About the dropping nose, I'm suspecting the H-600 is designed to feature bistatic radar; i.e, the nose radar and the upper radome function in tandem; as the nose radar is at a different location than the upper radome, part of the shaping signal deflection is defeated very slightly by the nose radar being able to absorb deflected signals.
Not sure how well it'd work, from what we know about the E-2D and KJ-500 radomes, the approximate size of the radome aperture should be around 5 square meters, but the nose radar is about B-1B-sized, so about 1.25 square meters. The smaller aperture may defeat attempts to run bistatic radar.
Another key difference between Chinese AESA AEW&C and American AESA AEW&C is the radome design; the E-2D features a rotating bifacial AESA, while Chinese AESA to date have been, excepting the static bifacial "beam" antennas we've seen, static trifacial. This means that, for the same radome size, the E-2D is going to be more powerful, but Chinese AESA have typically featured a larger radome; on my measurement of KJ-500, the radome face is identical.
There's a few trade-offs in having rotating vs non-rotating radomes. First, trifacial radomes are going to be larger, and involve more modules than rotating bifacial radomes, increasing cost as well as drag, and by increasing drag, reducing endurance. On the other hand, however, trifacial radomes do not rotate and thus have fewer points of mechanical failure.
Last thing to note is, that if my estimates of radome aperture are correct, if we accept that the Chinese state-of-the-art J-11 AESA can hit 400-450 km of detection range vs 0 dBsm, scaling it up to AEW&C aperture implies a radome with a detection range of 1032-1161 km. Vs -30 dBsm, as I expect the J-20 and F-35 to be in the UHF-band, this comes out to an approximate detection range of about 184-206 km. If GaN modules are used, and achieve at least a 3x increase in power (4x modifier), the detection range jumps to 400 km; i.e, with J-20s running long-range sentry jobs, the J-20's EODAS should be able to pick up the F-35 relatively early with the AEW&C telling it where to look and get a firing solution before the F-35 is close enough to launch AIM-120s for intercept.
Edit:
The diagram refers to the nose element as "气象雷达", or meteorological radar. Doubtful, given the large size, but the CG is most likely just a fanboy image anyways.
Not sure how well it'd work, from what we know about the E-2D and KJ-500 radomes, the approximate size of the radome aperture should be around 5 square meters, but the nose radar is about B-1B-sized, so about 1.25 square meters. The smaller aperture may defeat attempts to run bistatic radar.
Another key difference between Chinese AESA AEW&C and American AESA AEW&C is the radome design; the E-2D features a rotating bifacial AESA, while Chinese AESA to date have been, excepting the static bifacial "beam" antennas we've seen, static trifacial. This means that, for the same radome size, the E-2D is going to be more powerful, but Chinese AESA have typically featured a larger radome; on my measurement of KJ-500, the radome face is identical.
There's a few trade-offs in having rotating vs non-rotating radomes. First, trifacial radomes are going to be larger, and involve more modules than rotating bifacial radomes, increasing cost as well as drag, and by increasing drag, reducing endurance. On the other hand, however, trifacial radomes do not rotate and thus have fewer points of mechanical failure.
Last thing to note is, that if my estimates of radome aperture are correct, if we accept that the Chinese state-of-the-art J-11 AESA can hit 400-450 km of detection range vs 0 dBsm, scaling it up to AEW&C aperture implies a radome with a detection range of 1032-1161 km. Vs -30 dBsm, as I expect the J-20 and F-35 to be in the UHF-band, this comes out to an approximate detection range of about 184-206 km. If GaN modules are used, and achieve at least a 3x increase in power (4x modifier), the detection range jumps to 400 km; i.e, with J-20s running long-range sentry jobs, the J-20's EODAS should be able to pick up the F-35 relatively early with the AEW&C telling it where to look and get a firing solution before the F-35 is close enough to launch AIM-120s for intercept.
Edit:
The diagram refers to the nose element as "气象雷达", or meteorological radar. Doubtful, given the large size, but the CG is most likely just a fanboy image anyways.
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