Ka-52 in Russian Air Force

GarryB the weapon of choice for air to air engagement, particularly agianst enemy helicopters (and only incidentally against enemy aircraft flying at low altitude to avoid destruction by long range AD systems) will be the Р-74М, just recently selected for integration with the Ми-28НМ that thanks to its new sensor suit will fully exploit its increased engagement range.

Interesting... thanks for sharing... always nice to hear new information from you...

I guess it could even carry a sonar and some anti-submarine rockets or torpedo on weapon pylons. Making them sub hunters if they need to.

I suspect this modification is no more than a hook attached to a structurally central point on the helicopter, I would suspect depth charges and torpedoes could form part of the armament of the Hokums but would suspect an unmanned surface vessel would be more use with a dipping sonar to find underwater objects.

You would probably need rather more than a wing pylon mounted pod for the sonar sensor and extension and recovery mechanism and of course all the processing power needed to troll through all the data it would generate.

They are working on new helicopters to replace the Helix models, but they need to fit into the same hangars and use the same support equipment so I doubt they will look hugely different... much as the Helix looks very much like a Hormone that it replaced.

Likely improved aerodynamics, perhaps modular design like a scaled up Ka-226, and likely rather more powerful engines.

A version with dipping sonar... perhaps with a boat hull so it can land on the water to operate for extended periods with just an APU supplying power for operations would be interesting...

But previously in another thread you had suggested that long range missiles/ BVR missiles can be dodged because the defendant has some time in hand to employ evasive manoeuvre or use other countermeasure?

And I stand by that when the target is aware it is being attacked it can manouver in specific ways to waste the limited energy of the missile.

For instance a 120km range AMRAAM is fired at an Su-35 from 110km range and a nearby A-100 detects the launch and signals the Su-35, who then turns 90 degrees and now instead of flying towards the incoming missile is now heading effectively to maintain its 110km distance... now that AMRAAM was actually expecting the Su-35 to keep heading towards it so at say 800km/h closing speed firing at the Su-35 from 110km range the missile might have been expecting to impact the Flanker at about 70-80km range because while it was flying towards its target its target was closing the distance... well with this simple flight manouver instead of continuing flying straight forward its target is now going to be much further away and to one side so it has to lose a little speed and turn to the new intercept point... after 30 seconds of course the Su-35 might turn 180 degrees and head back the other way which means the AMRAAM which was flying at a target at 70-80km away and then having to turn and adjust its flight altitude and speed to then intercept a target 110km away and off to one side now has to change direction again and fly off on another angle... the Su-35 could then turn another 90 degrees and head away from the missile and more likely than not it will run out of energy and just fall from the sky because being rocket propelled its rocket motor does not operate all the way to the target so it is coasting on momentum... flight manouvers and changes greatly reduce its performance... the Flanker could actually climb and the extra altitude might mean the incoming missile burns energy climbing and can't recover it to then dive down on the target and using gravity to give it energy to overcome the drag of combat manouvers.

In this case however we are talking about a missile that has a flight speed of likely about 1.8km per second that will... when used against targets 100km away likely be lofted up to very high altitudes to then dive down on the target at very high speeds so the time to manouver and get the missile to waste energy and bleed speed is significantly reduced... and of course most radars on aircraft don't point upwards so having it swoop down at very very high speeds makes it hard to deal with in terms of flight manouvers.

Will the naval Ka 52 also carry the 100km range cruise missile?

If these missiles are Hermes then they are not really cruise missiles...

But for attacking land targets such weapons would be very useful for naval Ka-52s for attacking bunkers and gun emplacements and enemy armour for a landing force...

So is this new 100km range missile an export version of the Kh-35U ?

Pretty sure it is not.

It is more like a two stage Vikhr with a powerful booster rocket motor and a 30kg warhead...

Of course it can carry the Klenok/Hermes, I just wanted to demonstrate that it can carry much heavier weapons.

Indeed in some cases the much heavier warhead of Kh-35 and even Kh-31 would be useful but I suspect Hermes could be carried in greater numbers though it would not deliver the same punch to heavier ship targets...

From thegopniks links:

Another example if I am an Apache Pilot I would not mind bringing my Spike NLOS to take down an export mi-28 because that mi-28 radar is limited at 20kms while my radar performance far exceeds that mi-28s radar and so does my missile.

Yeah if range was everything then the USAF is screwed because the MiG-31BM with R-37M missiles has an engagement range of about 300km.

