Long range Missiles

[delvo]

I don't get why some posters will say "discuss". Is that supposed to be a command, an imperative? Is the poster afraid that if he doesn't say "discuss", nobody will realize that the intent of the thread is for feedback on what he posted? I'm confused.

It's a quote from a Saturday Night Live character who would bring up discussion topics (I think while interviewing people like on a talk show) and introduce them by saying a single sentence to either agree with or disagree with, and use the "discuss" to signal to others that it was time to start responding to that claim and she would just sit back and observe or move on to something else while everybody else was busy/distracted, like a short way of saying "My part is done; now it's up to you". Usually, although she acted like the topic was deep and important, it was over a fairly silly claim, like "English muffins are neither English nor muffins. Discuss.". People who use it mean it light-heartedly, as a kind of joke to start off the discussion with.


I think that SNL gag originated with a certain type of homework assignment that would sometimes come up in school, in which "essay questions" on pre-printed forms would have the same basic form... but I think phrasing essay questions that way went out of style a few decades ago.

[mrigdon]

SNL got it from the Mclaughlin group, a show that used to air on PBS.

https://www.google.com/search?client=sa ... 8&oe=UTF-8

[delvo]

...critical nodes that enable U.S. air operations. Those nodes include the AWACS, various intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets, aerial refueling tankers and electronic attack aircraft.

It might not be possible to stealthify tankers or something like AWACS, but those others are stealth aircraft, sharing their data with each other over directed beam transmissions instead of broadcasts. That takes out the need for AWACS in the first place; you don't need one big sensor blasting noise all over the area if you have a bunch of little ones distributed all around the area and can read their data all in one place anyway. The function of the AWACS gets distributed over the network, and the network is the new version of AWACS.

So what that really leaves us to ponder here is tankers. And we already know we can build pretty big stealth aircraft that can carry a bunch of stuff including fuel, so if tankers aren't totally stealthfiable, then the reason must be in the hose. (In principle, a stealth tanker design would be as simple as a big stealth bomber with tanks and a hose system in place of a bomb bay.) So, supposing that there's just nothing we can do about the detectability of the hose:
1. It's only an issue when the hose is out, which is not most of the time that a tanker is flying.
2. Even with the hose out, you can still keep the tankers away from the fighters' target(s) almost as far as the fighters' combat radius. That's pretty far.
3. This is why the latest fighters (not just F-35 but also F-15E) have longer ranges than their predecessors, and why we have bombers, including stealth bombers, including the new one coming out in a few years with other nifty new sensor & communications technology in it.

The way to beat all of that would be with an equivalent system yourself: a network of multiple separate smallish stealthy sensor-data-sharing aircraft to get as far out, and thus as close to the enemy, as possible. (It would actually be possible for two such networks to overlap above the same area of land/water and still not know the other is there passing right by.) If we had an enemy who could do that, then the victory would probably be determined by which side simply had more of it.

[hornetfinn]

I don't think anyone has put any serious efforts into developing an ARM for anti-aircraft uses.

Isn't that how home on jam works?

HOJ as used in air-to-air missiles works reliably only against noise jamming source and not so well against other forms of jamming or radars. Non-ARM missile seekers are designed very differently to ARM seekers and their ability as passive systems is seriously limited. HOJ is basically used to counter last-ditch ECM by target aircraft where noise jamming is usually used.

[milosh]

Second, because no one, other than some outdated Jane's reference, claims the latest Zaslon versions can engage anything at that range. Original Zaslon had a "detection range with 50% probability" against 20m^2 target, at 200km. That's detection range. Tracking range at 120km. According to manufacturer.

And what that have with actual Zaslon radar? Nothing. We dont have any info about AM on manufacturer site.

Zaslon-AM could have only better cpu but it could have more kW, information is classifed. I think 200km is at least tracking distance for AM, skeptic would say for E-3 size target, optimist would say for fighter size target.

And for Zalson-M it was 320/280km for fighter size target:
http://kret.com/en/news/3986/

And lastly, all these tests are against closing head-on targets. I.e., in real life, this is never going to happen against the sort of targets we're talking about.

Agree. And I dont think we need to talk about ultra long range attacks because RVV-BD is official 200km. Some say it is false it can more but I dont see how. It have similar weight as R-33 and for 300km engagement range it would need to weight as R-37. And I dont think 200km is small at all especially because it can engage agile targets which R-33 couldnt.

Izd 810 on other hand could be ultra long range missile but we need to wait and see.

[arian]

Second, because no one, other than some outdated Jane's reference, claims the latest Zaslon versions can engage anything at that range. Original Zaslon had a "detection range with 50% probability" against 20m^2 target, at 200km. That's detection range. Tracking range at 120km. According to manufacturer.

And what that have with actual Zaslon radar? Nothing. We dont have any info about AM on manufacturer site.

Zaslon-AM could have only better cpu but it could have more kW, information is classifed. I think 200km is at least tracking distance for AM, skeptic would say for E-3 size target, optimist would say for fighter size target.

And for Zalson-M it was 320/280km for fighter size target:
http://kret.com/en/news/3986/

I've seen that claim too about Zaslon-M, but again, nothing other than some random people's websites. Nothing "official" or authoritative. The only authoritative claim is from the manufacturer which claimed "50-100%" improvement over Zaslon. And that's why I said, even if we assumed 100% improvement over Zaslon, we're still left with quite a bit to go to be able to engage a target at 300km.

