Hempy, don't be mean.
Fox3 - That's been the idea for a while. Marine IOC is a joke. M=1.2/40000 feet, two AMRAAMs tops, no Rover and no gun. It can do an F-117-like fixed-target mission but that's totally not what Marine air does. And one squadron at most (aircraft built since 2013 can't run 2B). For the time being, too, it seems to be sucking down a lot of effort (aircraft mods and flight test - and presumably this latest S/W patch won't work on Block 3).
It's not that other aircraft have not had limited IOCs, but most were at least on a path that led directly to FOC or at least a robust interim capability.
Orca - Right, this does seem something rather basic to be working on at this stage. The question is where the problem occurs (also whether it is A-A or A-G or both). If the individual fusion engine on each aircraft is coming up with a fuzzy target location (after combining different sensors with different accuracy in az-el and range, and different scan rates) then sharing across four ships means everyone sees four targets. You could, I suppose, put in a S/W patch that plays eeny-meeny-miny-mo and picks one of them. Rather far from ideal, however.
Another issue (in A-A) is that the main sensors will be passive EW and radar. There's no IRST except a function in EOTS, which has a restricted look-up angle and is not the same thing as Pirate or Skyward-G. When fitted, IRST has a big contribution to fusion because of its az-el accuracy and speed.
Last edited by LowObservable; 25th Mar 2015 at 14:02.