With that logic, against 30K feet targets KS-19 should be only a 'sky denial' value at average, at best it might score a kill or two. May be cluster shells breaking and spreading wide into pieces and then exploding might increase a probability of hit.
You and your cluster shells.
Cluster shells would not be effective.
Think of it in terms of capacity, you are trading a large heavy projectile for lots of smaller projectiles to increase the chance of a hit. In the case of a shotgun you wouldn't want a solid slug load for shooting at rabbits because the accuracy needed to hit a small fast object with one large blob of lead makes the chances of a hit very low. Also that huge blob of lead would make a real mess of the rabbit. The solution is instead of one blob of lead you use hundreds of small lead balls where one ball hitting the rabbit in the leg or whereever will not be effective, but because all the balls are thrown together and lots of hits at once are likely and your point of aim can be off by 30cm or more and you can still hit the rabbit with lots of the balls of lead with enough force to kill it then it makes sense to use the pellet load rather than the solid slug.
For a dangerous target like a wild pig or bear then a solid slug becomes the ammo of choice.
The problem with your ides of using cluster shells in anti aircraft artillery is that while in theory it should have all the benefits of a pellet load against rabbits in reality there is simply not enough shell capacity to have lots of little explosives that will spread out in the sky and create the area effect you are hoping for.
The most effective use of cluster munitions is found in bombs, where a 500kg standard bomb creates an enormous amount of damage near the centre of the explosion but its effect reduces rapidly as you move away from the centre.
If the target is soft and could be killed by a 2kg HE fragmentation device then it makes sense to put 200 2kg HE bombs in a 500kg bomb shell and release the bomblets over the target area so they spread out before exploding.
Despite only totalling 400kgs of HE the 200 bomblets will kill far more people out in the open and exposed than the 500kgs in the 500kg bomb.
The problem is area too... release the bomblets from too high up and they will spread too far apart and lots of people in the group on the ground will not be hit... drop them too low and they wont spread out far enough to cover the whole target group so again it will be less effective.
Even with a 100mm anti aircraft gun you will have the problem that the cluster mines are either very small in number, or individually too small to damage the target aircraft, and the problem of when they are released becomes an issue to.
At the end of the day just having proximity fused HE shells is the best solution found so far.
However, will a modified or upgraded guided KS-19 vrs Jdams flying at subsonic speeds and in the proximity of 3-5 Kms offer little more potentials? Iran has modfied KS-19 and boast of precision hits by Safir, but then ME countries like to thump their chests even before production lines are in place.
With guided shells the cost increases... I still say that Pantsir-S1 or TOR offer mobility and capability you are simply not going to get from any gun that uses conventional propellent.
EM guns might change this, but until they are viable the best choice is missiles.
Can a KS-19 type platform be first used to lobby an Igla at say 20K feet and then manpad fires in and does its 15K feet chasing? Similar to your idea of UCAVs armed with Iglas
The KS-19 is a high velocity weapon and the shells accelerate to mach 3+ in just the length of the barrel... I don't think a MANPAD would survive that.
A better solution could be an AAM or MANPAD with a booster rocket to make it two stage. The problem would be that it would need to acquire its target after the first stage has burned out. The Morfei is a short range SAM based on the 9M100 short range AAM that uses a sophisticated IIR seeker and full thrust vector flight controls and is lock on after launch.
Another option is the fact that the Pantsir-S1 missile and the Hermes ASM have a unified design so a MMW radar homing or IIR homing missile could be loaded into a Pantsir-S1 and fired at high altitude targets in a fire and forget mode.
Tripoli was in the hands of the rebels. So who made the difference? We all know the answer, so no point in argument.
Without ground forces air power is nothing... look at Kosovo... it was almost ineffectual.
Using precision guided munitions, Air Forces can take out tanks, artillery, BMDs and then what is left?
Using precision guided munitions in over 2 months NATO took out perhaps 12 Serbian tanks... and that is with uncontested air control.
One place I read that Israel Air Force is confident of destroying main tank divisions of Syrian Army in 3 days using air assets. Going by the past performances of IsAF, I would not throw a denial or rebuttal to those claims.