I rather suspect the new self defence systems of the Russian helos will render most anti aircraft missiles the west uses impotent... and if it comes down to a gun fight my money would be on the Russian helos because their guns are like comparing .22LR with 5.45x39mm ammo... both the same calibre but one is a low velocity round that relies on heavy projectiles for effect on targets, while the Russian round is actually heavier and moving much faster too.

I wasn't suggesting replacing ka27 and other real ASW helicopters with the ka-52 but give it some ASW capabilities so that they can cover more areas when needed.

The future heli carriers will be most of the time unused as landing force so they can act as ASW carriers with all the ka52 they will carry.

I agree it would be hard to give the ka52 a real sub hunter capability but there are some easy ways to implement a primitive anti sub capability in a pod that includes a small sonar and a computer for processing.

I appreciate what you are saying and agree, but would suggest that the ASW capacity of the Ka-52 will be limited to carrying guided depth charges and small torpedoes like the 380kg TT-4 air launched 324mm torpedo optimised for helicopter use, or perhaps the APR-3ME, a 350mm calibre air launched 475kg torpedo...

I would suspect drones could be launched that can land on the water and lower sonar devices and transmit the data to a nearby ship for processing... a vertical take off model could be carried in large numbers by all sorts of ships big and small and the information collected will give a useful picture of the state of things underwater... they could all listen while a disposable rocket could deliver an active sonar source to a location in the water for the listening devices to hear signals from.

An enemy sub detecting active sonar signals might launch a torpedo at the spot of sea above the sonar sound putting at risk anything sitting on the surface... but a drone is largely disposable and the enemy wasting a torpedo on such a target would be an acceptable trade... it would also confirm the presence of enemy subs...

The Ka-52 could be sent out to investigate with a couple of TT-4 torpedoes and some rockets and of course its gun anything the drones find.

True only until the Russian aircraft runs out of ammo, for some reason they do not like to carry enough rounds for more than 1 or 2 targets.

With improved sensors and computing power and improvements in servos and aiming mechanisms I would expect their guns can aim pretty accurately these days and with the powerful ammo you wont need an enormous number of hits to bring down a target... these are the same rounds Tunguska uses and it is devastating against helicopters.

The 30mm cannon on the Apache is more like the 23x115m rounds on the chin turret of the hind... low muzzle velocity but with a heavy projectile... which is ideal for low recoil and use against ground targets for which a very high rate of fire is not required.

For use against air targets however a high rate of fire is useful in that it sends a cluster of projectiles that scatter around the point of aim, so any manouvers by the target between when the gun is fired and when the shells hit the target any changes in speed or direction are compensated by that scatter so you still get hits.

Note the twin 23mm gun on the Hind fires at 2,500rpm but does not shake the helo up because of the small propellent load... the high rate of fire would make it devastating against an enemy aircraft... the twin 23mm gun is used by the MiG-21 and MiG-23... fired in quarter second bursts it is smaller and lighter than the US 6 barrel 20mm gatling, fires a similar number of rounds in a quarter second bursts, the main difference is the projectile weight and speed... the american round is light and very fast, while the Russian rounds are rather heavier and much slower.

The extra weight in the Russian rounds is HE payload to do damage on impact which tends to make them more effective.

Personally I think they should use twin 23mm guns on all their helos... they could certainly carry a lot more ammo as the rounds are much more compact and low recoil.

If a Russian helicopter needs more rounds they can carry a range of excellent gun pods, but most of the time if you get within cannon fire range of the target in a helicopter then you are in the shit because ground based cannon are a serious threat to your being able to fly so flying within (your) cannon range of the target means you are within range of their cannons and they probably have more cannon than you do...

The cannon is a self defence mechanism for emergencies and surprise targets... most of the time you want to stand off at max range and look at targets and threats and engage them from the max range possible.

They talk about the Apache carrying 1200 rounds of 30mm ammo but in real WWIII combat that internal ammo area is normally taken with extra fuel and the helo carries 200 rounds of 30mm ammo ready to fire.

The full 1200 round mag takes hours to fill and is a pain in the ass.

In the early 1980s the MiG design bureau created a software programme to control the cannon on the MiG-29... very simply using the onboard gyros and accelerometers to determine the angles the aircraft was at but also the speed it was flying at and its altitude and attitude towards the target as well as the details regarding the target... ie its distance and speed via the IRST and laser range finder.