Zaslon-AM is not Zaslon-M because Zaslon-M involved a bigger dish. Zaslon-AM is a modernization of original Zaslon, but using the same antenna dish. This according to the manufacturer (but also because you can't fit a bigger dish in the MiG-31BM's nose, which you could do in MiG-31M's nose).

Either way, they didn't do it in practice, so it's a moot point.

Agree. And I dont think we need to talk about ultra long range attacks because RVV-BD is official 200km. Some say it is false it can more but I dont see how. It have similar weight as R-33 and for 300km engagement range it would need to weight as R-37. And I dont think 200km is small at all especially because it can engage agile targets which R-33 couldnt.

200km is not small, but it is basically AIM-54 capability, which also achieved 200km+ engagement in tests..

There has been work in this area.

More recently, air-to-air ARM designs have begun to appear, notably the Russian Vympel R-27EP. Such missiles have several advantages over other missile guidance techniques; they do not trigger radar warning receivers (conferring a measure of surprise), and they can have a longer range (since the battery life of the seeker head is the limiting factor to the range of most active radar homing systems).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-radi ... prov=sfla1

There has been work in this area, but nothing has come out of it. It's not a reliable means of engaging aircraft, much less so modern airborne radars with low side lobes. It may work against a target that doesn't know it is being attacked, but if it's an ARM, chances are the radar will also pick up the missile too, and with sufficient time to either turn off the radar or to direct the main lobe in another direction.

Ground based radars do this to defend against ARMs, and send them flying in different directions. It no longer works for ground-based radars because modern ARMs have memories and GPS guidance, so they'll remember where you are even if you try to fool them. For a moving aircraft, this doesn't work.

R-27EP was, likley, never put into use. And it's not a recent development either. The Soviets were working on this in the 1980s. Rumors are that they even tried ARM guidance on R-23 missiles.

[jessmo111]

I wonder why no one will build a weapon thats Anti-Rad
And long range to start, but switches to IR in a terminal phase, or if Radar signal is lost.

[PhillyGuy]

why don't we just integrate the SM-6 for air/rotary launch and fill up the under development 'arsenal plane' with them.

if that bad boy has 250+ mile range from sea level it should fly to the moon and back when launched at speed in altitude.

also has linkages out the wazoo and is already integrated into the Navy net (ships, aircraft etc...)

[sferrin]

why don't we just integrate the SM-6 for air/rotary launch and fill up the under development 'arsenal plane' with them.

Because it would be a terrible idea. The missile is designed to sit in an air-conditioned ship. Completely different requirements.

[arian]

It's a 6.6m 1.5 ton missile. Not something you can carry many of, so no advantage if you want an "arsenal plane" (an idea which may not be very useful to begin with).

They're extremely expensive, and total production run is about as many AMRAAMs as are acquired every year, so not a lot of them to go around besides filling the ship's VLS.

[PhillyGuy]

The air conditioning part is absurd, if the nuclear cruise missiles can tolerate the troubles of airborne strategic use, so should conventional surface to air naval missiles. Their size and production run are more valid arguments, as is expense but sometimes the best capability costs. The B-52 can only carry 8 ALCMs internally, which are almost identical in weight and dimension to the SM-6. But you could most likely remove the booster section for adapted air use and that would automatically reduce some size, weight and cost without trading in too much performance. And if the need and resources are there, any production can always ramp up, even in what seems like the drip drop production world of extremely advanced defense systems today.

I really don't see why you would develop an entirely new missile when you've got thousands of these long range naval SAMs that until last week had not really been fired in operation. Out of a production run of thousands, you'd think a few of them could be spared retirement, modified and maintained for air use. Even the SM-2s would work beautifully for air use.

[southernphantom]

I wonder why no one will build a weapon thats Anti-Rad
And long range to start, but switches to IR in a terminal phase, or if Radar signal is lost.

I suspect it would be simpler and less expensive to build a GPS-guided missile that goes active around a designated point, and can receive midcourse guidance from the launching aircraft or other allied platform.

[arian]

The air conditioning part is absurd, if the nuclear cruise missiles can tolerate the troubles of airborne strategic use, so should conventional surface to air naval missiles. Their size and production run are more valid arguments, as is expense but sometimes the best capability costs. The B-52 can only carry 8 ALCMs internally, which are almost identical in weight and dimension to the SM-6. But you could most likely remove the booster section for adapted air use and that would automatically reduce some size, weight and cost without trading in too much performance. And if the need and resources are there, any production can always ramp up, even in what seems like the drip drop production world of extremely advanced defense systems today.

I really don't see why you would develop an entirely new missile when you've got thousands of these long range naval SAMs that until last week had not really been fired in operation. Out of a production run of thousands, you'd think a few of them could be spared retirement, modified and maintained for air use. Even the SM-2s would work beautifully for air use.

What's the threat you're going to be dealing with that would require such an extreme range? For ships it's obvious: engage enemy missile carriers before they can detect and engage the ship. For aircraft, especially now 5th generation, there is no such threat. And if you need a B-52 sized platform to carry 8 of them, what's the point?