1) RCS figures are always stated from the frontal aspect since head-on is how most battles start. That is also where most design LO features are incorporated.
And is an average figure too.
They are an indication, but I would rather think that accurate figures will be secret.
2)You can list all the mitigating factors you want, an SH armed with AIM-120D has the advantage in any BVR scenario.
And a rifle gives an advantage in combat over a knife yet a trained soldier with a knife will use tactics to defeat an untrained person with a rifle.
Top-down radar scanning can achieve detection of sea-skimming flight, an MK showing its ass is even bigger than head on, 120D has home-on-jam so ECM resistance will be futile.
The R-77 also has HOJ so all the Flanker has to do is get to launch position and launch before the AIM120 hits and they are both dead... except that BVR missiles are still called missiles... they are not hittiles yet.
Only question is will the MK see the launch before he loses time to escape.
An MKI has quite a sophisticated RHAW and ECM setup and would probably have a good chance of survival.
I don't know what the MK has but it would certainly be better than nothing.
3) The antennas on the Su-35BM are not intended to detect com data-links. They aren't even made for the 35, they are for PAK FA and they aren't going to pick up data-links. Unless it has a triangulation like Kolchuga, the data would be useless.
L band antenna that can't detect L band emissions from datalinks?
What do you think L band AESA antenna would be for?
They are in the wings because they need to be large due to the frequency they operate in.
The advertisement I saw states it is designed for the Su-27, Su-30 and Su-35 family of aircraft.
You can see that advert at the top of the page here:
http://ericpalmer.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/the-l-band-game-changer/#comment-4352
The R-77 uses mid-course guidance with a data-link from the aircraft. When you launch you want to make a hard turn to put distance between you and their incoming missile. The main phased array only has a 120 degree pan which makes hard turns impossible to keep missile tone.
Doesn't the R-77 use inertial guidance with updates from the launch aircraft as needed with terminal active radar homing.
Before launch the aircraft finds a target determines the range and plots to expected position of the aircraft when the missile arrives. It passes that information to the R-77 which then flys to a point in space where it can see the area the target is expected to be when the missile arrives.
If everything goes well and the target continues at the same speed, altitude and direction then when the missile gets to its interception point it activates its own radar finds the target and then flys at that target to impact.
If the target turns or changes speed so that when the missile arrives at the intercept point and the target it too far away then the missile will not get the target.
To prevent that the launch aircraft can periodically look at the target to ensure it hasn't changed direction, height or speed, but if it has the aircraft recalculates the new interception point and transmits this new data to the missile that manouvers to the new interception point.
Long range shots are unreliable when the launched missile has to constantly manouver to new interception points because the missile can run out of fuel.
The PAK-FA doesn't need to keep its radar on target constantly, just like an F-16 doesn't.
The whole point of active radar homing is so that the target isn't warned of the attack by constantly being tracked with a radar beam.
You might find this interesting to read:
http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2009-06.html
5) Not only C4ISR, but the weapon platforms themselves. Chief of Defence just had a rountable saying how outdated our weapons are and that all Soviet based research will end. T-95 gone, BMPT gone, BMD-4 gone, Sprut SD gone, Coalition SV gone.
SPRUT is in service isn't it?
And you can't justify the expense if T-95 but eventually you will need to replace the T-90 and that replacement would likely be called T-95 even if it doesn't look much like what it does today.
I remember the Su-27M, called Su-35 being cancelled too.
Yet Medvedev has signed contracts to produce Su-35S aircraft for the RussianAF.
What I am trying to say is that cancelling in this sense is OK, because eventually new stuff will need to be developed and with newer technology and the skills of Russian engineers it will only be better when it does appear.
6) Most of it was in there in 1995, most of it was in there in 1989 too. It is not perfectly acceptable, it is a national tragedy.
If you mean the new stuff that is in prototype or even developed form but not in service, well that is just going to take time.
The design bureaus could still plan new designs and make plans with minimal funding.
They could work on testing prototypes etc.
For the Military Industrial Complex however, the production side also didn't have money for production except for some exports. You would know better than I that high quality tools plus skilled workforces is what Russia needs but no money and no production is not how you refit factories with new tools or train skilled personnel.
Russia went through a period where lots of her parts makers suddenly were in foreign countries and even for the ones in Russia there was no work or money and workers started driving taxis to feed their families.
