Another interesting aspect is the Lock-On detection of the enemy aircraft. Aircraft are able to identify when they're being tracked by other aircraft or homing missles. [1]
How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
21–30 of 87 posts
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#22Off Topic: Man! Reading this answer so makes me want to play those FlightSim games of the yesteryears like Apache Havoc, Commanche, Jane's F/A 18 Hornet etc etc. Does anyone have any suggestions for a modern Flight Sim game? Thanks!
Lock On! used to be a favorite of mine, no idea how well it runs on modern OS'es.
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#23So why don't they include two radars, one for sweeps and one for tracking? I know, I know, weight, power, etc. At the same time, isn't that the obvious answer?
How is it an obvious solution if it is not practical? The electronically-scanned radars mentioned in the second answer can easily divide their time between the tasks (no mechanically-constrained dish to sweep) but there is definitely no space for two radar systems in the nose of a fighter.
Besides space I think having two radars might cause interference that would be difficult to filter out.
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#24Good response, worth the read. Heck the response alone could justify their own article. As an aside: I hate quora' site design so much I have blacklisted it using Google Personal Blocklist. Somehow I dislike it more than Experts Exchange (which is also blacklisted), it is just super cluttered with nonsense, rolls into the comments section without warning and rarely offers good content (see Experts Exchange again). Th…
> Somehow I dislike it more than Experts Exchange Someone needs to make a Stack Overflow to Quora's Experts Exchange (preferably by just using the Stack Overflow codebase/framework).
Is is called Stack Exchange. They don't cover all the topics, but the new sub-sites are being created gradually when demand is made.
This one would fit into http://aviation.stackexchange.com/.
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#25So why don't they include two radars, one for sweeps and one for tracking? I know, I know, weight, power, etc. At the same time, isn't that the obvious answer?
as other commenter said ESA radars do great simultaneously scanning and tracking, with modern radars - more than 1 target simultaneously. The 2nd radar may be employed for the rear sphere like in that rear "stinger" http://www.airforceworld.com/bomber/eng/su34-fighter-bomber-...
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#26Meta Note I'm not sure if its the software or the OP who added the "?share=1" parameter but thank you for including it in the link. The flag makes reading quora possible. If HN doesn't add this parameter by default I think it would be a worth while upgrade to the site. Lots of great content is locked in quora otherwise.
What does it normally do? I gave up and created a Quora account a while back. Even on Incognito, though, hitting the link without the share on it looks normal and doesn't do anything particularly annoying.
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#27Off Topic: Man! Reading this answer so makes me want to play those FlightSim games of the yesteryears like Apache Havoc, Commanche, Jane's F/A 18 Hornet etc etc. Does anyone have any suggestions for a modern Flight Sim game? Thanks!
Lock On! used to be a favorite of mine, no idea how well it runs on modern OS'es.
This sim still exists as Flaming Cliffs 3 (http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/products/flaming_cl...)
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#28Is there any way to view the rest of the answer hidden behind the "more" link without signing up for an account?
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#29So why don't they include two radars, one for sweeps and one for tracking? I know, I know, weight, power, etc. At the same time, isn't that the obvious answer?
No space. Take a look at this image, it's the standard AN/APG-63 on an F-15C fighter aircraft: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:APG-63_radar_of_F-15_...
Note how the radar's processing units and dish take up the entirety of the aircraft's nose and how large the system is compared to the technician working on it. There simply isn't enough space to add another radar.
Nor would it make sense to split that into two smaller radars, as the size of the dish and processing units is strongly linked to its power and range. That's one reason larger aircraft like the F-15, F-14 and Su-27 have longer-ranged and more powerful radars than smaller fighter aircraft.
This track vs scan limitation is removed by Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars such as this AN/APG-63(V)2 retrofitted to a USAF F-15C: http://www.pacaf.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/070720-F...
Rather than having a mechanically-slaved reflective dish, an AESA radar has hundreds of Transmit/Receive Modules (TRMs) each capable of acting like a tiny radar dish by transmitting or receiving on its own frequency and being steered its own direction.
So now, rather than having the radar dish jump between track and scan at rapid intervals, the system can just dedicate a few hundred of the AESA TRMs to tracking one or more targets while letting the remainder continue sweeping the skies. There's no limitation on azimuth because each TRM can be individually steered.
So in short, the answer is that the latest fighter aircraft don't have two radars, they have hundreds or thousands of tiny radars that can work together in a whole bunch of useful combinations.
Edit: Replaced initial image with a Wiki Commons link that doesn't have linking issues.
Re: How does a fighter jet lock onto and keep track of an enemy aircraft? (2013)
#30Related anecdote - I worked with a coder a while back who was a naval aviator before he went back to school, flying carrier-based transports. I asked him once about whether he would have wanted to fly fighters instead, and he said that just flying transports was already a huge amount of work, as far as flight plans, training, practice, and such. Flying fighters apparently involved doing all of that same work, plus a bunch more for weapons, tactics, etc, so those guys never had any free time. Apparently, flying fighters wasn't nearly as fun as it sounds.