The only feasible way to try to counter stealth?

[Hobbes]

So wait, what, does other than military operators

using one or another band spectrum categorically render that band unusable or unavailable for military purposes? Wouldn't any force or unit have to contend with at least somewhat cluttered, "spoiled" or indeed actively challenged EM environment, necessitating deconfliction (at the minimum) and other (counter)measures anyway?

I think it's more the other way round. If a radar operates on a certain frequency, that frequency becomes unusable for all other uses: radar uses very powerful transmitters, which will drown out pretty much all other traffic.

 

[stealthflanker]

Yes, but the illuminating aircraft is way farther from the LO target than the missile. The radar range equation varies with the fourth power of distance, so you have to pump WAY more power to get the same return.

For this you should use Bi-static Radar equation or treat the missile as a "separate" passive receiver. The 4th root rules only applies for Monostatic case where the transmitter and receiver are in same place (co-located) For bi-static case we have separate equation as following.

regarding semi-active missile case or bi-static implementation. Missile or other receiver in other angle may receive better return, basically because of 2 reasons :

1.shorter path length.
2.Bi-static RCS. Or the RCS of the object "seen" by the receiver. We know all object has NO static value of RCS, frontal aspect RCS may be different to what's on the side. The side tho can be expected to always have relatively large value, thus can give higher return.

 

[LowObservable]

Who would in turn be laughed at by the USAF and raise you the SAGE networked F-101,F-106, etc.

The question of who was first with a datalink-based interception control system seems a bit foggy. This page...

https://www.f-106deltadart.com/flightcontrols.htm

...suggests that the datalink bit of the F-106 system took some time to get developed, and it's not clear when the link was in use. (If there is someone who has covered SAGE like Friedman has covered naval air defense, I haven't found them yet.)

Most of the detailed coverage of Stril 60 is in Swedish, but it does seem that they claim that the datalink was working by 1963 on the J35B.

 

[TomcatViP]

As you keep insisting:

* The "F-86L" was developed under "Project Follow-On". It was essentially an F-86D incorporating a data-link capability for the "Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE)" air-intercept control system.

The CGI system used with the F-86D had not proven entirely satisfactory. Communications between the ground controller and the pilot tended to be slow or confusing, and so something a little smarter was needed. SAGE, introduced in 1953, had been developed by the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It used a big ground-based computer to assess target information obtained by ground radar, and relayed target data to the interceptor through an AN/ARR-39 datalink, automatically guiding the interceptor to the target while the targeting information was displayed to the pilot. It was a marvel of the world at the time -- though it is an indication of the growth of computing power since the 1950s that even though the SAGE computers filled up rooms, any cheap modern smartphone would dwarf the memory, mass storage, and processing power of all the SAGE computers added together.

The F-86L was intended as stopgap for SAGE operation until better the better Convair F-102 Delta Dagger and its successor, the F-106 Delta Dart, came on line. All F-86Ls were rebuilds of low-flight-time F-86Ds, with the first such rebuild flying on 27 December 1955. The rebuilds were brought up to the equivalent of an F-86D-45, with other improvements including updated avionics and the "F-40" long slatted wing. Rebuilt F-86D-50, F-86D-55, and F-86D-60 were simply redesignated "F-86L-50", "F-86L-55", and "F-86L-60" respectively. Oddly, however, earlier F-86D subvariants were given block numbers incremented by 1 after update. For example, an F-86D-40 became an "F-86D-41".

981 F-86Ds were converted to F-86Ls in all. They began to go into USAF Air Defense Command service in late 1957, but were phased out into Air National Guard service by 1960, to be finally obsoleted in 1965.

my 2 cents

Text extracted from here: http://www.airvectors.net/avf86_2.html

 

[Arjen]

Stril 60 development started in the mid-fifties. The project's first <edit>largely successful</edit> demonstration of control via data-link was on 16/10 1962 with a modified J35A Draken. See page 104 of linked pdf.
J35B was the first Draken-variant built with the hardware necessary for data-link operations. 73 J35B aircraft were built from 1962 till 1963.
PDF found here:
http://www.fht.nu/Dokument/Flygvapnet/flyg_publ_dok_svenska_flygvapnets_styrdatasystem.pdf
<edit> I'm not completely sure about the modified J35A being the aircraft involved in the 16/10 1962 demonstration. Two Lansen aircraft were also used during data-link trials, with two J29 Tunnan explicitly mentioned as target aircraft </edit>

 

[Hood]

Ferranti, Elliotts and BAC developed an automatic interception system for the Lightning with a datalink which was fully engineered and tested on a P.1B. £1.4mil was spent on development but it never entered service, although the datalink was used until 1975 with ground controllers. I haven't got the exact dates at my fingertips but it most have been circa 1960-63.

https://www.pprune.org/military-aviation/205755-anyone-remember-lightning-datalink.html

 

[Arjen]

Marconi was heavily involved with the Swedish effort.

 

[LowObservable]

TVIP - I hadn't known that about the F-86L.

However, Wiki says that the first operational datalink ground station was Sault Ste-Marie, in April 1961. There are lots of references attached and I'll dig into them later, but it sounds as if the F-86L was early-to-need...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Environment#Deployment

 

[Grey Havoc]

Ferranti, Elliotts and BAC developed an automatic interception system for the Lightning with a datalink which was fully engineered and tested on a P.1B. £1.4mil was spent on development but it never entered service, although the datalink was used until 1975 with ground controllers. I haven't got the exact dates at my fingertips but it most have been circa 1960-63.

https://www.pprune.org/military-aviation/205755-anyone-remember-lightning-datalink.html

That system was intended to be a major part of Tinsmith/SLEWC (Standby Local Early Warning & Control). Unfortunately there were problems with the software in the ground based computers. By the way £1.4 million was the cost of the datalink development, but the overall cost of the automated interception system project was reportedly £30 million. As Hood has mentioned, the datalink was used in a manual reversion mode until 1975, when it was supposed to be replaced by a new datalink as part of the Linesman System, Tinsmith having already been phased out around 1974. Alas, Linesman (also known as Linesman/Mediator) was a flop at best.

Interestingly, certain physical remnants of the datalink on the Lightnings were then used from then onwards by air & ground crew for the time honoured tradition of transporting life's little luxuries.