Pretty much what the pilot did was point his helmet mounted sight at the target and got a "lock" which turned the radar and IRST/laser rangefinder to look at the target and also lock... so now the computer was crunching target data and the aircrafts own flight data... once the target was locked the pilot merely pulled the trigger to tell the system to open fire but it held fire until the gun was aligned with the target and the shells fired would hit the target, so the pilot would manouver the visible crosshairs in his HUD to align the gun to the target... when the gun was lined up the computer would fire a burst of 5-7 shells and the targets were being destroyed.

The designers famously said if they knew the gun would be so accurate he would have halved the number of rounds to 75 (from 150 normally carried).

7 round bursts with 150 round available means approximately 21 targets engaged per ammo load... which actually sounds rather good.

The last article I read about the Mi-28 said they were improving it in many ways but one of those ways was to allow it to engage enemy drones... I would suspect that would be by using airburst 30mm cannon shells and I suspect the same role would be a requirement for the Hokum family too... both guns have dual feed systems, so they could load standard HE Frag in one belt and HE airburst in the other for small targets or engaging ground targets.

I suspect the anti armour rounds will largely be replaced with laser homing rockets which would be effective to much greater ranges allowing safer standoff distances.

The Ka-52 would certainly be rather more accurate than the Mi-28 because the Mi-28 has the gun under the nose which would turn the aircraft during firing... the Ka-52 on the other hand mounts the gun near the centre of gravity and it is particularly accurate.

Hermes is like Pantsir and gets its range by using an expendable solid rocket booster. This has the consequence of making the weapon rather long, but with the payload section being long and narrow and relatively low drag it means excellent acceleration and low decelleration... so it gets up to high speeds and it coasts well and retains speed rather well too which is ideal for long range use.

The purpose of the hermes is to engage point targets on the ground with a decent payload accurately and quickly... I don't see them thinking of these weapons as being useful against targets 500km or more away... if you wanted that it would be much simpler to replace the payload section of a large missile with a 57mm 32 shot rocket pod like structure where the main missile flys to the target area 500km away and then 32 x 57mm rockets are fired with each using its own seeker and rocket propulsion to engage different targets.

Such a thing makes sense for a MiG-31 which might be facing a dozen cruise missiles where an R-37M is overkill but its range is useful.

Packing half a dozen Verba or Igla-S in the front section of the R-37M means when the missile travels 300km to a position where incoming cruise missiles have been detected it can release 6 short range missiles optimised to engage cruise missiles... it would allow an aircraft like the MiG-31 to carry up to 48 individual missiles each able to bring down a cruise missile or a larger aircraft.... 56 if the 6 small missiles peel away in flight attacking their own target but the primary missile is still able to engage the launch platform too... even just with a kinetic impact... which could be improved with a bursting charge to break up the big missile 20m before impact with the target...

Hermes will be a dedicated air to ground and likely air to air missile for the Hokum and other attack aircraft... Vikhr has a switch that allows it to be used against heavily armoured targets and also airborne and soft targets. It uses multiple fuses that result in a HEAT explosion or a HE Frag explosion with proximity fuse...

The problem is that those small missiles are generally short range and you would need a lot of hits before it has any real effect... and your launch platform would be targetted straight away if it started launching such an attack.

Most Soviet and Russian ships are armed with weapons that would easily help repel such an attack and also deal with the source.

You could probably take the solid rocket booster off a Hermes missile and just fit the payload sections in a bundle of 6-8 on the front of a Kinzhal missile but the idea for this concept has been lost.

For a Kamov helicopter having a Hermes missile that can hit targets out to 100km can be useful but it wont be sinking ships... if the target is a ship it can carry Kh-31 and Kh-35 missiles or over shorter ranges the Kh-38 with a 250kg payload could be used instead.

A Hokum detects a radar emission 90km away and lofts a Hermes with a combined passive and active radar homing seeker to destroy the radar... that makes sense... launching attacks on shipping does not for the land based helicopter... for the naval one it is more likely to locate the enemy ship and transmit its location back to the ships the carrier it is operating from is working with and they will launch an Onyx to destroy that ship.

The purpose of hive missiles would be where the targets are small and light and numerous but the distance is big... a MiG-31 detects a B-2 bomber 300km away and it is in the process of launching cruise missiles... it launches 6 missiles and then turns and accelerates to a new launch position... so the MiG-31 launches a standard R-37M at the B-2 and a special new R-xxx at the cluster of cruise missiles... the r-37M obliterates the B-2 before it can launch any more missiles and the R-xxx flys along the flight path of 6 cruise missiles which have now spread out each hunting different targets so the lofted high altitude R-xxx missile launched manouvers and releases mini missiles to fall down and steer towards the target cruise missile and then as it gets close it lights up its small rocket motor and kills the target... 6 mini missiles destroy 6 cruise missiles... the MiG-31 would still have perhaps 6 missiles left... two more missiles on its belly (of four being a mix of R-37M and R-xxx) and four medium range R-77s... later replaced with long range scramjet powered R-77M2s with a 300km range too... but only able to intercept one target at a time.

