F-35 Joint Strike Fighter News, Videos and pics Thread

[Brumby]

The F-35 is synonymous with the idea of situational awareness and sensor fusion and is often mentioned in such terms. However what exactly does it mean besides the description made by (I think Hostages) of having a god's eye view?

I recently came across a description made by Air Force Lt. Col. Gene “Joker” McFalls, F-35 Enterprise Lead with the

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that outlines it at an application level and the difference between 4th gen and 5th gen EW. I think it not only sums up very well what it means but also what it involves and the complexities to deliver such capabilities. It also highlights that even though there are other competiing platforms that talks about delivering similar capabilitiesn but unless they involved the same scope like the F-35 program then it is simply comparing form but not subtance.

Extracts of his comments :
"So you’re going to take all of those sensor inputs — your radar, your electric-optical, your comm, your distributed aperture system and your radar warning, and it’s going to fuse them all together to give the pilot a more accurate picture of what’s going on for situational awareness and how he’s going to engage that. And that’s the big advantage you get with including all these sensors, because you’re reducing the ambiguity down and enabling them to deploy the aircraft more effectively…

With a 5th gen display, it’s going to tell you pretty much what aircraft it is and what level of confidence it has determined that, and what the different sensors on the aircraft are predicting that threat to be. So what happens if we don’t get this mission data program done effectively? With your legacy EW, the pilot has to do the fusion in his brain…

With 5th gen, you start with the [electronic warfare database] data, going into the fusion engine, and then you can start eliminating things. So we get the characteristics and performance. We know it’s flying, so it can’t be a ground based threat. We have airspeed, we have altitude, that kind of thing. We add IR signatures. Ok, now we have mission data that lets us know whatever the threat is, it’s a [radar cross section] of X and its size is Y, so we know it’s probably not that first aircraft.

Then we take the order of battle data and the [geospatial intelligence] data, and we know where we’re flying, what the country has in their inventory. So we can eliminate it down, reduce the ambiguities so the pilot gets a representation of what the sensor fusion actually thinks the threat is. It takes all that data, fuses it together into that unique platform identification.

Take away that data, McFalls said, and all that’s left is a stealthy F-16.”

 

[Jura The idiot]

The F-35 is synonymous with the idea of situational awareness and sensor fusion and is often mentioned in such terms. However what exactly does it mean besides the description made by (I think Hostages) of having a god's eye view?

I recently came across a description made by...

I'm just trying to be helpful (as Brumby told me had issues when posting links), hope it's this one:
The Difference Between 4th and 5th Gen EW

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[Jura The idiot]

a moment ago I went thru
Shaping an S-Cubed Combat Revolution: Preparing for the Coming Hypersonic Cruise Missile Threat
lengthy blog post (

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) of somebody who appears to be the F-35 supporter for example

External weapon hard-points on the F-35 are a brilliant design aspect, which is often overlooked in most discussions.

The non-stealth F-35 can sling more ordinance than F/A-18 and F-16.

here I'll just tell you what the blogger says is that S-cubed Combat Revolution

S-cubed=sensors-stealth-speed of weapons can provide a new paradigm for shaping a combat force necessary for the US Military to fight and win in 21st century engagements.

EDIT
heck a print-screen of what was on my notebook got attached and I don't know how to get rid of it ... now I asked WebMaster for help (fortunately for me, the picture doesn't show anything "sensitive" LOL it's just a print-screen, I'm sorry about it anyway)

 

[thunderchief]

Extracts of his comments :
"So you’re going to take all of those sensor inputs — your radar, your electric-optical, your comm, your distributed aperture system and your radar warning, and it’s going to fuse them all together to give the pilot a more accurate picture of what’s going on for situational awareness and how he’s going to engage that. And that’s the big advantage you get with including all these sensors, because you’re reducing the ambiguity down and enabling them to deploy the aircraft more effectively…

You could do that on any aircraft , regardless of generation . In fact, lots of aircraft (not just fighters) already have that - they display information from various sensors, AWACS and ground control on single display .

