Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "Found And Explained" channel.

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  4.  @fuckadoodle2  If I told you that every assertion you just made was wild inaccurate, how would you respond? Before you do, understand that I’ve been in the aerospace and defense industry since the 1970s, was involved with most of the programs you just mentioned, and watched them develop from infancy to maturity (and retirement) over the course of the past 5 decades. The F-35 weapons bays are larger than the F-111’s and F-22’s. F-35A and C can carry 2000lb class weapons, whereas F-22A can only carry 1000lb JDAMs due to bay depth. F-22 bay depth was designed for the AIM-120. What other fighters have weapons bays? Su-57 can only carry 4 R-77 series missiles in its bays. F-35 is more than multi-role, but Omnirole. Mission sets commonly executed by F-35As: VLO Offensive Counter-Air VLO Defensive Counter-Air VLO self-escort deep penetration strike VLO D-SEAD VLO Airborne Warning and Control VLO Strategic and Tactical ISR VLO Anti-Ship VLO long range networked terminal guidance for Surface-to-Surface and Air-to-Surface weapons launched from other platforms VLO Offensive Electronic Warfare/Attack VLO Defensive EW for 4th Gen strike packages No other platform can currently do all of those mission sets like that. F-22 is the closest, but lacks IR spectrum sensors and weapons bay depth for the 2000lb class JDAMs. Dogfighting has been dead for about 20 years now, but you wouldn’t want to get within visual range of an F-35 in any of the platforms you mentioned. F-35s have vastly-superior fused sensor cueing capabilities for a new generation of HOBS missiles that no other fighter has, along with superior Electronic Attack/EW than the F-22 has.
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  5.  @seraphm6573  I’m blinded by 5 decades of experience in this specific field of aerospace and defense, where we primarily worked on A2A programs. Missile kinematics and separation aircraft performance has been bread and butter for my family for generations. “Cruising along at Mach .8 and Mach 1.8 don’t make a difference in overall IR signature intensity.” Uh, yes it does. It makes a dramatic difference. You just happen to be conversing with someone who has done extensive analyses on IRST detection ranges on various types of airborne targets in different weather conditions. 90km detection range is for supersonic bombers in optimum atmospheric conditions using 1990s optics. If they’re subsonic, it drops considerably from there by almost half. For small fighters, it drops even more into much closer ranges. For Stealth aircraft like the F-22A and F-35s, you aren’t going to detect them with IRST until on the edge of visual range due to the extensive IR concealment systems they incorporate. Supersonic speed blooms them more, but they are still quite stealthy in IR spectrum. There are some interesting photos of the Rafale’s OSF showing F-22 in burner and not in burner. It’s extremely low contrast relative to the background. Another thing people who never did this kind of work for a living overlook is PID. You don’t just shoot at Unidentified IR contacts. You have to cue other sensors onto them to try to establish PID. Who do you think has worked on IR concealment longer and incorporated those lessons-learned into the F-35 vs J-20? Lockheed has been working on RF Stealth and IR concealment since the late 1950s. China just barely got into the game in the 1990s. That means F-35s will have first-look, first PID, first-shoot. J-20 will be defensive the entire time it spends within WEZ. AIM-120D has far greater range than you listed. It has demonstrated longer intercept range on a live target drone than the AIM-54C ever did. PL-15 is a paper capability until proven otherwise, and its seeker won’t have tracking capability until within maybe 6nm, assuming F-35s choose to not allow the automated EW system to do its job. The short story is China is way behind the power curve in all of these spaces, no matter how many people they bribe and steal from.