The USAF was going to save the people of Kosovo in a couple of days... a week tops, and who would argue with the USAF?
Again here are the main tasks cut out for the RuAF:
Sorry, but that is rubbish.
The main tasks for the RuAF are to protect Russian territory from hostile external forces and to cooperate with the Aerospace Defence forces and the Army.
They don't need that crap you are suggesting, what they need is improved hardware in terms of aircraft and weapons, to improve training systems and procedures, to replace obsolete equipment and sensors, and to raise the standard of their C4IR to the level where they can perform the mission stated above.
The difference is in the doctrine to fight. West prefers air force to minimize losses on its side. Russia and China probably prefer the ground based offensives and more so because they like to keep the costs under control.
Well I would say that the West prefers air power because it makes it easier to fight around the world on the territory of other countries. Russia and China have no global empire to maintain and therefore are focused on protecting their own territory, for which an Air force is largely optional, though can greatly reduce losses and improve the effectiveness of ground forces.
For firing on missiles and bombs, which don't do a lot of maneuvers in the sky, this is still quite effective weapon. Do't forget, ships still have large cal. guns, which are also used in air defense role.
But they are big labour intensive systems... can you really see them replacing MANPADS and Medium and long range SAMs?
With the advances in radar location, fire control, shell technology etc, why not fire a large number of 100mm shells into the general area where a high flying aircraft is located and fill that part of the sky with shrapnel?
Well the Italians have gone for a 76mm SPAAG, and GLONASS guided artillery shells offer potential for possibly hitting aerial targets... They really need a big change, like an EM powered gun that fires heavy shells at very high velocities... like 4-5km/s and then it might become viable.
Most likely for ships before land based...
I bet the demand for the KS-19 type should be much higher, given the low cost of operations and low cost per kill of Plane or Jdams type entries in the envelop of the radar.
But the point is that it will still be firing quite a lot of shells for each kill. It will require lots of men to man the systems. And of course as soon as it opens up its position will be easy to plot.
The thing you need to understand Victor is that there are no easy cheap solutions... the West has carefully developed its capability to steal resources from the damn natives for hundreds of years and spent an enormous fortune honing its abilities, making it globally mobile... taking over islands here and there for bases.
The whole six month Libya operation cost NATO $1B to $1.5B tops.
To turn a functioning country into a shthole... I hear the leaderships first law will be to legalise polygamy...
West does not like to lose men and extra costs incurred in war fighting is considered a consumption boost to the defense industry which creates more jobs and fuels further economic consumption.
Which is why Russia doesn't need to worry too much about F-22s because it has the capacity to inflict ENORMOUS casualties on NATO.
But to fire on bombs and missiles it need tracking radar for quicker lock on and tracking.
a 360 degree AESA with 4 faces would offer continuous 360 degree target detection... and you could put a hemisphere IIR optical sensor for complete radar and optical coverage. With such a vehicle passing data to Pantsir-S1, TOR, and BMP-4s (Armata, Boomerang, Kurganets-25, and Typhoon based IFVs) equipped with either 57mm guns or 45mm guns with laser guided shells a single shot against a bomb would suffice as the guidance will allow for deviations from the time the shell leaves the muzzle of the gun to impact.
The 57mm shell would offer the best performance.
Note Phalanx uses armour piercing shells because Soviet anti ship missiles had angled armour plates to protect their warheads, most other CIWS used HE shells to try to detonate the warhead of the incoming missile. This was the most effective way to destroy such a weapon...
Guns and missiles are not in competition, but supplement each other. Russia have two combined systems, Tunguska and Pantsir, which have both missiles and two twin 30 mm guns.
Guns can be very capable and compliment Missiles and can work together to make defences more effective.
The Shilka is a devastating system in the ground to air role and the ground to ground role and the Tunguska is just a step better.
Congratulations to whomever sold the idea of JDAM to victor... you really did an outstanding job...
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) against nations completely uncapable to defend themselves ,capitalizing the tensions and the partial interests and aims of theirs tribal and faction components to effectively disintegrate them, represent the most mean frontier of modern imperialist politic aimed at gain access to critical energy sources or at change the political geography in areas not "alligned" to western interests.
