete. Heck, depending on the mission, the F-15, F-16, and A-10 are still not obsolete.

Good topic.

Re: Will China and Russia Make U.S. F-22 and F-35 Stealth Fighters Obsolete?
 

Everything becomes obsolete ... eventually.

And as stated above, nothing at all wrong with and A-10 in a low threat environment. Part of the reason the brought back the OV-10 to deal with ISIS.

Re: Will China and Russia Make U.S. F-22 and F-35 Stealth Fighters Obsolete?
 

And, this maybe true as the US Army has over the past two decades failed to fund "Fire and Forget" ATGMs; Although, Raytheon has a contract to produce "wireless" guided missiles, under the designations: BGM-71E TOW 2A, the BGM-71F TOW 2B, and the TOW 2B Aero.

Now, the question is whether wire guided systems are immune to jamming. Here, I am suggesting the emission of white light would cause the operator to loose target acquisition. The white light blinds the TOW operator, thus causing the missile to miss the target.

It is akin to "...a camera flash going off in your face in a dimly lit room? It leaves you unable to see at all for a brief period of time and then leaves you seeing spots for a few minutes. A laser directly in the eyes can cause retinal damage at the worst or leave you unable to see for a brief period of time." Target lost.

In 1987 a Soviet vessel, the Chukotka illuminated a U.S. Navy P-3 reconnaissance aircraft with an intense light causing eye damage to the pilot. Source.

In game terms, we do not have evidence of a vehicle deployed with a "white light" counter measure. If there existed such a measure, we could increase the EW rating of the vehicle to model the affect in the game.

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Re: Will China and Russia Make U.S. F-22 and F-35 Stealth Fighters Obsolete?
 

The Maverick and Hellfire missiles are not fire and forget ATGMs?

Re: Will China and Russia Make U.S. F-22 and F-35 Stealth Fighters Obsolete?
 

Yes, indeed they are, although my discussion was meant really for the optically guided missiles.

Good catch, you are referring to the sentence where I began with, "And, this maybe true as the US Army has over the past two decades failed to fund "Fire and Forget" ATGMs..." Taken alone, by itself this statement belies the fact you brought out with the Maverick and the Hellfire air to ground missiles.

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Re: Will China and Russia Make U.S. F-22 and F-35 Stealth Fighters Obsolete?
 

And the Javelin ATGM is what, precisely?

Re: Will China and Russia Make U.S. F-22 and F-35 Stealth Fighters Obsolete?
 

The Javelin is the primary infantry ATGM in use by the US Army and Marines. It is a lethal weapon, indeed. With regards to guidance systems, it is an imaging IR guided missile. As such, it too is susceptible to high illuminating white light when directed at the missile.

In general, the counter-measure is an attack on the missiles recticle-scan seekers to degrade the image processing homing system.

The Canadians have an interesting stduy from 2007, "Preliminary study of defensive aids suite technology for the armour combat vehicle programme."

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Re: Will China and Russia Make U.S. F-22 and F-35 Stealth Fighters Obsolete?
 

How did this thread go from a plane obsolescence topic to ATGM systems?

Re: Will China and Russia Make U.S. F-22 and F-35 Stealth Fighters Obsolete?
 

In my intial post, I suggested cognitive jammers could be ported to tanks and that IR (heat or image) guided missiles can be defeated using high illuminated light and lasers.

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Re: Will China and Russia Make U.S. F-22 and F-35 Stealth Fighters Obsolete?
 

the point I was refuting was the statement
The javelin being a prime example of a fire and forget ATGM, after all, and somewhat funded by the US Army...

Anyway - this thread is drifting off into pointlessness.

Re: Will China and Russia Make U.S. F-22 and F-35 Stealth Fighters Obsolete?
 

The fire and forget missiles were brought up earlier and addressed. My comment on lack of funding was only pertinent to replacing TOWs with wireless missles by the army.

The point is in games terms if I want to author a scenario say in 2023 (sometime in the future) and I edit a platoon of Indian tanks to make them IR counter-measure equipped, I might want to increase the EW rating of the tank. On what realm of possibility would I edit those Indian tanks ? If studies say it is possible to do so.

But, yeah we talked FF missiles in earlier posts.
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Re: Will China and Russia Make U.S. F-22 and F-35 Stealth Fighters Obsolete?
 

I once saw a Dragon (wire guided ATGM) gunner use the wire to his advantage by firing over obstacle and hitting something behind it. Admittedly this is something only an expert could probably do, but it can be done. The same would apply to the wire guided TOW.

Wire guided missiles have one very distinct advantage over the various fire-and-forget systems ... they're MUCH cheaper on a missile-by-missile basis, and cost is a factor. That's why the "best" toys are generally limited to Special Forces types.

Re: Will China and Russia Make U.S. F-22 and F-35 Stealth Fighters Obsolete?
 

Not checked but most close in defence systems are made up of diffrent parts hard & soft kill or sometimes just soft kill.
Soft kill is the "dazzlers" you speak of, mainly for dazzling the missile could I suppose conceivably effect the firer if they are close enough & the system detects his position. IR smoke is another part of the soft kill option.
Dazzlers work cannot remember who involved but complaints recently from Terrorist organisations that Koronet is going out of control & diving to ground once it nears its target.
The game does or at least it seems to to me take the tech battle into account old ATGM's are far more likely to be defeated than newer ones, may be a factor of their accuracy I dont know but it works well enough.