MiG 41

[RIPTIDE]

Someone know if the 33 has been tested against maneuvering fighter-sized targets, and similar for 37 or derivatives (which I guess might be what would equip the 41, unless they are intended to be exclusive to the upgraded MiG-31)?

A good input to that question would be the guess that the R-33 with it's SARH head is most likely command detonated? That's a guess.... but a reasonable one. It may not be super effective against F-15/16 type things.

[Exorcet]

@exorcet .. why just the "border".. how abous EOS ground station in a grid fashion like..

You could put them were you like, but cost is going to limit the number you have (not only for the units, but their placement, their power consumption, their maintenance).

 

In my mind, I thought of two places you'd like to have them. Borders for early warning or around targets of interest. Considering their range limitations and standoff weapons, I thought border might make more sense. Anything comes into your airspace and the MiG is scrambled or vectored.

 

 

connecting them to a C3,C4 posts it could track supercruising stealth planes easy.. maybe enough to spamm missiles in the vicinity of stealth planes .. height is pretty much known, it will be more than 30.000 feet, if for no other reason than to preserve airframe from going supercruise in less friction environment than lower than this.. and it its higher than that than you can "track" by condensation plumes it leaves behind.. of course if its cloudy you can't see it..

 

If you want a really, really dense network of these, it actually makes them easier to find. If they're literally everywhere, spaced 10 km apart, to start taking them out you need to just search a 15X15 box, find one, and then destroy the ones that you think are in the way (and a few more outside of that so you don't reveal the exact path you want to fly). It would take time to do this of course, but then again I'm not sure of the feasibility of having them cover every square inch of terrain. If it was that simple, maybe it would have been done already.

 

but still, EOS grid makes cheap financial investment to what it offers.. a location (that is location of stealth planes minus the altitude info).. but connecting this EOS together a computer analysis can give quite good estimates as to speed, bearing, heading.. enough for fire-solution from S300,S400.. or Mig-41.. in this case..

I don't disagree on the potential capability, but I think the effort needed to set this up might be underestimated.

 

the thing is, F-35 will not be sure he is stealthy, you can't be 100% sure nobody sees you..and you see this thing on radar going in unpredictable way moving faster than anything you can kill of with your mach 4 missile.. for god sake that means F-35 would have to fire a missile in the face at 20 miles to get a hit.. and only if it flies straight into the face of f-35..

Stealth is limited that's true, so there is no 100% invulnerability. The question becomes what's the probability of detection, but just getting RCS figures is hard enough. I'm sure that something like the MiG-41 could kill F-35's or F-22's, but I can't predict the success rate.

[GGTharos]

but still, EOS grid makes cheap financial investment to what it offers..

 

No, it does not. It's already been implemented (as in it's in service) for some platforms and it's claimed range against aircraft is about the same as that of radar vs stealth aircraft.

 

enough for fire-solution from S300,S400.. or Mig-41.. in this case..

 

And what's this radar guided weapon going to do against a target it can't track?

 

the thing is, F-35 will not be sure he is stealthy, you can't be 100% sure nobody sees you..and you see this thing on radar going in unpredictable way moving faster than anything you can kill of with your mach 4 missile.. for god sake that means F-35 would have to fire a missile in the face at 20 miles to get a hit.. and only if it flies straight into the face of f-35..

 

You can actually launch that missile at longer ranges when the bandit is coming at you fast, and for a modern 120 that is a very very long shot. So what if it doesn't hit? The turn radius of something that's going M4 is going to be gigantic, and that's quite significant ... both an advantage and disadvantage.

 

A fast opponent is always an issue, don't get me wrong.

 

by flanking left right, etc.. flanks are exposed and radar signature is bigger, etc .. This Mig-41 could very well play a role of a spear-head where Pak-FA and other follow into the breach..

 

Sure, and when the bandits are on your flanks you can notch. F-35's can play the 'spear head' game too, you know, and being stealthy kinda makes it easier.

 

The point is that all of this talk is BS. Hinging things on the characteristics of one aircraft never did anything for anyone without appropriate tactics - we like to say F-15's have a perfect air to air record - is the aircraft superior to its opponents - yes, but what makes this work is tactics. The F-4 was superior to the MiG-21 as well (it had the BVR advantage) but it couldn't use its superiority for many reasons, including some technical (no look-down capability). MiG-23's shot down F-16's that were technically better at a fight with guns and heaters because the 23's had a BVR capability that F-16's did not.