The purpose of this design is to allow long range engagement but to also engage multiple targets that don't require a 50kg HE warhead the R-37M sized missiles normally carry...

Even OSA can shoot down ATGMs so I would not expect a properly defended ship to be vulnerable to an attack of 1,000 cuts.

Submarine can come at 50-70km from a ship undetected pretty easily and launch a bunch of such missile with some IR guided, some radar guided and some anti radar.

Launching hundreds of missiles will attract the attention of most ships nearby and the noise generated with multiple launches will attract enemy attention...

How will these submarine fired missiles be radar guided? Which radar will guide them?

A sub should be able to detect a ship at 50-70km so you could fire missiles with radar guidance towards to expected location of the ship calculated using the currrent speed and course of the ship... not precise enough to not need terminal guidance but good enough for most anti ship missiles...

So basically this new missile, called R -xxx, that you are proposing is actually a drone, right....that can launch missiles of its own?

Not a drone... more of a MIRV bus for an ICBM where a rocket or scramjet motor carries a cluster of separately guided warheads with their own guidance and propulsion to deliver the package to the target area where the separate missiles are released and guided towards separate targets.

It has been mentioned as something they are working on for their MiG-31 interceptors...

If the answer to the question is Yes, how are you planning to guide several such mini missiles towards the hostile cruise missiles? Guidance will be a major challenge.

Imagine an R-37M but longer and with the front section fitted with conformal grooves to mount Verba AAMs in a semi recessed location on the forward body of the missile pointing forward... 6 of them. The fronts of the missiles are covered with an aerodynamic dome but the missiles are connected to the main missile via wire connection and can be explosively jettisonned in flight individually.

So basically the MiG-31 launches this missile in the direction of a group of incoming cruise missiles... that are say 300km away and closing, so the missile you launch adopts the standard lofted flight profile climbing and accelerating to high speed... by the time it is 180km away the motor will have burned out and it will be coasting along at about Mach 5 or so... as the incoming cruise missiles get closer the high flying missile will eject individual missiles to home in on specific targets as detected by the missiles seekers and the main missiles ARH radar seeker along with any information from the launch aircraft.... the six mini missiles this main missile carries are basically individual missiles in their own right... my example uses Verba which is perfectly capable of intercepting cruise missiles BTW, but they might use the new 9M100 missile with lock on after launch (LOAL) capability and an IIR seeker and data link back to the launch aircraft... released from high altitude they might send back their view of the target area and be directed by autopilot to fly in specific directions so their seekers can pick up the cruise missile targets as they fall from high altitude... once targets are locked they can light up their own rocket motors and engage the targets...

Would be worth while for a MiG-31 against cruise missiles, but could be useful for a naval S-400 missile where an enemy is attempting to swarm your ship having a single missile that can take out 5-10 targets with one shot... 400km away from the ship would be a very potent defence as long as you have good airborne radar that can detect attacks from that distance...

It might also be useful against hypersonic threats too...

A swarme attack of 100 such missile is impossible to stop.

You would need more than one sub to launch 100 missiles... and with their new AESA radar suites the number of dumb cheap command guided missiles they could launch and control at one time could be easily increased exponentially if required...

Depend what you are facing. If it's a formation of 2 or 3 ships they will all be hit multiple times and they will need to fight the fires inside their ships.

But will they?

I mean to fire hundreds of small sized missiles you need a serious platform... like the entire contents of a submarine or dozens and dozens of attack helicopters launching from 50-70km.

Lets go with something close to service... a flight of 16 x Ka-52K attack helicopters each with 16 Hermes missiles with 100km range, so 16 x 16 = 256 incoming missiles... the problem is that even with 100km range a Russian corvette with Redut can start engaging the incoming missiles immediately and the launch helicopters too for that matter. Further when the missiles approach to within 20km then Pantsir can start shooting them down too and 16km naval TOR missiles, then from 4km range and close then 30mm gatling guns, but of course 20km and closer then 130mm guns and 100mm guns can start engaging targets too... and of course there will be chaff and flares and jammers of all types too.

