J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread VIII

[Blitzo]

Not so. If you are facing another stealth fighter, then both cannot use BVR if the stealth is good. Eventually you end up in an WVR fight against another stealth fighter jet.

I think in the future, most dogfights could again become WVR if stealth becomes more and more prevalent.

No lol

If both sides are stealthy, pursuit of greater networking, better sensors, better signature reduction, better EW, better weapons are all higher priority and higher yield areas of focus first rather than devolving to pursuing WVR.

That's why MUMT UCAVs won't be developed as highly agile dogfighters but rather as extended weapons, sensor, EW platforms and networking nodes.

 

[Atomicfrog]

Not so. If you are facing another stealth fighter, then both cannot use BVR if the stealth is good. Eventually you end up in an WVR fight against another stealth fighter jet.

I think in the future, most dogfights could again become WVR if stealth becomes more and more prevalent.

I can see each other destroying the opposing team support aircraft without detecting each other in some scenario.

If they cannot detect each other adequately, they will just miss the opponent... quite hard to see another aircraft tens of miles away. They will get in WVR if they are lucky/not lucky without ISR.

 

[siegecrossbow]

Usually, under what kinds of conditions are stealth fighters being killed more frequently "than it makes to the media"?

This is even more key to the topic than just the outright "stealth fighters are no different than non-stealth fighters today" quote.

(Also because the US is seen going all-in on VLO designs for their B-21 and NGADs as well - Similarly, with China and other countries who are working on next-gen air combat systems.)

Obviously it is better to have stealth than no stealth or countries wouldn’t bother developing them at all would they? They are not invincible/undetectable, but the resources required to detect them is not only technologically sophisticated but cost inhibitive for a lot of nations.

 

[Ironhide]

Du Fengrui Brigade is which one?

That will be 40th AB named after the legendary Pilot

 

[ougoah]

J-16 pilots from Du Fengrui Brigade have had some success in two vs two exercises against the J-20. The strategy was not trivial and required several sleepless nights to come up with, and for obvious reasons the details are rather nebulous. But the gist of it is to bait the stealth fighters into opening fire control when you and your wingman are within lockon range of the enemies so you can track and engage via active/passive sensors. Supposedly this strategy has had some success under real world conditions against F-35s as well.

Stealth fighters are not really invincible in this day and age. What they are good at is limiting the number of options you have to counter them.

Wouldn't this be a bit of an obvious and also not realistic way to counter opposition stealth?

1. Stealth fighters are usually equipped with superior (more modern) radars, passive sensors, and signals control. Therefore non-stealth would not really be allowed to get into close enough range for stealth fighter's fire control radar to be on when non-stealth is close enough to make use of active signals from stealth. Reducing non-stealth RCS benefits the closing of distance, especially with who knows what EW equipment 4.5 gens are using.

2. CEC and various tactics from stealth and stealth + non stealth combined forces (e.g. J-20 and J-16 tactical pairings) would negate all that anyway.

Not saying airforces around the world shouldn't be developing n vs n counter stealth tactics and these don't have great purpose, I reckon PLAAF's genuine counter stealth tactics and technologies are under wraps. The above seem too ... for public consumption. PLAAF will do those kinds of exercises like western airforces with F-22/F-35, for fun and some evaluation.

 

[yeetmyboi]

Oh I love how "J-20 TVC" turned into a 2-page long banter on the viability of 5th gen WVR combat.

The whole point of TVC is better maneuverability. It's a rather moot point when stealth and powerful turbines enables both

• closer combat envelope thus larger NEZ for BVRAAM missiles
• higher engagement altitude thus higher energy => again larger NEZ

A J-20 doesn't need TVC when it's perfectly capable of maneuvering using its aerodynamic control systems and its current WVRAAM is also fine. It doesn't need something like ASRAAM Block 6 or AIM9X Block 3 because it has a very functional industrial base and doesn't have to run contracts every couple of years to keep said sector alive ( though 9X-BLK3 is more of improving the original 9X capability to what ASRAAM achieved years ago, Raytheon isnt any zombie).

Whatever yuan spent on giving J-20 and J-35 TVC ( and super SAMs) should be redirected to RSLVs, panoramic IR/AMTI sats and CPGS-type missiles, or expand the production of stealth fighters so that they can absorb losses in the event of a war, or the stilll-fictitious H-20. The most optimal way to kill fighters is to preemptive OCA their bases with jointed ops through a combination of SOF, large-scale bomber raids and CM/BM strikes. As history shown a determined air raid is unstoppable ( Yorn-Kippur) and the trend is to invest in triple digits billions worth of IADS to defend against trillions worth of fighter bombers, so it's not even a very favourable cost exchange in the first place. The Egyptian fired just shy of 400 shots per kill for every plane and the PAVN was like half to one-third of that, and that was before stealth-committed DEAD.