 

But when you start talking about aircraft where the superiority isn't clear (well, you might think it's clear, but in reality it's just some fantasy you made up - EOS grid vs. stealth planes aiding MiG-41's) then I don't think that things work out so well.

[EtherealN]

It will be fun for the russians to build an EOS grid across all of siberia...

 

In that case, they might as well just add a couple bases and air regiments with PAK-FA's. :P

[4c Hajduk Veljko]

Kaktus29 idea is actually very interesting. I too was thinking in that direction. Think of having passive receivers, such as EOS, on buildings roof tops. Have a simple processing unit process the signal and all that networked over the internet.

[Alfa]

A good input to that question would be the guess that the R-33 with it's SARH head is most likely command detonated?

 

No it has a radar proximity fuze with a range of some 20 m.

 

It may not be super effective against F-15/16 type things.

 

Well the R-33 has a maximum target g-load of 4, so probably not :)

Edited March 9, 2014 by Alfa

[Kaktus29]

Riptide.. you say people would steal them.. lol.. like millions of ATMs across US that nobody touches.. why is that?.. oh cuz u go to jail right?.. some r stolen, so what.. but CCTV cameras, police does the job, put ppl for treason in jail for 100 years and then nobody steals them anymore..

 

also, who said this things are HUGE, they are really small boxes that emit no radiation, how will F-35 destroy them? i don't get it.. will they examine every inch of every rooftop in 10x10 km box?.. yeah, while S-400 missiles are lobbed at them..

 

about the S-400 missile not able to finalize its kill from this EOS traction method.. who says it has to be SARH missile, there are Active radar missiles also, as missile comes to 10 km range of plane it will pick the plane up, or have the missile IR seeker sort and pick it up even from longer range.. point is, this is hardly a plot hole if i can say this..

 

again, i made a very huge country as example for this system and still the bill came at moderate 1 billion.. considering 1 billion would net you 10 Pak-Fa's or 5 F22 i think this is very cheap to have installed in a secret way across a huge country like Russia.. of course best way to do this is by proxy-front electrical companies who install new version of cables to all villages, cities etc.. and then pop-those babies on top of roofs embedded with alarm and GPS transponder if CIA starts suspecting stuff and wants a closer look.. so FSB could be close to apprehend the looters right away..

 

 

 

all in all, i see no real big holes in this strategy, especially since its passive system it will freak out the war planners of aggressor nation, since you can't shut this down..no matter how much you try.. lob all ARHs you want.. ))

 

 

About Mig-41 and potential speed of Mach 4+ .. since AIM120 and equivalents are pretty much at that speed it means big complication at hitting this thing from a distance.. and only way to ensure a kill is to get closer to it, increasing a chance 41 big radar picks you up, worse case scenario-you fire at him, he fires back from the position you fired-automatic lauch and both r engaged defensive.. who has better chance of survival.. one is going 4+ mach and flying at 85.000 feet other is going snail like 1.4+ and at 30.000 feet.. i'll pick 41 in this case..

 

again, you are not seeing other factors like Pak-fa that messes up the calculation..

 

 

------------

 

about EOS grid, its just a thought, who knows, maybe drone EOS will be created, which will be more stealthy, smaller, more nimble with smaller range but more able to sneak up to the super-crusing 5th gen fighters..and sending data back to Mig-41s.. in this way you can reduce the need to map out the whole country (even though its worth it since its cheap considering what you get back from this investment), .. and its more mobile plus you can take out the cloud equation and enjoy clear skies in hunting red thermal image of super-cruising planes.. of course this drones would fly slower-subsonic to avoid thermal image and be stealthy.. basically many ideas to disable the idea of F-22 or any other such plane to rule the skies.. in the end it will be many systems working together to enable defense.. hardly one super plane doing it magically alone..

[Vekkinho]

A good input to that question would be the guess that the R-33 with it's SARH head is most likely command detonated? That's a guess.... but a reasonable one. It may not be super effective against F-15/16 type things.

 

 

The idea of R-33 is to attack large (B-1B, B-52), fast (SR-71) and distant targets (B-52) that cannot Split S and drag it.

