*Military Aviation Principles DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87087*

*Military Engineering*

fighter.

threaten the F-35.

*3.1.5 Maritime patrol aircraft*

**3.2 Fighter aircraft generations**

one such aircraft that is in use for a long time.

*3.1.3 Multirole combat aircraft (multirole, fighter bomber, strike fighter)*

variants later receiving secondary ground attack capability.

*3.1.4 Electronic warfare (EW) aircraft*

The MRCA roles may include air-to-air combat, bombing operation, aerial photo reconnaissance, etc. The main motivation for developing multirole aircraft is cost reduction in using a common airframe. Multirole means an aircraft with major roles, a primary air-to-air combat role and a secondary role like air-to-surface attack. It may be appreciated that an aircraft optimized for a particular role may not fulfil some other role efficiently; however, they may be gainfully used for secondary roles. For example, air superiority fighters designed for higher manoeuverability over the contemporary aircraft are also capable of ground attack. Similarly an interceptor having high rate of climb and acceleration and equipped with close combat missiles and air guns can also be used to chase enemy aircraft and neutralize them in air. Aircraft roles can be changed by changing on-board armament stores/ role equipment. Some aircraft are retro modified for additional role. The F-14 was envisioned originally for air superiority and fleet interception defence with some

The Euro fighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafal are classified as multirole fighters. Euro fighter Typhoon was however, originally designed as an air superiority

An EW aircraft is a military aircraft equipped with EW system meant to degrade the effectiveness of enemy radar and radio systems by using radar jamming deception methods. EW is a technology to detect, identify the frequency spectrum and locate the source of electromagnetic energy and use of self-protective jammer to deny the opponent access to the EM spectrum. EW can be deployed from land, sea or air. Various types of self-protective jammers like noise/frequency jamming and counter-measure dispensing systems (CMDS) are used. This gives the aircraft stealth capability to deceive the enemy radars. F-35 has very advanced EW capability which enables it to reach well-defended targets and suppress enemy radars that

A maritime patrol aircraft is designed to operate for long duration over coastline/water territory in order to detect, identify enemy ships and submarines and destroy them using air-to-surface weapon, torpedoes and underwater mines. These aircraft are equipped with various sensors including sonar and radars and are also used in maritime search and rescue operations. Jaguar maritime patrol aircraft is

Aircraft is designed for an economic life of 20 years from the consideration of obsolescence. However, as the cost of procurement of new aircraft is continuously rising, aircraft are operated for longer period, and midlife update is carried out to make the aircraft competitive to contemporary aircraft. This has brought a concept of fighter generation categories created to identify major technology leaps in the historical development of jet fighters. Though there is no sound technological basis, this is more of a creation of aerospace webs and magazines. A general grouping is done based on the operational capabilities, handling qualities and pilot work load as

well as the year of design. The aircraft generation is discussed below [6, 7]:

**8**