Ultimately WVR is a result of poor situational awareness, so better sensors are a much more long-term solution than better nozzles tbh.

CCA as magazines is nice because IR tracking sats means every launch can be detected, so removing the launch signals from the important planes is good for survivability. SBIRS for example can locate a 155mm howitzer muzzle blast and calculate a CBAT mission in the same time as tradition WLR batteries. OTOH fully segregrated magazine/sensor is bad in that you are essentially leaving your entire offensive fire projection in a dozen of drones that if the enemy manages to track then you are quite dead. It's the same reason why barge arsenal ships died under SC-21. It also experimented with a 512-cell cruiser but that's different. The PLAAF current doctrine is fine because they have a load of educated, fit and patriotic young men looking forward to joining and their contractors are responsible unlike LockMart or McD tbh, so they can absorb and replace losses in both manpower and material. There's very little incentive to buy "arsenal drones" but otherwise a very evident need for ISR/EW UAVs, more AWACS/tankers, more survivable airbase, more J-20s and more missiles in the first place.

End-term is gyatt like my cheek after yall clapped me on that tank thread so excuse my perpetual lurking.

 

[plawolf]

Wouldn't this be a bit of an obvious and also not realistic way to counter opposition stealth?

1. Stealth fighters are usually equipped with superior (more modern) radars, passive sensors, and signals control. Therefore non-stealth would not really be allowed to get into close enough range for stealth fighter's fire control radar to be on when non-stealth is close enough to make use of active signals from stealth. Reducing non-stealth RCS benefits the closing of distance, especially with who knows what EW equipment 4.5 gens are using.

2. CEC and various tactics from stealth and stealth + non stealth combined forces (e.g. J-20 and J-16 tactical pairings) would negate all that anyway.

Not saying airforces around the world shouldn't be developing n vs n counter stealth tactics and these don't have great purpose, I reckon PLAAF's genuine counter stealth tactics and technologies are under wraps. The above seem too ... for public consumption. PLAAF will do those kinds of exercises like western airforces with F-22/F-35, for fun and some evaluation.

Have you just totally forgot about jamming and AWACS support?

PLAAF AWACS have all but been confirmed to be able to detect stealths at extended ranges. Probably not anything remotely precise as a lock, but good enough to vector friendly fighters close enough to be able to pick up the bogey with their own senses and mk1 eyeballs.

Marry that up with focused directional jamming against the ‘enemy stealth’ to disrupt their datalinks, comms and off-board friendly sensor support while hitting them with fighter radar active scan signals designed to spoof the RWR into registering a lock and you will need opfor to be one hell of a cool cucumber to not turn on their own radars and jammers to counter what looks to them to be an imminent incoming attack.

 

[Gloire_bb]

PLAAF AWACS have all but been confirmed to be able to detect stealths at extended ranges.

I think we need to specifically reiterate this point.
AWACS (and most observation radars in general) work in C or L bands.

While stealth fighters still have small signatures in those bands, much of their fine finish(RAM, toothing, etc) is out of equation at this point, as it is literally too small to matter. Thus, while really old AWACS still can struggle (they struggle with anything sub-meter in the first place), anything more adequate will see them at reasonably reduced range - simply because it's a model threat since 1990s.

And while they aren't pinpoint accurate - come on, those aren't metric radars(and to be absolutely frank - even those are accurate enough for 3 out of 4 examples below, especially if we don't care about target altitude).

C/L bands are sufficient to warn of a threat and have a S/A track. Reasonable track, when we speak AESA AWACS, but really just properly updated digital signal processing&operator interface is already a huge jump.

Or to throw in an ARH weapon, which can scan sufficient volume of air on their own. NIFC-CA does exactly that, for example.
Yes, there is a chance to miss a shot this way. it's still a shot with chances of success.

Or cue fighters' ESAs through a data link, to focus their X-bands in narrow beams and brutforce detection & weapon lock at a BVR range.

Or setup an ambush (air tactics aren't as simple as 'stealth aircraft ambush non-stealth', period. Non-stealth a/c can perfectly ambush others, including stealths, too).