It's also an AWACS/Tanker killer if you eliminate it's escorts first, it's very ineffective vs maneuvering target such as fighter jet of small RCS.

[GGTharos]

about the S-400 missile not able to finalize its kill from this EOS traction method.. who says it has to be SARH missile, there are Active radar missiles also, as missile comes to 10 km range of plane it will pick the plane up, or have the missile IR seeker sort and pick it up even from longer range.. point is, this is hardly a plot hole if i can say this..

 

You're quite incorrect: Radar missiles of all types are quite vulnerable to stealth. And IR missiles have plenty of trouble locking onto targets that are far away, this has even been proven recently with datalinked IRH LOAL trials. You could stick a larger seeker on the missile of course, that would increase detection range a bit but it would significantly neuter the missile's drag profile and thus the range.

 

again, i made a very huge country as example for this system and still the bill came at moderate 1 billion.. considering 1 billion would net you 10 Pak-Fa's or 5 F22 i think this is very cheap to have installed in a secret way across a huge country like Russia.. of course best way to do this is by proxy-front electrical companies who install new version of cables to all villages, cities etc.. and then pop-those babies on top of roofs embedded with alarm and GPS transponder if CIA starts suspecting stuff and wants a closer look.. so FSB could be close to apprehend the looters right away..

How are you going to design, produce, install and maintain such a large network in anything that resembles secrecy? Even the existence of SOSUS isn't a secret, and you'd think that could be done quite secretly.

You're making up a huge fantasy.

 

all in all, i see no real big holes in this strategy, especially since its passive system it will freak out the war planners of aggressor nation, since you can't shut this down..no matter how much you try.. lob all ARHs you want.. ))

You don't see the gigantic logistical holes in terms of spare parts, personnel required for maintenance, processing power, actually powering all those units, and dealing with false alarms?

 

About Mig-41 and potential speed of Mach 4+ .. since AIM120 and equivalents are pretty much at that speed it means big complication at hitting this thing from a distance.. and only way to ensure a kill is to get closer to it, increasing a chance 41 big radar picks you up, worse case scenario-you fire at him, he fires back from the position you fired-automatic lauch and both r engaged defensive.. who has better chance of survival.. one is going 4+ mach and flying at 85.000 feet other is going snail like 1.4+ and at 30.000 feet.. i'll pick 41 in this case..

Again that is incorrect. With a bandit coming at you at M4, you can launch that missile at 4x the range you could launch vs. an M1 target. Sure, the M4 guy can survive better ... but he's going to have trouble returning to that engagement.

 

again, you are not seeing other factors like Pak-fa that messes up the calculation..

You're not seeing F-22's and stealth bombers. Wait no, you do, with your magical IR detection grid :)

 

about EOS grid, its just a thought, who knows, maybe drone EOS will be created, which will be more stealthy, smaller, more nimble with smaller range but more able to sneak up to the super-crusing 5th gen fighters..and sending data back to Mig-41s..

More fantasy.

 

Here's a clue for you: Everyone uses all kids of drones, including airborne decoys for the enemies to shoot at.

 

basically many ideas to disable the idea of F-22 or any other such plane to rule the skies.. in the end it will be many systems working together to enable defense.. hardly one super plane doing it magically alone..

Many fantasies you mean. Why haven't even rich, small countries created such a network? Perhaps you believe them to be stupid? There's a reason why the radar is the primary means of airspace surveillance. You seem hung up on detecting 'super-cruising planes' ... what's stopping an F-35 with all its optical sensors from detecting a fat M4 MiG-41 before it ever sees an F-35? And I won't even go into fantasy F-22 IRST upgrades.

[TAW_Blaze]

about the S-400 missile not able to finalize its kill from this EOS traction method.. who says it has to be SARH missile, there are Active radar missiles also, as missile comes to 10 km range of plane it will pick the plane up, or have the missile IR seeker sort and pick it up even from longer range.. point is, this is hardly a plot hole if i can say this..

