VKS Russian Aerospace Forces: News #2

The case is not that they get the real experience, but that they have survived that.
Ukroluftwaffe gets some real experience either, but the most common maneuver was assisting the coffins in the last sortie.

An early warning helicopter with long legs would be much much better than aerostats.

Honestly I am not sure it would.

Some people look at an airship and think they are like a balloon... cut the skin and they collapse with a pop... but a modern airship made of modern composite materials can be flame proof, fill it with Hydrogen but in separate bags with the air space between the bags filled with nitrogen so the hydrogen cannot burn if ignited... you could use a hydrogen fuel cell and batteries to change the balance between lifting hydrogen gas or water ballast...

Endurance wise an airship could remain on station for months and operate at an altitude where very few SAMs could reach it... place an S-400 battery directly below it and anything that could reach it would be big, which the S-400 should be able to shoot down before it reaches the airship.

The airship could be scanning 24/7 which means it would see anything approaching including drones and ground launched missiles could be launched to defend it.

Even if a drone or missile hit the airship it would need an enormous warhead to do any significant damage and it would not catch fire because the materials it is made of would not be flammable.

You can't say the same for a helicopter whose engine is working hard to keep the aircraft aloft.

An airship could be tethered or could occasionally use electric motors to remain on station.

Will be interesting to see what they come up with... they were using airships in mountain regions as signal repeaters to get communications working in high mountain regions, but I think they should expand their applications... Airships have enormous potential, their slow flight speed is not a huge problem for platforms that don't need to move fast like AWACS working over a battlefield or indeed AWACS following a group of surface ships.

Airships could even deliver things like fuel or ammo to remote units... touching down on the ground or on water to transfer material or men or supplies.

Good example of how to hide attack helicopters from AD radars by 'hiding' in traffic on a road. Well the first of the pair anyway

Insurance guy: "The damage to your car was done by...?"
You: "A helicopter."
Insurance guy: 

Isos wrote:Not useful anymore. Nowadays you need precision. Once you know where to hit even 50kg warhead is enough. Carpet bombing is also outdated. You have far less soldiers per km2 than in ww2 or ww1.

Why not convert the IL-76 to drop glide bombs. It can carry a shitload and just orbit at high altitude dropping glide bombs. One such plane can provide air support to a massive area at very low cost.

Transport planes can carry heavy payloads and the newest model Il-76 can carry about 60 tons a distance of about 5,000km, which is a long way and a lot of bombs, but the individual precision of each bomb would be relatively low if they are not guided and are just rolling them off the rear ramp in flight.

They have aircraft designed to carry bombs in significant numbers called Tu-22M3 and I suspect they will be working to modify them so they can carry the maximum number of glide bombs that they can manage.

They might need to modify the mounting systems to allow glide bombs to be attached... the purpose of glide bombs is standoff range so altitude and speed are best for releasing such bombs which means the Tu-22M3 is also a good candidate for such a role because they are supersonic and can probably safely fly at higher altitudes than transport planes can too.

They would also already have the nav attack computers needed to release the bombs to give them their best chance of getting direct hits on target.

Edit: of course one of the best ways of delivering large numbers of glide bombs would actually be MiG-35s where each aircraft could carry two glide bombs and two Kh-31 anti radiation missiles and four remaining wing pylons for two R-77s and two R-74s for self defence.

The glide bombs can be released at specific targets in real time as they pop up and if any air defence systems light up to try to shoot down the Fulcrum it can engage those systems and radar with Kh-31 missiles. Any aircraft or drones spotted can be engaged with the remaining air to air missiles.

The real difference is that lots of smaller targets are harder to deal with by the enemy and each has a self defence electronics suite and weapons to defend themselves too meaning they can do damage across the entire length of the battlefield all at once which means less waiting for the ground troops for their air support to arrive.

Broski wrote:
Because the Ukronazis aren't Afghan goatherders and still have soviet SAMs at their disposal.

Very few they are rapidly approaching goatherder status. Its also useful for other wars, against ISIS and their ilk.

GarryB wrote:Transport planes can carry heavy payloads and the newest model Il-76 can carry about 60 tons a distance of about 5,000km, which is a long way and a lot of bombs, but the individual precision of each bomb would be relatively low if they are not guided and are just rolling them off the rear ramp in flight.

They have aircraft designed to carry bombs in significant numbers called Tu-22M3 and I suspect they will be working to modify them so they can carry the maximum number of glide bombs that they can manage.

They might need to modify the mounting systems to allow glide bombs to be attached... the purpose of glide bombs is standoff range so altitude and speed are best for releasing such bombs which means the Tu-22M3 is also a good candidate for such a role because they are supersonic and can probably safely fly at higher altitudes than transport planes can too.

They would also already have the nav attack computers needed to release the bombs to give them their best chance of getting direct hits on target.

Edit: of course one of the best ways of delivering large numbers of glide bombs would actually be MiG-35s where each aircraft could carry two glide bombs and two Kh-31 anti radiation missiles and four remaining wing pylons for two R-77s and two R-74s for self defence.

The glide bombs can be released at specific targets in real time as they pop up and if any air defence systems light up to try to shoot down the Fulcrum it can engage those systems and radar with Kh-31 missiles. Any aircraft or drones spotted can be engaged with the remaining air to air missiles.