Does it mean 'stealth doesn't matter where there is sufficient LF coverage'?
Well, of course no. Stealth fighters maintain a major advantage even w/o their original freedom - we can say that in effect they're permanently protected by rather effective and at the same time silent jamming (and real jamming, especially off platform, hides them more effectively still); they also benefit more from all the same old tricks (flying against terrain background, for example).

But as a rule of thumb, modern fighter stealth (i.e. excluding b-2 and especially b-21) lost a lot of its 144:1 magic, which really mostly worked against a/craft of pre-stealth world.

p.s. also about 144:1. it's often understood as stealth v non-stealth advantage, when it's much more of a later aircraft v earlier aircraft one.

F-15 raked its kill ratio while being several times brighter than mig-21s it was killing.

New russian flankers do one-sided killing literally against the ~same platform in ukrainian service...just in a sufficiently outdated package.

By the way - in both cases older side managed to force WVRs on multiple occasions. It didn't magically save them.

 

[siegecrossbow]

I think we need to specifically reiterate this point.
AWACS (and most observation radars in general) work in C or L bands.

While stealth fighters still have small signatures in those bands, much of their fine finish(RAM, toothing, etc) is out of equation at this point, as it is literally too small to matter. Thus, while really old AWACS still can struggle (they struggle with anything sub-meter in the first place), anything more adequate will see them at reasonably reduced range - simply because it's a model threat since 1990s.

And while they aren't pinpoint accurate - come on, those aren't metric radars(and to be absolutely frank - even those are accurate enough for 3 out of 4 examples below, especially if we don't care about target altitude).

C/L bands are sufficient to warn of a threat and have a S/A track. Reasonable track, when we speak AESA AWACS, but really just properly updated digital signal processing&operator interface is already a huge jump.

Or to throw in an ARH weapon, which can scan sufficient volume of air on their own. NIFC-CA does exactly that, for example.
Yes, there is a chance to miss a shot this way. it's still a shot with chances of success.

Or cue fighters' ESAs through a data link, to focus their X-bands in narrow beams and brutforce detection & weapon lock at a BVR range.

Or setup an ambush (air tactics aren't as simple as 'stealth aircraft ambush non-stealth', period. Non-stealth a/c can perfectly ambush others, including stealths, too).

Does it mean 'stealth doesn't matter where there is sufficient LF coverage'?
Well, of course no. Stealth fighters maintain a major advantage even w/o their original freedom - we can say that in effect they're permanently protected by rather effective and at the same time silent jamming (and real jamming, especially off platform, hides them more effectively still); they also benefit more from all the same old tricks (flying against terrain background, for example).

But as a rule of thumb, modern fighter stealth (i.e. excluding b-2 and especially b-21) lost a lot of its 144:1 magic, which really mostly worked against a/craft of pre-stealth world.

p.s. also about 144:1. it's often understood as stealth v non-stealth advantage, when it's much more of a later aircraft v earlier aircraft one.

F-15 raked its kill ratio while being several times brighter than mig-21s it was killing.

New russian flankers do one-sided killing literally against the ~same platform in ukrainian service...just in a sufficiently outdated package.

By the way - in both cases older side managed to force WVRs on multiple occasions. It didn't magically save them.

In case of Russian Flanker and F-15 both have significantly superior avionics/radar/missile than their opponents.

I think the quality of radar/avionics can even the odds in favor of 4.5th gen to a certain extent. F-15C and F-16A/B/C/D were slaughtered in lopsided battles when the F-22 first came out, but F-15EX will have an easier time against other fifth gen.

 

[Gloire_bb]

In case of Russian Flanker and F-15 both have significantly superior avionics/radar/missile than their opponents.

I think the quality of radar/avionics can even the odds in favor of 4.5th gen to a certain extent. F-15C and F-16A/B/C/D were slaughtered in lopsided battles when the F-22 first came out, but F-15EX will have an easier time against other fifth gen.

Yep, that's part of the point.
First, their opponent was indeed a high supercruising, fbw, unstable stealth.
Then, the difference between those F-15Cs(before an-apg63v3) and F-22 in electronics was larger than between Su-27s and Su-35 (though they had equal weapons).
Finally, their radars were pre-stealth (v1 upgrade added amraams, tvs etc, but otherwise was mostly about reliability and serviceability).
I.e. (I am assuming, but the likelihood is high) it probably filtered away even the things they had an echo from. Nor they had any alternative means of detection, because USAF were quite adamant that IRST is for weak old worlders .