 

You can't just maddog a bunch of ARH missiles above your border at a random direction because your IRST stuff detected a heat signature across it. What about all your friendly forces and civilian aircraft? You would need to actually sync this system with your ground radars and AWACS, that way you could actually sort between civil aircraft, friendlies and actual enemies. But this is already very complex, then add ECM activity on both sides, see what happens. Won't work out. On top of that, maddogging an ARH at a stealth aircraft will probably have no effect, if it doesn't know where to look it won't find him. X angle shot at Z altitude does not imply knowing where to look. If anything else is nearby it's also likely to go on that, since it's probably bigger RCS than said stealth aircraft. So honestly this maddogging missiles all around is not a viable option, at all.

 

Another argument is that even if you sync ground radars and AWACS with the IRST grid, you would imply that an undetected aircraft on the radar spotted by the IRST is hostile. What if it's not? You'll have to send planes there to investigate further..

 

About Mig-41 and potential speed of Mach 4+ .. since AIM120 and equivalents are pretty much at that speed it means big complication at hitting this thing from a distance.. and only way to ensure a kill is to get closer to it, increasing a chance 41 big radar picks you up, worse case scenario-you fire at him, he fires back from the position you fired-automatic lauch and both r engaged defensive.. who has better chance of survival.. one is going 4+ mach and flying at 85.000 feet other is going snail like 1.4+ and at 30.000 feet.. i'll pick 41 in this case..

 

Flying M4 makes your flightpath predictable and the aircraft can't turn for shit so they can pick the best angle of approach and fire on you, if they're close enough you won't be able to react. Trying to go low after that is not exactly a viable option either, why sit in a M4 aircraft trying to airbrake down to reasonable speed so you can dive to lower altitude without incinerating the airframe. As soon as the enemy has the chance to go low the energy of your missiles won't do nowhere as much.

Edited March 9, 2014 by <Blaze>

[OutOnTheOP]

@riptide.. really? its too expensive.. lol.. how much does such a device cost? 10 million? nope.. 5 milion? nope.. 500K? maybe.. so if you put it in a 10 miles grid covering a huge country like Russia would be what.. how many devices.. 10.000 km X 2.000 km = 20.000.000/10 km= 2.000.000 devices which cost 500K equals what?.. 1.000.000.000.. so 1 measly billion to cover a huge ass country like Russia and gives you ability to shoot down raptors that cost 200 million a pieace not to mention other stealth planes..yeah .. i think this is a good investment..

 

Any IIR sensor with sufficient resolution would run around $1 million USD. This is roughly what the US LRAS costs. The airborne versions would actually cost significantly more, as miniaturization, weight savings, and cooling become more of an issue.

 

That said, ground mounting them is the worst place to put them, as it puts a whole lot of very dense air between them and the target. Considering that they're already looking 18 kilometers (!!!) to see an F-22/F-15 at ceiling altitude directly above them, I doubt their effective range would be much farther than 5-6 kilometers laterally, and even then, I suspect they'd have a pretty poor acquisition rate with all the atmospheric distortion

[RIPTIDE]

The idea of R-33 is to attack large (B-1B, B-52), fast (SR-71) and distant targets (B-52) that cannot Split S and drag it.

It's also an AWACS/Tanker killer if you eliminate it's escorts first, it's very ineffective vs maneuvering target such as fighter jet of small RCS.

Yes, this I understood anyway. :thumbup:

[RIPTIDE]

No it has a radar proximity fuze with a range of some 20 m.

Thanks. 20m? That's a lot. Of course at altitude the effectiveness of explosives increases a lot in terms of radius.

[RIPTIDE]

Riptide.. you say people would steal them.. lol.. like millions of ATMs across US that nobody touches.. why is that?.. oh cuz u go to jail right?.. some r stolen, so what.. but CCTV cameras, police does the job, put ppl for treason in jail for 100 years and then nobody steals them anymore..

.

So you're now limiting these devices to populated areas?

 

I'd personally chop as many as I could down and sell their very expensive components on. :P And I'd never get caught.

[Dudikoff]

The idea of R-33 is to attack large (B-1B, B-52), fast (SR-71) and distant targets (B-52) that cannot Split S and drag it.

It's also an AWACS/Tanker killer if you eliminate it's escorts first, it's very ineffective vs maneuvering target such as fighter jet of small RCS.

 

I thought one of its main tasks was also the interception of long-range cruise missiles (e.g. SRAM, ALCM) launched from those bombers (or ships/subs, I guess with TLAM-A) which would indicate that it's not limited to huge RCS targets only.