 

[strehl]

You could do that on any aircraft , regardless of generation . In fact, lots of aircraft (not just fighters) already have that - they display information from various sensors, AWACS and ground control on single display .

True sensor fusion is on a different level. It is one thing to broadcast and display remote sensor information which is what JTDS/Link 16 does and something different to send the information directly into a computer which then has to geographically normalize (orient and scale) all the data to a common coordinate map and disambiguate multiple readings that are actually the same thing. Data inputs to a single target file could include widely divergent sensor inputs ranging from optical to passive RF locators each with inherent accuracy limits that must be factored and then adjusted with time tags to determine relative weighing as it affects the final solution displayed on the screen. The sheer computational horsepower required to do this in another league. Combining onboard sensor inputs to a common display is easy (on a relative scale) since you have a single coordinate reference and a limited range of input scaling. The only examples I know of are the F-35, the Navy Cooperative Engagement Capability, and the Missile Defense Agency ballistic missile defense system. I do not believe there are any other US platforms that are claiming to have this function or have the same magnitude of software and processing power. On a simple observational note, whoever says they can do this should have gone through as much pain and cost in achieving that capability. I would think that would have attracted attention.

 

[Brumby]

You could do that on any aircraft , regardless of generation . In fact, lots of aircraft (not just fighters) already have that - they display information from various sensors, AWACS and ground control on single display .

It is simply more than detection but from the description it is the identification, localization, threat assessment; and threat prioritization all delivered as a display and function which traditionally is the job of the pilot ex detection. Also what is not discussed is the daisy chain fidelity mapping allowed through the fusion of data through the F-35 platform (provided within comm. link) and the power of distributed lethality.

 

[Jeff Head]

You could do that on any aircraft , regardless of generation . In fact, lots of aircraft (not just fighters) already have that - they display information from various sensors, AWACS and ground control on single display .

No...actually you cannot. You can get various sensors sent to consoles on AWE&C or AWACS type aircraft...but that is not what they are talking about, or what the Lt. Colonel said.

"...fuse them all together to give the pilot a more accurate picture of what’s going on for situational awareness and how he’s going to engage..."

That is something beyond simply bringing the sensor data in. This level of fusion is what the F-35 is being built to accomplish and in a way no other similar aircraft or system has done before.

This is beyond Cooperative Engagement even.

As some have said, perhaps at the Ballistic Missile Defense control centers, or aboard an AEGIS cruiser's combat center, or Cheyenne Mountain you are getting something akin to it...but not on a strike fighter.

Again, simply bringing sensor data to a single point is nit even close to what we are talking about here. If you look at an E-3 or E-2, once that data comes together, you then have a whole staff of people pouring over it and coming up with the decision trees and resulting overall situational awareness that this system is being designed to give to a single pilot.

 

[A Bar Brother]

No...actually you cannot. You can get various sensors sent to consoles on AWE&C or AWACS type aircraft...but that is not what they are talking about, or what the Lt. Colonel said.

"...fuse them all together to give the pilot a more accurate picture of what’s going on for situational awareness and how he’s going to engage..."

That is something beyond simply bringing the sensor data in. This level of fusion is what the F-35 is being built to accomplish and in a way no other similar aircraft or system has done before.

This was achieved by the Europeans 10 years ago.

And you can do this for any aircraft.

 

[Jeff Head]

This was achieved by the Europeans 10 years ago.

And you can do this for any aircraft.

Bringing in the sensor data can certainly occur on many aircraft, but the type of capabilities that we are talking about for the F-35 have not been developed for any other strike aircraft to date. Nor do I expect them in the near future.

it is a very major part of what the F-35 is about and what so many nations are buying. If they thought they could get it on the cheap on less capable aircraft they would be doing so...and I am talking about Israel, Japan, Italy, Turkey, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, etc., etc. And yet they are not.

And for most, they cannot because of the types of computational power and architecture required.

