GarryB wrote: Drones are small targets and their munitions even smaller. I don't think they will see them at max range ... maybe 10km but the munition used by turkish drones have 8-14km range.
Would also add if the radar is being jammed effectively then the radar will be turned off so how is a drone supposed to know where the Pantsir system even is?
A flying moving target is much easier to spot than a stationary vehicle...
When the enemy start jamming I would expect some sort of missile would be launched to engage... the Iskander and Tochka familes of missiles have a range of different guidance heads and one detects radar frequencies... so it could be used to target an active jammer quite easily... a 500kg payload coming in at about 7 times the speed of sound should render the jammer quiet for an extended period...
SOSNA-R or Pine would actually be a much better solution as it has no radar and is totally passive and uses small 35kg missiles that are two piece solid rocket booster and slim long missile terminal portion... loaded in tubes like a pantsir but a much smaller cheaper missile that uses cheap beam riding technology.
Ironically it is a similar weight to the new model Kornet and both have a 10km flight range in the HE version, but the main difference is that Pine is a very high speed two stage missile that reaches its target out to 10km in about 12 seconds, while Kornet moves at about 350m/s... so rather slower...
Both have the expensive optics and complex guidance systems in the launcher so the ammo is cheap and can be mass produced in enormous numbers and actually used without breaking the bank...
I highly doubt that the latest product (TDI-J85 engine) of the program "Gray Wolf" will be really used in the realization of cruise missiles "swarms", as usually mantained in open media, while instead it will be, if realized at affordable cost, used as main propulsion of full UAV formations or mixed UAV/"dumb" cruise missiles swarms with the UAV component providing integrated flight parameter guidance and target assignation and positional data for the "dumb" affordable cruise missiles.
There are some premises for that:
1) US specialists lately became perfectly
aware that
classical approach to the decoys design, mostly through radar signature's management of the flying object aimed at
mimic other products and theirs employment in SEAD/DEAD missions, has been practically
rendered totally obsolete by the latests integrated multifrequency sensor of main enemy's IADS and the new algorythms of theirs integrated signal processing , reciving data from irradiations from different point of origin.
2) Advancement in Federation's air and even more ground-based EW systems render for the future
"swarm attack" mandatory the
total authonomy of the elements of the attacking group from long range man-on -the-loop guidance, or by means of
advanced IA integration - an element that however
collide with the necessity of very low unit cost and time of construction of the single elements - or
through guidance carried out by some elements present directly in or near the attacking swarm - in the initial Pentagon's plan F-35 or F-22 ,but the plan has been abandoned lately toward specilaized UCAV -.
3) The size of the swarm (number of the component elements)
and the stand-off distance from the enemy AD systems , necessary for a staple node of an enemy IAD
continue to grow enormously year after year and those growing requirements, togheter with the secure guidance technique from point 2, collectively collide directly with the ever lowering unit cost's requirements.
In substance a
future offensive air group need an ever growing number of highly-expendable UAV/UCAV/cruise missiles , with
ever growing stand-off range ,so that theirs delivering platforms or ground bases would noit become easily destroyed by enemy air defenses or stand off attacks, and with
sensor suit and flight guidance methods that must be more and more independent and resistant to EW. Those three ever changing factors do not combine favourably for weapon designers.
The new trend among US planners is to create relatively affordable stand off products that, to the contrary of identified decoys, cannot be totally eliminated from engagement sequence by part of the EW and SAM of enemy IAD because potentially capable to generate some damage to the defensive structure or provide aid ,in the shape of short range jamming or positional data, to second wave stand off weapons : in substance
the aim has became that of generate the maximum menace's disambiguation problems for the enemy IAD. Returning to the Gray Wolf subject is important to understand that the
TDI-J85 is an engine with lower mass but also only about 200 lb of thrust, even foreseeing a very unlikely increase of 25-30% thrust in a future iterations, you have a product that prevent the relative missile to proceed at the same speed and flight parameters of missiles such as JASSM/JASSM-ER and above all with the same radar signature of those product for advanced multi-spectral radar of the latest generation, moreover those low-cost "cruise missiles" would lack the space and energy requirement for authonomous guidance and ECM resistant terminal guidance.
From what said it is very likely that the
final iteration of the Gray Wolf program will be likely a suicide or surveillance UAV ,integrated in a pack of similar,but high cost UAVs with very similar flight speed and manoeuvering parameters,
relying on those higher cost UAVs -maybe with a degree of AI integration-
for guidance and target engagements or, instead, a very low performance cruise missiles almost devoid of avionics relying on guidance by part of ISR elements (both high altitude UAVs or manned fighter/bombers.
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This will fool the Turks 