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  6.  @heatblast876  F-35s since Lot 4 have had smaller frontal, oblique, and side RCS values than combat-coded F-22As, according to Lockheed’s own leadership and the materials science analysis if you know what you’re looking at.   If you look at the frontal aspect of the Raptor and F-35s, you will see cavity resonance areas between the intakes of the F-22 and its fuselage/nose root area. That’s bad for stealth. F-35s have no such features, because they use Diverterless Supersonic Inlets. F-35s also have newer generations of RAM, coatings, and layerings of the RAM that are far superior to the Raptors’s (both for performance and maintenance). From oblique and side aspects, F-35s have RF transparent materials in the tailplane area, including the booms, h-stabs, v-stabs, keel web, their spars, and cores. F-22 has metallic flat surfaces around the TVC engine nozzles, mostly composite structures for the tailplanes, but with some aluminum spars and cores. Lot 4 and later F-35s (basically the entire production lot minus the initial 6 As, Bs, and Cs) dropped the aluminum spars and structures from the tailplane area to reduce weight and increase strength in order to meet the Key Performance Parameters set by the JPO. F-22 has a lot of titanium construction for Mach 2+ performance and structural integrity for its heavy weight airframe to be able to sustain 9gs. That Titanium construction adds to RF reflectivity. F-35s use a lot less Titanium than the F-22, and a lot more % of carbon fiber/carbon resin epoxy laminates, and carbon Bismaleimide composites. This plus the carbon nanotube RAM contribute to a smaller RCS value set from all aspects. If someone tells you any differently, you can write that source off as incompetent when it comes to this subject. For the Su-57, they are relying on taping off seams and coating after that, which is a nightmare for maintenance. They also failed miserably with their design from the first bulkhead if you look at it. It’s basic VLO techniques that were somehow ignored on a structure than contributes around 33% of your frontal RCS. They decided to make that a reflector instead of a deflector for some reason. China did not make that gross error with the J-20, and they are even incorporating it on the J-10B/C. They also have incorporate this basic stealth design approach on the J-11D. We simply don’t know what the production Su-57 RCS values are, nor do we know the J-20, J-11B/C, or J-11D. For the 4.7 Gen designs, they will still be large due to external stores and other bad shaping and materials. They are not as up-to-speed with this technology set and materials science as Lockheed, and never will be. Lockheed has a head-start dating back to the 1940s, from where they did technical exploration of Nazi Germany’s early stealth systems.
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  12.  @seraphm6573  Open Source updates for F-22A are listed in the Raptor Incremental Upgrade Program and kept very vague, but they have replaced the CIPs at least once with newer generation processors, used the open architecture that was available for 3x CIPs, gone to a newer APG-77(V)1 with unspecified improvements, replaced unspecified sensors with newer ones. No US fighter program has stayed static, so this is normal. You just can’t see from the outside what has changed due to the nature of the design. Supersonic JDAM delivery and separation tests, followed by SDB separation tests were pretty big for the F-22A combat-coded Raptors. It’s a more capable VLO penetration strike platform than anything else except JSF and B-2A currently. That was done with Increment 3.1. They programmed RF digital geolocation for surface target emitters to support its A2G capabilities, along with AESA SAR ground-mapping modes, and made it more interoperable with Link-16 protocols. There was 3.2A with unspecified software-based improvements related to electronic protection, Link-16 receive, and PID enhancements. Increment 3.2B brought in AIM-120D and AIM-9X interoperability, new IFDL, improved geolocation emitter detection/tracking/sharing, and some type of improved Weapon Employment Zone commonality. It’s a much different weapons system than when it was first fielded. The major differences are in A2A capabilities, A2G weapons employment, networking, sensors, PID enhancements, EW, and processing power to support these capabilities.
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  27.  @franksun4017  AESA Radars antennae arrays are made from hundreds of Semiconductors. That’s what TRMs are. The lower quality SCs you have, the bigger you have to make the antenna arrays and still won’t have comparable performance due to lack of electron mobility. China sucks in this space. When the antenna array is that large, you then have to make the first bulkhead very large, and you have to carry a certain weight in the nose with all the inefficient garbage electronics behind the Radar antennae. There are 2 power amplifiers that are critical to Radar operation. The first generates the waveform, which is sent to the antennae and resonated out in the airspace. Any reflections that come back to the Radar need to be converted from analog to digital, then amplified with the back end amp and run through a signals processor to make sense of the contact vs clutter. If your industry sucks at these types of technologies, the overall Radar components will be heavy while still having bad thermal management. This results in a 70ft long albatross of a fighter that now needs lots of thrust to get it into the air, with a reasonable climb rate to optimum intercept altitudes, with optimum cruise speeds and range. They have already stated that the Russian AL-31 motors are not enough to reach these desired areas of performance. You might be tempted to critique the F-22 for being heavy, but its weight is largely driven by Mach 2+ performance requirements, along with the weapons bay cavities and actuators, as well as 1980s-1990s era RAM (heavy). F-22s are definitely not underpowered, because the US makes world-class fighter engines. One thing I have noticed is that China has gone complete lockdown on reporting any mishaps with the J-20, which means they are very sensitive about exposing its weaknesses. In contrast, we have many reports on J-10 and J-11 crashes (happen quite frequently).