Edited March 10, 2014 by Dudikoff

[ФрогФут]

Flying M4 makes your flightpath predictable and the aircraft can't turn for shit so they can pick the best angle of approach and fire on you

You need to be VERY head on to get a good DLZ. Which was problem even at the SR-71 time, which is not even close to Mach 4. If the target is not flying at you, the DLZ will get smaller and smaller very quickly depending on the angle.

[TAW_Blaze]

You need to be VERY head on to get a good DLZ. Which was problem even at the SR-71 time, which is not even close to Mach 4. If the target is not flying at you, the DLZ will get smaller and smaller very quickly depending on the angle.

 

At M4 your reaction speed will be crazy long and you won't see LO planes up to 20-30 miles if not a lot less so you have to assume you're not flying into ANY of them while knowing none of their position, which is quite complicated to perform.. impossible to be exact, in a multi ship engagement.

 

It's a curious aspect how much it affects a missile if it's shot in a maintained crank at that speed. I would presume it reduces it's range by a rather large part. In that case, he has to fly straight at you (reversing crank as you do in a normal fighter simply won't work due to the time it takes) to use it's launch range to the limit.

 

Or you can just maintain the crank anyway, and although you'll be able to fire effectively at a shorter range it's still likely better than what the enemy can do. But the problem is that it's hard (pretty much impossible) to crank in relation to someone whose position is unknown.

 

Another argument is that your incredible effective launch range is worthless if again you cannot detect the enemy outside X range, given the fact that your launch range is multiple times X. As of right now, that is exactly the case.

Edited March 10, 2014 by <Blaze>

[Alfa]

Thanks. 20m? That's a lot.

 

Well the distance is set according to the kill range of the warhead and the R-33 has a pretty big charge(some 47 kg of HE).

 

Mind you, 20 m is actually not that far - IIRC the AIM-120 and RVV-AE have something similar despite having less than half the charge, but their warheads are of the "expanding rod" type, while the R-33 warhead is "blast fragmentation".

 

Of course at altitude the effectiveness of explosives increases a lot in terms of radius.

 

Yes but the R-33 is actually meant to kill low flying cruise missiles(target altitude can be as low as 50 m) as well as high altitude bombers.

[GGTharos]

The 120 uses a blast-frag warhead, but it's also supposedly directional ... by having multiple detonators and detonating them in a given sequence, you can shape the direction in which you focus the majority of the blast.

[Pyroflash]

Yup, you are thinking of the AIM-9 series. They are the ones with the CR warheads.

[Alfa]

I thought one of its main tasks was also the interception of long-range cruise missiles (e.g. SRAM, ALCM) launched from those bombers (or ships/subs, I guess with TLAM-A)

 

Correct.

 

...which would indicate that it's not limited to huge RCS targets only.

 

No but a max target G-load of 4 would indicate that the R-33 is limited to "non-manouvering" targets :) .

[GGTharos]

You might be surprised Alfa: C-130's are easily capable of pulling 5g, and B-1Bs I believe have a 6g capability :)

 

Mind you, I have no idea what the airframe limits of a loaded down B-1 is.

[Alfa]

The 120 uses a blast-frag warhead, but it's also supposedly directional ... by having multiple detonators and detonating them in a given sequence, you can shape the direction in which you focus the majority of the blast.

 

Are you sure about that GG? :)

 

The "expanding rod" type of warhead goes under different names such as "continious rod" and "annular blast fragmentation"

[GGTharos]

The descriptions of it that I have found (sadly it's been a while ago ... but I can try to find things again) basically described it as a warhead containing explosive with baked-in fragments. But like I said, it has been a while.

 

Edit: Google WDU-33/B and WDU-41/B, looks like both of them are explosive-filled pre-fragmented (or scored, at least) casings.

 

Are you sure about that GG? :)

 

The "expanding rod" type of warhead goes under different names such as "continious rod" and "annular blast fragmentation"

Edited March 10, 2014 by GGTharos

[Alfa]

Well I looked around and found the attached image of the WDU-33 warhead and it looks like a fragmentation warhead arranged much like a continious rod type - i.e. rectangular fragments arranged around an explosive core.

 

So it seems you are right, but then it would nevertheless appear that the blast pattern is very similar to that of continious rod and indeed a case of "annular blast fragmentation" - i.e. directional.