Chapter 315 Imitation Radar
Rectangular air inlet, twin engines and twin vertical tails, bubble-type cockpit, the appearance is so beautiful, full of power and beauty.
F-15! This is an American F-15 fighter!
"The island nation's Self-Defense Force currently has four F-15 fighter jets. Three of them were towed back to Moscow, and this one was placed here and we are responsible for studying it," said Grishin.
When East and West Germany merged, the Americans easily obtained the MiG-29 fighter jets from East Germany. This Soviet frontline fighter jet was stripped of its outer shell in front of the West and exposed to Western research. I wonder how many people in the Mikoyan Design Bureau were deeply concerned about this.
Now, it is the Americans' turn to be depressed, because their most advanced third-generation aircraft has been obtained by their own side! After this research, they will be more confident in fighting against American fighters in air combat in the future!
The radar cover on the nose of the aircraft had been removed, and the radar antenna in the gap between the plates could be seen. Andre could not help but walk over quickly and observe the F-15 carefully.
"The first thing we need to do is reverse mapping and imitate the F-15's airborne radar." Andre said excitedly, looking at the flat radar antenna with affection.
The Soviet Union's electronic technology was backward, and until its disintegration, it had not overcome the difficulty of flat-plate slot radar. The Su-27, a heavy fighter, was originally planned to be equipped with a flat-plate slot radar, but it ended up being a large and thick inverted truck, a one-ton behemoth out of thin air. The Su-27's subsequent improvements were almost all centered around this thing.
Now, the T-10 has not yet started its test flight, and the historical difficulties will not recur!
"Yes, the main task of our Ohe factory at this stage is to survey and imitate the F-15's airborne electronic equipment, among which the radar is the focus." Ohashi Eitaro said: "Although our Mitsubishi Heavy Industries assembled the F-4 fighter, the airborne radar on it was also a complete set of imported American products. The current F-15 was originally planned to be imported for production, and the radar equipment also needs to be imported, but we already have various parameter files. Radar is related to the performance of the fighter. We will no longer be able to obtain any advanced technology from the United States in the future. We can only develop it ourselves. All our technicians are concentrating their efforts, and now we have overcome the difficulty of manufacturing radar antennas."
Radar antenna! The APG-63 radar used by the US F-15 fighter jets, one of the most important ones is the flat slot radar antenna, which is an antenna that opens cracks on the wide or narrow sides of the waveguide and arranges them appropriately to form a linear array or a planar array to meet the requirements of various antenna applications. This method has significant advantages such as high gain, easy control of aperture distribution, and compact structure. Among them, the standing wave array with longitudinal slots on the wide side of the waveguide, that is, the flat slot antenna, also has the characteristics of low loss, light weight, high power capacity, high polarization purity, and high mechanical strength. These advantages allowed the United States, which attaches great importance to electronic technology, to first use it in fire control radars on fighter jets, guidance head antennas for missiles, and so on.
The Soviet Union's radars were large and powerful, but their actual utilization rate was quite low. The low efficiency of the radar antenna was an important factor, and most of the heat was dissipated as heat! Although the Soviet Union wanted to overcome the difficulties of the flat slot radar, it faced many difficulties.
The most important of these are materials and precision processing technology! These technologies were originally impossible for the Soviet Union to obtain from the West.
"Great!" Hearing this, Andre was extremely happy. He naturally knew what this meant. As long as the manufacturing difficulties of the radar antenna were overcome, relying on the island country's electronic technology level, the subsequent processing systems and other components could also be overcome one by one. In this way, they could just catch up with the development progress of the Su-27!
The Soviet Union's electronic technology will see a spurt of improvement because of the island nation's return of favors! After catching up in electronic technology, let's see how the Americans will confront the Soviet Union militarily!
"Once this radar is successfully developed, we will equip our fighter jets with it and export it to our friends at the same time. In the future, we can also consider technology exports and directly produce these radars in Moscow," said Ohashi Eitaro.
This is almost certain. After all, some of the research and development of this radar was done by Soviet personnel. If the research and development is successful, the Soviet Union will also master the technology at the same time. However, the processing level in the Soviet Union is insufficient. If it is produced in the Soviet Union, it will need to introduce mechanical processing equipment. How to calculate the cost and profit at that time is not something Andre can worry about.
Moreover, the radar systems of the Soviet Union's future fighter jets must not rely on the island country's factories. In case the island country people have any bad intentions, they will harm the Soviet Air Force.
"Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is also quite advanced in the development of phased array radars. They are working on overcoming the difficulties of the T/R components of active phased array radars." Grishin said, "We are also joining in and striving to develop more advanced active phased array radars as soon as possible."
Although the Soviet Union already had airborne phased array radars, they were passive phased array radars that relied on ferrite phase shifters. New active phased array radars are the future direction! In this regard, the island country has the foresight of technology, and with the cooperation of Soviet experts, they jointly overcome technical difficulties.
"In addition to our tireless work on radar development, we also have another team researching the engine of the F-15 fighter," Ohashi said. "However, the F-15 engine is not mature yet and faces too many problems. Last time, it was because of an engine failure that caused a large number of US aircraft to be grounded."
Engine! In fact, the Soviet Union's pursuit of engines was not as urgent as avionics, because the Soviet Union was not behind in engine development, but the Soviet engine technology still had defects, such as service life, which was far from the Western level. Studying Western engines was still helpful for the Soviet Union to master more cutting-edge engine technology.
It is the F100 engine that is still facing various reliability issues. If it weren’t for the large-scale grounding of the F-15 last time, the Americans would definitely not give in so easily!
Wait, if the island nation has mastered the technologies of engines and avionics, and there is still one aircraft left, does that mean that the island nation has the ability to independently develop and produce fighter jets? Thinking of this, Andrei suddenly became alert.
Although we need to utilize the technology of the island countries now, we must never develop the island countries into a military power!
"We have a new plan." At this time, Ohashi Eitaro said: "Originally, the next generation of fighter jets for our Self-Defense Forces was the F-15, but now, I'm afraid the plan is going to fall through. We need a new fighter jet to deal with future conflicts."