I think there is a pretty wide disparity between what some are interpreting as "sensor fusion," and what is actually intended for the F-35.

The proof will be in the pudding.

 

[A Bar Brother]

Bringing in the sensor data can certainly occur on many aircraft, but the type of capabilities that we are talking about for the F-35 have not been developed for any other strike aircraft to date. Nor do I expect them in the near future.

it is a very major part of what the F-35 is about and what so many nations are buying. If they thought they could get it on the cheap on less capable aircraft they would be doing so...and I am talking about Israel, Japan, Italy, Turkey, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, etc., etc. And yet they are not.

And for most, they cannot because of the types of computational power and architecture required.

I think there is a pretty wide disparity between what some are interpreting as "sensor fusion," and what is actually intended for the F-35.

The proof will be in the pudding.

The Rafale in particular has true sensor fusion. For eg: The radar's ranging is very accurate, however the IRST's angular information is more accurate than a radar. The Rafale's fusion engine combines the two to give a very accurate reading on the target. This does not exist on most other aircraft that claim sensor fusion. However it is still being developed for the F-35.

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Overcoming individual sensor limitations related to wavelength / frequency, field of regard, angular and distance resolution, etc, by sharing track information received from all the sensors,

This is the same as what's been advertised for the F-35.

Okay. Just to keep it simple, LM has released slides that show what sensor fusion is on the F-35 compared to other aircraft that "claim" sensor fusion.

This is a 4th gen system with no sensor fusion. The pilot gets a cluttered display.

This is a 4th gen system with sensor fusion. An example is the Super Hornet. The pilot does not get a cluttered display. This is what you were talking about too.

This is what's on the F-35.

Now if you observe the difference between the second image and the third, you will notice that LM claims a basic sensor fusion system only accepts a track from a primary source, say the radar, and displays only that to the pilot while rejecting tracking data from other sources. Now, that is true of the Super Hornet. However that is not true of the Rafale, Typhoon and even the Gripen. All three aircraft do exactly what's mentioned in the third image, where the tracking information of different sensors are fused with the best data from each sensor. This is just like the example I gave above with the radar and IRST. I have also provided an official source which explains the same thing.

Saab achieved sensor fusion back in the late '90s, EF and Rafale in the early 2000s. Right now, through the Swiss evaluations, we know that Rafale has the best sensor fusion kit among the three.

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This explains the same.

Sensors have inherent advantages and drawbacks: the passive FSO has excellent countermeasure resistance, and its angular resolution is better than that of the radar. On the other side, the radar is able to determine the target's position and velocity vector in all weather conditions. The Spectra suite can analyse enemy radar emissions to precisely identify an emitter. The powerful data fusion algorithms combine and compare the data gathered by all Rafale sensors, and accurately position and identify targets. It’s much more than simple correlation as it gives the pilot an accurate and unambiguous tactical picture.

The entire section on sensor fusion (page 3) explains the exact same thing as what's been mentioned in LM's slide for the F-35's sensor fusion, multispectral tracking, automatic ID, on/offboard data etc.

The only advantage the F-35 has over the Rafale and other Eurocanards is the latest hardware on the F-35 because it is a newer development program. That's really only two pieces of equipment, the optic fiber interface and the MADL. However even the Europeans are working on this for MLUs. However, the bigger difference is while the Europeans have an operational sensor fusion engine, LM is still working on theirs.

Please check the RNAF scores on Rafale and F-35. They were practically the same. It is impossible for the scores to be the same if the avionics were not similarly capable. And this was the assessment of a real air force which has access to real data, not just marketing slides and articles. Gripen and Typhoon are lower on the scale because of the lack of AESA and a few other crucial technologies which they are introducing now, but before the F-35 is operational.

Anyway the countries you mentioned buy American. The French are eagerly waiting for an actual air force competition by a western country. They are keeping their fingers crossed for a Canadian tender where the Rafale and the F-35 will face-off.