The real difference is that lots of smaller targets are harder to deal with by the enemy and each has a self defence electronics suite and weapons to defend themselves too meaning they can do damage across the entire length of the battlefield all at once which means less waiting for the ground troops for their air support to arrive.

Who says they need to be rolled off the ramp? they can be pushed out of a hole in the floor with compressed air from a magazine, and yes of course they would be guided.

Any such modifications would be expensive and not really contribute to the aircrafts original role.

If, however, you look back through some of the threads you will find that I mentioned this sort of thing before.

The Il-476 has a structure that can be loaded into it to hold water for fire fighting duties. There is another structure that can hold fuel and allow the aircraft to be an inflight refuelling tanker when required. There is yet another structure with three levels of seats for troops to sit in to maximised the number of soldiers it can carry at a time, and I was suggesting that another rack type system could be developed that has rails on it to suspend bombs of all shapes and sizes on these rails that can be extended out of the rear ramp when it is opened in flight where bombs can be dropped conventionally and in seriously large numbers.

You could make it modular so you have a half length one that will fit into the Il-276 which has the same fuselage as the Il-476 but shorter and with smaller wings and only two engines instead of four engines. When fitting the system to the Il-476 you could fit three connected together to carry perhaps 15 tons of bombs each, so the Il-276 would have one with 15 tons of bombs with the system itself weighing perhaps 3 to 5 tons. With the Il-476 you could have three of these mounts carrying 45 tons of bombs and  weighing 9 to 15 tons.

A system for larger aircraft like Slon and Il-106 could be adapted... they could fit quite a few of these mounts each.

I think the core problem will be getting enough targets in real time to justify that sort of bomb capacity in one aircraft.

As I mention smaller lighter shorter ranged aircraft can often do a better job of giving good coverage and also being better able to defend themselves too.

Once the system is up and running you could fit it to civilian airliners with a modification of a side cargo door with an arm extended out to hold the munitions to be dropped.

I don't think it is a terrible idea... in fact I think against super poor unsupported enemies like ISIS it would actually make rather more sense than an AC-130 like gunship idea, which I think it way too vulnerable.

It could just as easily be adapted to carry guided anti sub weapons with the transport plane flown over water to deal with the threat of enemy sub attack.

Actually the guided glide kits for dumb bombs means the 72 seat upper deck on the An-124 could be used for terminals and other stations for radio comms communicating with ground forces getting target coordinates in real time to engage by releasing bombs out the rear ramp.

In fact you could go a step further and have a forward facing chute with compressed air launchers where the upwards folding nose of the An-124 is fixed and four launchers are built like forward firing torpedo tubes for bombs that can be fired forward accelerated by compressed air... for the reach of a faster aircraft...

I really don't see it being that hard to design a removable modularized system that can handle about 40 500kg bombs that can be dropped through a couple of small holes in the fuse that can be covered over by a removable panel when the module is removed. They can have a load master operate it so it easier to design.

Well obviously there are safety concerns because you don't want them armed and able to explode till they have left the aircraft, and of course there are communication issues as most transport planes don't have navigation bombing systems already installed and even guided bombs need to be released from a height and speed where they will be able to manouver to get a hit on its designated target.

A two or three row system of bombs mounted on rails front to back down the cargo bay with suitable safety systems so safety pins remain in fuses till the bomb is dropped and the safety pin is pulled as it drops so the bomb wont be armed till it is clear of the aircraft shouldn't be too complex and difficult.

They could have glide kits fitted and perhaps a Wifi system for programming each bomb with a target coordinate just before release, so roll the bomb back on a central rail that extends backwards beyond the rear ramp in flight and let it fall off the back of the rail to drop like a conventional bomb.

But of course if you are going to do that then why not go the extra step... if you saw the MiG-35 video of Combat Approved you saw a MiG-35 fly right up to the open rear ramp of a transport plane with the pilot almost able to fly into the plane...

Instead of hanging out an inflight refuelling probe on the end of a hose, hang out a grappling hook and catch drones in flight and bring them on board... refuel them and more importantly rearm them with missiles and small bombs and allow them to continue operating over the battlefield for longer periods of time.

Operating at 10km altitude guided small bombs like KAB-20 would do good damage because of their accuracy so they don't need to be super heavy... a transport could carry enormous numbers of such bombs and even drop some itself if needed, and could refuel drones multiple times and of course being able to load ATGMs like ATAKA or Kornet would be valuable too because these missiles are cheap and could be expended on all sorts of targets with good accuracy.

Laser beam riding Kornet could be fired nearly straight down at 10km altitude and its accuracy should be pretty good while 1.2m penetration with a top attack munition... not much would survive... of course the closing speed might be too high for the HEAT warhead to function properly so early detonation because of an APS system might improve its penetration... ironically.

I would say the biggest barrier to making the bombing system is lack of interest... most of the time the biggest problem with bombing is finding targets to hit so flying around with a plane carrying enormous amounts of ordinance might not be a priority.

A jampacked airfield

Trollstoy
@Trollstoy88
·
1h
Barents Observer: Russia deployed the maximum number of strategic missile carriers on the borders of Finland and Norway.

An attack on strategic bombers... go ahead...

They can attack anything they like... getting them to attack such targets uses up their resources and such targets are already heavily defended and so having a real enemy attacking them is good preparation for a real WWIII when US 5th columnists would attempt to do the same.

Good practise for the air defence forces.