Now money is being pumped into the system, the fact that they are now freezing some programs is good, that money should be used carefully in the right places, but things don't go from broken to fixed in days or months, it will be years and decades, but progress is being made and opportunities will be created.
Don't ignore what is wrong and what is bad, but don't focus on it except to resolve it.
7) Tochka U has a CEP of 30m, it is not exactly a precision weapon. It is a hack job that gets the mission done with shear brute force. The effects of its destruction were felt several hundred metres away from its intended targets. It leveled a couple apartment buildings.
They weren't after Osama, a SAM missile site covers a significant area so a 480kg cluster munition warhead with a CEP of 30m is the right tool for the job.
Equally Armoured vehicles parked in a town square is another ideal target for such a weapon... in fact it is easy to think of plenty of targets you could use a missile that comes in so fast there is no warning till it is too late.
Most of the bombing was done by the Su-25 and were dumb rounds. Tactical Missile Corp received an order worth 6 billion rubles. Thats €152 million divided among 14 different missile classes, that isn't enough to equip one regiment of Su-34s.
So they are going from almost no precision air delivered non strategic weapons to having some. Sounds like progress to me.
BTW considering the rate they have been making such weapons in the past I rather doubt they could even manage a really large order to equip the entire force.
Hold it right there pal. I never stated Russian servicemen are pathetic. I stated the equipment the VVS uses is obsolete and that is pathetic. I suggest you repeat what I say correctly or your stay at RMF will be brief.
You said:You expected a Russian paratrooper to praise and sugercoat our pathetic military state?
What is a military force?
Bits of equipment, camouflaged uniforms? or the people that serve?
And I repeat, context!
No money and no new toys for 15 years... while the US alone spends half a billion a year.
The Georgian journals seem to think so.
Those Georgian journals are written by the Georgian government... the same government that said it was Russia that started it.
I am talking about the Georgian soldiers who showed with their feet how pathetic Russian military forces are.
You think Soviet autopilots hooked up to ground based datalinks, that LO doesn't matter, and that an L-band radar can track targets via Link 16.
Not all pilots. I was my understanding that the PVO had a more sophisticated set up.
I did not say L band radar can track targets via link 16. What I said was it can detect and get directional information based on Link 16 emissions.
The L band radars in question are for Su-35s and Flanker series aircraft to locate NATO aircraft passively and to also seek flying objects that might be LO and Stealthy in X band frequencies but not so stealthy in longer L bands.
It is a radar, it can emit itself and doesn't need to triangulate anything.
Detecting an L band signal from a target in front of the aircraft it can electronically scan the forward hemisphere and check the received signals for doppler shifts to find moving objects. A scan with the nose mounted main radar will give an X band scan for comparison. A target that emits L band signals and appears on L band scans but not on X band scans can be assumed to be a stealth aircraft.
Stick around and learn something if you care to know the truth.
Always interested in learning something new.
Most B-29s over Germany and Japan didn't have the analog computers. B-29s in Korea did and they were able to take out bridges in one run. Su-24s in Georgia were making low-level bombing runs against factories and airports. Putting a 1000kg bomb into one from a thousand metres isn't hard. Note that those Su-24s didn't even have the new targeting computer.
So your problem is that the new bombing computer is not good enough in your opinion, that hasn't even been used yet in conflict.
I would suggest that until your C4I improves and your battlefield intel gathering improves it wont matter what computers your Su-24s have.
To complain that Russian fighter aircraft don't have the accuracy of western fighter aircraft is to ignore that accuracy means nothing if you don't know where the targets are in the first place.
Now that Glasnoss is becoming operational satellite guided bombs are much cheaper than guidance computers on aircraft and are not that much more expensive than dumb unguided ordinance.
Once recon and intel capabilities of the Russian AF is up to spec it makes rather more sense to spend money on cheap guided all weather day night capable ordinance (as opposed to expensive guided day night all weather ordinance like IIR seeker weapons, or even laser guided which are not all weather weapons).
The President, the Prime Minister, the Chief of Defence, and the Minister of Defence have all said the way we fight wars is backwards and that our equipment is obsolete.
There is plenty of room for improvement. Obsolete compared to what?
State of the art is easy in small armed forces, but for big forces you need a lot of stuff, and another large lot of stuff to use in an on going war, and of course extra stuff for reserves. The problem is that everything was neglected through lack of money, but you can't just make all the problems go away with money... unless we are talking about trillions of US dollars and we are not, because you don't want to go down that road.
