MiG-29/ΜiG-35 Fulcrum: News #2

After losing so many planes over Vietnam and given US rejection of attrition is understandable to try to avoid dogfights, but it has never worked as advertised, for the simple reason that fighter planes devour distances extremely fast. Encounters many vs. many are going to end up in a merge more often than not.

After losing in every test between an F-16 and MiG-29B downgraded export model MiG-29 that fought with its fuel tank fitted to extend flight range, which limited flight manouver capacity to about 5g, they really didn't have a choice but to go for a BVR combat focus because even it they adopted the HMS and R-73 they would still lose as they would need to get a missile hit before the enemy launched their weapon... because when the enemy launched their weapon it usually became one all...

On the other hand, Pk of short range missiles is far from 1 and with DIRCM this will only get worse. Still have to see a serious analysis about high off-bore sight missiles eliminating the need for manoeuvrability.

DIRCMs is a reaction to R-73... in testing the MiG-29s saw the enemy plane... got a lock and fired before the F-16 could do anything or manouver into position to fire a missile...

Manouvering to point your missiles at the target before you launch them improves their performance, but is not critical...

New AESA seeker on R-77 is precisely trying to avoid the missile losing the lock due to hard manoeuvring during end game so the problem still exists, apparently... Newer fighters have expanded flight envelopes too.

The R-77 will be moving at 3-4 times the speed of sound... its field of view from 1km distance means any manouver a target performs in the last 2 seconds before impact is hardly going to take it out of its vision range.... that is just silly...

Older missiles like early model Sidewinders had narrow fields of view... it was on purpose because if it had a wide field of view it could be distracted by the sun or rocks on the ground heated in the sunlight during the day. The narrow field of view seekers were not great at tracking crossing targets especially as they generally tried to lead the target in a crossing engagement.

Modern wide field of view missiles and indeed SARH and ARH missiles just would not have the same problem... the electronic scanning in an ARH missile would mean 90 g turns would not save you...

Weight is weight, drag is drag. CFTs can be better than EFTs in many conditions (could agree on that) but are not better than a plane properly designed. The rest is just marketing talk.

CFT might be better than external fuel tanks when those EFT are being carried, but when the EFTs are dropped then all that drag goes away and you get all the manouver and speed and lower RCS back...

The Russians have the super CFT package... it is called the Flanker and is a MiG-29 with all of its fuel internally carried... most of the time they operate with half fuel loads because they don't need the extra fuel for most missions...

If planes A and B launch an IR missile, B being on A's six, missile coming from the former may well destroy A before its missile has even locked onto the target after being launched and having turned 180º. I do not know how the position of the target is updated from the carrier so the missile knows where to search (instead of for instance destroying the own launcher or a wingman), but I guess a missile that has no lock because its launcher has been destroyed cannot attack the first thing it finds. Consider B's missile gets the launcher speed as boost whereas A's needs to make a sharp turn that will slow it down substantially

The Russians don't have any lock on after launch missiles... only the Israelis and the west do... the simple fact is that under very few circumstances will one aircraft start off directly behind another one for an engagement... but even if the did the MiG pilot could pull back hard on the stick and yank his nose around... it does not need to point directly at the target... within 45 degrees is enough to get a lock with either R-27(E)T or R-73 and launch the missile... once launched all three missiles can track targets up to 75 degrees off boresight... and if he launches it is locked.

Most of the time the enemy could be detected from most angles but usually at distances where there is time to turn and point the nose close enough to the target to get a lock. For western aircraft at the time you pretty much had to point your nose directly at the target... about a 20 degree cone angle total compared with 90 degrees total for the Russian missiles...

NATO tests showed the R-73 was a very good missile, that was superior to their model Sidewinders of the time... the result was a crash update of the Sidewinder (AIM-9X) and enormous funding and priority for AMRAAM.

This is what I mean, have seen no detailed analysis of how this would actually develop considering relative positions of the opponents, analysis of the dynamics and effects of the countermeasures. Since this is a western style duel, small differences can be actually critical in regards of who is shot down and who survives.

Their flares didn't work against the R-73/27, and with thrust vectoring they could not out turn R-73 to evade it, and the HMS plus radar and IRST tracking means as soon as the MiG pilot saw a target he could lock and fire... often without needing to manouver at all... while other times a modest turn to get it into the kill zone...

The combination of that and passive radar guided AAMs had them screwed... the F-15 was in a worse position because its primary weapon was the Sparrow, but to lock on a Sparrow and guide it to a MiG-29 is to light up the MiG with a signal it could send a passive radar homing missile down... even the R-27R model was faster and longer ranged than Sparrow and the R-27ER of the Sukhois was even faster and longer ranged... more importantly when the F-15 with its superior radar detected the MiG and got its lock and fired its Sparrow the MiG could turn and launch an R-27R and then do what it liked, while the F-15 had to keep flying towards the MiG or it would lose lock and the Sparrow would hit the ground.

After losing a lot of F-15s, they would likely realise the problem and try to close the distance and use Sidewinders... HAHAHAHAHAHA... so they would have to run the gauntlet of R-27P SARH missiles and then R-73s... with HMS.

Well, apparently it was designed for that. The moment the plane and missile cross each other you can have massive relative angular speeds between them, hence the electronic beam steering.

Well that would suggest they are using a directed energy warhead to blast the fragments directly at the target, where ever the target might be as the missile blasts past.

More effective than just relying on a spherical blast when you don't know where the target is at point of detonation.

Not only that.... the An-72 had its wheels down so it was flying slow... and as we all know the An-72 uses the coander effect where the engines are mounted above the wing with the jet exhaust attaching to the wings upper surface and is angled downwards by the deflection of the wing control surfaces to provide extra lift during low speed flight (mainly for takeoffs and landings).

The An-72 is a specialist STOL aircraft that was clearly operating a low flight speed.

The wing control surfaces were almost vertical practically operating as a wing brake... normally used for landings...

_radioactive_ wrote: What's going on in 0.43?  I only see it on MiG series.  I've never seen an American jet.

Introduce yourself pls
https://www.russiadefence.net/f6-member-introductions-and-rules

For those claiming that the MiG-35 is a token plane that Russia might buy 12 just to get export sales, and then forget about....

Pilots in 2019 will receive the first serial fighter of the fifth generation su-57. A few "invisible" has already experienced in combat in Syria. Just today built about a dozen machines. It is expected that the first batch of them will be twelve. In addition, the new year will complete testing multipurpose fighter of generation 4++ MiG-35, which is expected to run in the series. Aircraft manufacturers expect to produce at least 36 cars per year. Also discusses the development of the naval version of the fighter. The plans of the aircraft manufacturers this year — the signing of the agreement on production of the new Russian early warning aircraft A-100 "Premier".

https://z5h64q92x9.net/proxy_u/ru-en.en/https/ria.ru/20190102/1548401018.html