In this context fully digital would mean what - fully digital radar?
all digital software based systems ?
anything else ?
Meaning no analog components... looks more like a computer than a transistor radio inside...
You do software upgrades instead of hardware replacements...
How does the missile find the ship? Does the missile have a database of 3D images of ships to compare with?
Not that sophisticated... before launch the launch platform would detect the target... say a group of ships or a ship on its own. With a group of ships you might select the biggest to be attacked and you launch the missile... it climbs and accelerates towards the target and when it gets within radar range of the radar in the nose it scans the area where the target should be... if it was a target on its own then there should just be one target.... if there was a group at launch then one of the targets would have been selected so when it scans with its own radar it will pick that radar reflection and drop down low and accelerate and attack it...
A newer model could be developed with a sophisticated IIR seeker which could be equipped with a 3D database of ship shapes.... they have to the 3D because they don't know which angle they will be approaching from, and use those to identify the object in front of them.
But once the rocket motor burns out how will the missile proceed towards its intended target? It will simply fall off from the sky.
A missile with very few control surfaces would need a long burn motor... almost like a gas generator to continually produce thrust and also flight control... a missile with flight controls could coast towards the target, but all missiles have tiny control surfaces that really only steer the missile... most missiles moving at low speed... say 600km/h would struggle to stay aloft because they don't have lift generating wings like an aeroplane does.
The hollywood perception that a missile steers around and chases planes is absurd... reality is more like very high speed slashing attacks with little to no chance to come around again and have another go...
This probably means the R-27ER switches from an inertial/radio-corrected flight trajectory phase to a semi-active homing phase once the target is illuminated.
So in the inertial/radio-corrected flight trajectory phase the aircraft is guiding the R 27ER and once the target is illuminated the aircraft stops guiding the missile as the semi-active homing phase begins.
More accurately, an R-27R or ER launch is like an R-77 launch... the target is detected and tracked and an interception point is calculated and so the missile is launched to short of that intercept point... say 10-15km short... so when the enemy plane is there the missile has the enemy plane in front of it and both are flying to one side or another on an intercept point... in other words the missile isn't flying directly at the target... it is flying toward a point in space where the target is flying to so over time each get closer to that same point until they impact each other at that point.
The difference is that when the R-27R or ER reaches that point the launch aircraft directs a radar beam at the target aircraft which the missile detects and locks on to, but based on previous calculations it wont just fly at the target it will fly to where the target is going to move to. If the target changes course or speed then the interception point will be recalculated and the missile will manouver to intercept the plane.
With the R-77 it turns on its own radar and locks and completes the interception on its own.
An interesting thing would be the R-27P... the passive radar homing missile... it should be able to shoot down AMRAAM missiles... it homes in on illuminating radar....
In a sense that it's the successor to the RVV-AE yes, however based on what I have read and heard in Defence Expos the refinements in propellants, autopilot kinematics, seeker jam resistance in the RVV-SD seems to be marginal.
The R-77-1 was not a huge transformation because the basic missile is not flawed.
The main changes were the move to fully digitise the design and produce the components in Russia, but the seeker is more powerful with a more powerful transmitter and receiver and jamming resistance has been improved.
Maybe because Russia is working on a whole new generation of air to air missiles and so they are not all that interested in bringing about major improvements in the RVV-SD.
Well in other areas of new designed weapons they have shown upgrades to older model systems by using new generation components and systems to improve performance so that new features and better performance reaches the troops faster.
Well garry is using the wrong word IMO. R-77 must be digital also. The contrary of digital is analogic and it's the electronics from before the 80s. Computers and microprocessors made everything better. R-77-1 being newer than r-77 means newer electronics inside.
It is like the difference between the MiG-23 and the MiG-29... the MiG-23 had components made especially for it and were named as such... the radar for the MiG-23 was the Sapphire-23... the BVR missiles were the R-23s and later R-24s... the avionics were for the MiG-23 only including the IRST.
A bit like a calculator... everything hard wired in to do the job it was designed for and nothing else.
The CPU in a calculator... if you could call it a CPU... more a I/O controller chip really was not very fast but because it didn't need much variety... it just did fixed calculations based on the buttons it had so it was very fast despite a very slow clock speed.
If you want a calculator these days you want one that does complex calculations and draws graphs and things so it needs to be much more powerful... but you could use software updates to add features to the calculator you never thought of when you first made it.
An all digital R-77-1 means digital signal processing, and being able to allow it to do more things in different situations to render it less vulnerable to say jamming or flares etc.
The two largest factors in fighter combat now seem to be stealth and high off-boresight (HOB) missiles.
Shooting down the enemy plane before he even knows he is fighting you is rule one of air combat... stealth would be part of that, though anti stealth technology is rendering that less a factor these days, but HOB missiles and sights means when you see him you can attack him... the sooner you launch the less likely he is to survive and the more likely you are to survive.
After testing MiG-29s in the 1990s the original plan for the British to make ASRAAM short range missiles and the Americans to make AMRAAM medium range missiles went out the door.... because they realised that even if their pilots managed to shoot down their opponents... the performance of the R-73 meant their flares were useless and if they launched before they died the score was often one all... which they could not afford... they then fast tracked AMRAAM and modified the AIM-9 with a new IIR seeker and screwed the Brits again...
The first allows you to either bypass a fight, or get into an advantageous position while the second allows you to eschew turning with a foe and just pop him as he passes.
Ideally it means you can fire at him sooner... and a missile even if it has to pull a hard turn on launch will still catch up to and reach an enemy plane and kill him before that plane that flew past can turn around and line you up and launch your attack.... Kill first to win.
Ideally you launch your missile as soon as you see him so he does not get anywhere near you let alone crosses your path and gets behind you.
60% of the time HATO pilots in F-16s would manage to get on the MiG-29s tail for a shot... that is the downgraded export MiG-29 with a centreline fuel tank always fitted... but they lost every time because even though they got into their traditional launch position they had already been judged to have been killed by the MiG that saw him... looked.... locked... and fired...
That's what US fanboys try to make everyone beleive because their gov spend thousands of billions in stealth and BVR.
For a long time (when they didn't have HOB missiles or helmet mounted sights) the west avoided close combat, which is ironic because in the 1980s they thought it was their dogfighting skills that would win them the war over europe against the Soviet robots.
The facts are that they would have had their asses handed to them... F-16s didn't have anything except sidewinders for air to air so they would have been seriously wiped out with R-73s and helmet mounted sights, and of course the F-15 would be no better because the Sparrows were ordinary and much slower than the R-27 and the R-27P and EP were intended to shoot down F-15s... the Sparrow needed the target to be illuminated from launch of the Sparrow. The passive homing R-27P and R-27EP homed in on that illumination signal and was faster and longer ranged than the Sparrow... so a group of F-15s start launching Sparrows at a group of Flankers and the Flankers return fire with R-27EP missiles homing in on the radars of the F-15s.... the Flankers can turn and fly away, while the F-15s will be tracking the Flankers and not noticing the incoming missiles homing in on their radars... and it would work the same against the British version of the Sparrow... the Sky Flash or whatever they called it...
High off boresight is for IR short range missile and the lastest US aim-9X failed against a syrian su-22. Missile Pk suck in real conflicts.
The best results for air to air missile kills in the real world were for AMRAAM at about 30-40% against targets that did not know they were under attack.... it is much lower for targets that are aware... but also much much higher for bigger slower targets that can't manouver well like tankers or AWACS or MPA types.