They say every army trains to fight the last war they fought. The reality is that there is no army on the planet properly trained for every type of conflict.
Russia has a period of peace where it can sort things out.
What annoys me is this talk of obsolete. The Afghans seem to be doing OK with obsolete weapons, the Viet Cong also did OK. Sure they had high loses, but they were fighting superpowers.
It is like this talk about Australian Super Hornets... they now have uber LO fighters with super BVR capability and long range stealthy weapons that cost them a fortune... they will be nice at airshows.
The thing is that 20 million Australians probably don't want their airforce bombing the 100 million Indonesians to their north.
If Russian fighters are potent WVR, the chances of a BVR engagement increase. Thanks for making my point.
In a sense that is what has driven the west to BVR, however as the figures show WVR combat still happened despite the west controlling the airspace and having situational awareness while denying the enemy the same.
This is not a choice that suits them because BVR Missiles are more expensive and leads to more mistakes and failures. A target 50km away heading to your left at 800km/h assuming an average speed of mach 2 over that distance for the missile launched the missile will be guided to a point 16km in front of where the aircraft actually is. If at the moment of launch the target turns 180 degrees the intercept point shifts 32kms to the right. Climbing or descending can shift the intercept point as well so a target that manouvers a lot will be an almost impossible to hit target at long range.
All of the kills over Southern Watch were AMRAAM. Vast majority of the kills over Serbia were AMRAAM.
Well Duh, American and NATO superiority doesn't come from giving the other guy a chance. They knew from testing that the R-73s carried by the Mig-29s were deadly and the head mounted sights made them even more dangerous in the WVR arena.
The point is that these NATO tactics of BVR engagements have never been used against an opponent that had comparable BVR weapons like R-27ER and R-27ET let alone R-77.
It is like claiming all Soviet tanks were rubbish because the way the Iraqis handled their forces in the Gulf War.
With the accuracy of modern BVRAAM, the WVR weapon is far less likely by a factor of 250%.
And when the enemy is stealthy or LO and you can't get a lock at BVR?
One use of AESA is to direct intense radar beams at small radar antennas to physically destroy them. Small radar antennas like the antennas in BVR missiles.
The figure is frontal aspect, the one that matters most, as I keep saying.
So you agree that from a design sense that is where the best figures would be and that operationally it would be impossible to present your front aspect all the time... unless the enemy only has one radar.
From any other angle the figure will be worse. Manouvering will also make it worse through the use of conventional control surfaces.
They are subject to lawsuits and fines if they do. BAE was fined half a billion dollars last month for that very thing
There is a game call bullsh!t. You get 5 cards and then you bid for the pot. Each person makes steadily bigger bids till someone calls them a liar. If they call someone a liar and they are not lying they forfeit their money in the pot. You can't fold, if you choose not to bid then you add to the pot.
Another name for the game is Marketing.
BTW the fact that BAE was fined suggests I am right and they do lie, or is it only BAE?
I am a guy with 4 years in the VDV, and 6 years in the Military Industrial Complex, also worked with NATO in the Slovak procurement office. If you want to question my assertions, that is fine. But I am not just some guy on the internet. I am THE guy on the internet willing to share my knowledge. So much in fact I was sanctioned for this website by MVD. Be glad in the fact you can come here and get answers, as the RF government would not let it be if they had their way.
We seem to be getting off on the wrong foot.
I respect your knowledge and your opinions, but that doesn't mean I have to agree with them, which you accept when you state I can question you assertions.
My comment that you are just a guy on the internet was not meant to be offensive. I myself just happen to be a guy on the internet too.
I will also concede that you are not just another guy on this site as you wield the ban stick.
You have stated some things about yourself and I have no reason to not believe you. I look forward to learning about your experiences and your thoughts on things and appreciate your willingness not only to share but to make the effort to share in English so I can appreciate it.
But lets be clear.
I like Russian and Soviet military stuff.
I couldn't care less if an AKM is obsolete and an M4 is much better because it is more accurate and lighter.
I also recognise that the Russian Armed forces has been neglected, but I think history has taught us that they are never pathetic whether their gear is ancient or brand new.
Reform to improve performance is obviously welcome, but change just to be like the US or NATO forces is a step back in my opinion.
The west would like Russia to become like the west, but the world doesn't need a bigger west, most of it prefers an alternative to the west, which I think Russia can be if it makes good choices.
The standard of choices seem to have improved after Yeltsin.
So no hard feelings?
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