Now when any of these missiles hit that is 30kgs of payload which is not something most ships could shrug off... but again this is worst case scenario... because rather than Ka-52Ks with AESA radars and long range surface attack missiles that are hypersonic a western attack is more likely to be from Apache helicopters with Hellfire missiles which is their solution to Iranian small patrol boats overwhelming them... 16 Apaches can carry 16 Hellfires each but each missile is not that fast and has a max range of about 12km at best which means even within range of 100mm and 130mm guns and any 57mm guns that might be fitted.

This death of a thousand cuts sounds great on paper but you are exposing a lot of launch platforms that will be terribly vulnerable to counter attack with most enemies...

Keep in mind that Russian ships are being fitted with laser dazzlers to defeat ATGMs and optically guided weapons. For passive radar homing missiles then active jammer rockets are carried and can be launched to attract incoming weapons and of course helicopters fitted with noise jammers and other equipment will also reduce performance...

On paper right now it sounds like a great idea and would work, but once you deploy a submarine fitted for such systems you will find the Russians start deploying countermeasures... quad tube Pantsir missiles for instance optimised to engage multiple small targets at closer ranges.... AESA radars able to track enormous numbers of threats and guide missiles and shells to those threats...

If it's a a carrier group you will need more such sub. But again they will fight the fires.

Then launch a salvo of kalibr/oniks and torpedoes. And run away as fast as possible.

The idea of multiple small threats used together to overwhelm the defences of an air defence system is based on use against small speed boats with heavy machineguns or light cannon or rocket launchers in the back, and basically Hellfires are the solution to be fired individually at each small boat.

For a proper IADS as fitted to a Russian vessel it is more a question of managing resources and sensors and target defeating weapons right down to men on the deck with MANPADS and even Kornets to engage incoming threats in a coordinated way... to be honest I think the west is pushing shit up hill to try to suggest this might be a new wonder weapon... and most ironically as I said... with Hermes the Russians are on the edge of introducing the ideal implementation of what the US is suggesting even though it is intended to hit point precise targets from stand off distance rather than a swarm weapon...

There isn't many such system in service. The best is tor and it can be easily overwhelmed by such attack. Nato and chinese ship don't have anything to counter that.

But that is the point.... there is no sub in service either... and TOR integrated with the ships AESA as a search radar and also for tracking targets could be modified to engage dozens of targets at one time and you could cover the deck in ready to fire vertical launch systems for hundreds of missiles... remember the Kirovs and the Kuznetsov are fitted with 192 of the old missiles... the new missiles are half the size so without making changes at all you could have 384 missiles ready to fire, but actually the old naval TOR actually had a rotary launcher system that wasted a lot of space because in each launcher the centre of the circles of the rotary launchers was essentially empty wasted space, whereas the new cell launchers uses space much more efficiently and could probably double the number of missiles in the same space... now that is without using empty open deck space for extra vertical launchers to boost available missiles...

Most importantly the TOR is a simple command controlled missile that is super cheap.... they probably have made millions of them...

The newest models are supposed to have a range of 32km and are very precise and accurate.

Not to mention that such small missiles would be seen on radars only at close range.

The ships are being fitted with rather large AESA radar mounted rather further off the flat surface of the sea than any land based system has their radar mounted... they are also linked in to an integrated air defence and battle management system of the Russian Navy.

But lets give them the benefit of the doubt and pretend they use these missiles to damage a Russian Corvette... hits from multiple small missiles is not going to immediately destroy the ship... it can transmit lots of information regarding the attack... and depending on what type of Corvette it is it could already be responding by launching a few 91ER1s at the sub that launched the attack as well 9M96s at the helicopters or transport planes or fighters that launched the weapons in question... and perhaps an Onyx or two at enemy nearby ships that might have hosted those helicopters...

It is a bit like talking to people about APS and ERA systems for tanks... sure you can overwhelm the defences and eventually penetrate and do some damage, but the point is that while you are chipping away and trying to hit the gun or the tracks they are free to obliterate you and all your other assets nearby...

I think they might use a Hermes missile against a ship target, but not in swarm mode to overwhelm... they will use it because of its low lethality against something the size of a ship... without precise aiming at the bridge or rudder control section a 30kg warhead will do diddly squat to a container ship..., but it certainly says stop your engines because we are happy to sink you if you give us no other choice.

Of course you can deliver the same message much cheaper by flying there and firing a burst of 30mm cannon shells across its bow so they can see the tracer rounds too...