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  28.  @chrisdoulou8149  There is a lot more to AESAs than configuring them as AESAs. TRM materials and semiconductors need to be of high quality, with high density elements that deal with heat really well. These are spaces in the Semiconductor industry where China is grossly lacking, and these chips are tightly controlled in the US. In practice, it means a US-built AESA can have a smaller antenna array, with much higher TRM density, with better-performing TRM elements, that can radiate longer due to their thermal management properties. This is likely the biggest factor in why the J-20 has such a huge Radome and 70ft long airframe. Just to be able to achieve whatever capability it was they wanted for detection range on specific RCS values, with their limited TRM and SC technology, they had to make a giant nose. The F-22's APG-77, while smaller, has higher TRM density, better SC materials, better processing power, better thermal management, and always will since the US produces cutting edge SC technology that is closed to everyone else, except Canada, Australia, UK, and JSF partners. APG-81 in the F-35 is smaller than the APG-77 in the Raptor, but more capable. Raptor incremental upgrade program is bringing the combat-coded F-22As from later blocks up to speed with newer chip sets, new CIPs, and new unspecified sensors. China has been cut off from US and European SC manufacturing technology, so they will have to resort to black and grey market sources for less-capable SC materials. This is why they pay so much money to the Bushes, the Clintons, Obama, and Bidens.
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  32.  @extraacct478  Lockheed senior management said that since Lot 4, the F-35 has lower RCS values than the F-22. I was designing RAM in the mid-1980s just for fun, or how I would approach that engineering challenge. Unbeknownst to me, I duplicated the early German RAM shaping used on their U-Boat masts before they went to the epoxy resin lead sphere matrix on their 2nd iteration of RAM, so I was 42 years behind the power curve on that one.   I basically used what I knew about anechoic chambers at the time, and applied that. I didn’t learn about the German RAM shaping until a few years ago, when an Australian MoD engineer revealed it in a presentation. RF propagation physics 101: There are all types of frequencies of course from different types and widths of emitters. Attenuating a design to minimize reflection/resonance back to the emitter has been a cat and mouse game for generations. The A-12 was the first operational US aircraft to incorporate these techniques, largely relying on a lot of composites and shaping along the leading and trailing edges, as well as use of composites for the variable shock inlet spikes and vertical stabs. Just from what I have seen from photos of the F-35 layered RAM, I can tell you they have taken into consideration far more than one specific bandwidth in the RF spectrum, as well as the IR spectrum. The comments about F-35 stealth not working or not being viable in the long-run are coming from people who don’t even know what the RF spectrum is. "Group of allies purchasing either one of these.” Allies are not able to purchase F-15S because F-15S was a Bondo/wood mock-up, nothing more. This is coming from former McDonnell Douglas-turned Boeing employee at the St. Louis Plant who said it was a stupid publicity stunt that didn’t even do static testing. I have not mentioned any specific RCS values, nor would I acknowledge such values had I ever seen them. Instead, you might want to read the open source details discussed by the JSF program leads and test pilots in a book called, "F-35: from Concept to Cockpit” 871 pages, meant for AeroEs. I think you have to be a member of a specific association that published it to have access though. It’s OSINT.
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  44.  @extraacct478  Considering how many generations we've been working on VLO technologies, I wouldn't be surprised if they've tackled multi-bandwidth RF better than most can imagine on JSF. When we were on B-1B CTF, they kept the LO features very hush, even from people working on it. Turns out the frontal RCS is smaller than a Viper, which is impressive. I'm not aware of any effort to employ LO on the B-1A, and the podded nacelle configuration changed when they dropped the Mach 2+ requirement, favoring non LoS intake ductwork arrangement to protect the low pressure stage from direct cavity resonance. There's a retired career F-16 FWS Instructor who interviewed dozens of F-35A pilots. They said they can't see each other outside of WVR, but are tracking Low Earth Orbit satellites when they look up. Both F-35 and F-22 pilots report that F-35s are defeating Raptors in Large Force Exercises because of their sensors since 2017. I think the Chinese are farther ahead in LO after the Clintons, Bushes, and Obama/Biden/Hillary gave them access to stuff they had no business even knowing about. One of our friends on B-2 CTF said he was ordered to give access to the cockpit to a female Chinese intelligence officer at ED in the 1990s. She went up in there like a Japanese tourist with her camera. He asked her, "Why is this so interesting to you?" Her: "To use against you, of course!" Bushes are surprisingly-sinophile as well. Neil merged his US Defense Aerospace Holdings firm with his Chinese real estate front in 2019. People at those levels sell access to technology we developed over decades for our defense, and they're selling it to our enemies.
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