General Questions Thread:

Isos wrote:Most of the time it will carry manpads for self defence. Air cover will be made by fighters.

Russia rely more on air defence systems to protect its forces from those threats with tunguskas and shilkas.

Helicopters are very good to attack ground vehicle so they should be used for that.

Shilka and Tunguska are not designed for scouting or hunting UAV or helicopters and obviously lack mobility compared to a helicopter and and not suggesting that all helicopters are configured to this and I am not disputing helicopters effectiveness as ground attack role.

I actually think it wouldn't hurt to have 2-3 ka-52 armed in this manner as a QRF for base defence against UAV once detected helicopters deploy destroying UAV before they even reach base air defence systems it just adds another layer. Of if troops on the ground keep reporting drones in the area send helicopters out to hunt them down and destroy or the same roles could be applied to the Yak -130 2-3 stationed at base waiting for the call the Yak of course has the added advantage of speed and agility arm it with handful of missiles and guns and your sorted the guns themselves would do most of the destroying and an unarmed UAV could easily be flipped by yak -130 wings if it really needed to.

d_taddei2 wrote:

Isos wrote:Most of the time it will carry manpads for self defence. Air cover will be made by fighters.

Russia rely more on air defence systems to protect its forces from those threats with tunguskas and shilkas.

Helicopters are very good to attack ground vehicle so they should be used for that.

Shilka and Tunguska are not designed for scouting or hunting UAV or helicopters and obviously lack mobility compared to a helicopter and and not suggesting that all helicopters are configured to this and I am not disputing helicopters effectiveness as ground attack role.

I actually think it wouldn't hurt to have 2-3 ka-52 armed in this manner as a QRF for base defence against UAV once detected helicopters deploy destroying UAV before they even reach base air defence systems it just adds another layer. Of if troops on the ground keep reporting drones in the area send helicopters out to hunt them down and destroy or the same roles could be applied to the Yak -130 2-3 stationed at base waiting for the call the Yak of course has the added advantage of speed and agility arm it with handful of missiles and guns and your sorted the guns themselves would do most of the destroying and an unarmed UAV could easily be flipped by yak -130 wings if it really needed to.  

It depends what drones. Shilka and tunguska are good for protecting troops, they are not meant to hunt.

If you are talking about military drones, most of them will fly higher than the helicopter, and will be destroyed by modern fighters.

Small drones will be more easily detected from the ground and destroyed by passive EW or enegry weapons. Yak-130 can do the job but they already have lot of interceptors (mig, sukhoi ...) for that. The war in syria proved that most of the time infantry detect those small drones first and they are deal with with small arms or cheap missiles. It isalready discussed on other threads.

Firing with a 30 mm gun from a helicopter or a fighter is not the best way to destroy them. They will be practicaly invisible and their small size will force you to fire lot of rounds before you hit it. If you hit it with your plane it can destroy your engines and destroy the plane, can be even equiped with explosives specially to destroy your plane.

Actually the Soviets used Hinds for interception in the past... Rust ring a bell?

The PVO detected Rust and MiG-23s went to intercept the unknown target... when they discovered it was a civilian cessna they reported this fact and the interception task was handed to the local authorities because a MiG-23 could either shoot it down or do nothing because of the speed difference...

Rust never even knew the MiGs intercepted him... but by the time the Hinds were launched and found him he had already landed.

Hinds were sent because they matched the airspeed of a cessna and would have been able to force him to land with warning shots and hand signals etc.

The problem was that without a radar they had to be talked to where the cessna was.

Modern attack helos don't have intercept radar either.

For the cost and low speed of a helo used in the air intercept role it would be much easier and cheaper to have a MiG-29M2 flying at 10,000m altitude with 8 x R-77 missiles that can hit hovering helos from quite a distance... the MiG could see targets great distances away and rapidly engage them with little risk to itself.

Attack helos have AAMs purely as self defence and most of the time operationally they would not even use them.

The only real factor that even makes such aircraft interesting would be a swarm UAV attack, because R-77s are not cheap and there could be more than 8 targets.

In such a case a helo is still to slow and would not cover ground very quickly.

I would be looking at Su-25SM aircraft, preferably with an Ugroza upgrade with laser beam homing 80mm rockets, or perhaps two stage laser beam riding rockets.

Four pods per wing means each aircraft could carry 160 UAV killers, plus gun.

In fact I would go for three pods under each wing and one EW jammer pod so you could fly to within 2km or so of the target and blast their electronics with a high energy beam and melt them.

The Su-25 is fast enough but also very manouverable.

Hi all. With COIN aircraft having more focus in the last number of years and more companies putting forward there own aircraft is this a market Russia should compete in?

Russia itself doesn't have a massive need for such aircraft apart from possibly of the caucuses region. But I am thinking of export sales and possibly as a cheaper alternative as military aid to neighbouring countries such as Tajikistan Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan with the threats that these countries face. As it stands Russia could really only offer helicopters such as mi-24 to fulfil this role.

The great thing about COIN aircraft is they are not complicated aircraft and Russia already has the
yak 152. It wouldn't take much to turn it into COIN type aircraft. You add this to a portfolio with an armed yak-130 (Light attack) Russia would cover every type of aircraft for every type of customer.


So should Russian companies design such aircraft or is the market already saturated or has the super tucano dominated the market now?

This is the SM-92P. Was intended for the Border Guards. Back in the middle of the 90´s. Saddly the company took the money and declared bankrupcy a little later = some guys stole the money. But the project could be resurrected.

Can anyone tell me exactly where the Pombey bombing range is please? I think it is somewhere near Vorkuta above and to the East of the Polar Urals. I have read elsewhere that it has been used by Tu 160s for exercises. Also if possible does anyone know how long it has been in existence as I think it is fairly new, but I may be wrong.
Many Thanks
KeMac

KeMac wrote:Can anyone tell me exactly where the Pombey bombing range is please? I think it is somewhere near Vorkuta above and to the East of the Polar Urals. I have read elsewhere that it has been used by Tu 160s for exercises. Also if possible does anyone know how long it has been in existence as I think it is fairly new, but I may be wrong.
Many Thanks
KeMac

Introduce yourself first pls

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

KeMac wrote:Can anyone tell me exactly where the Pombey bombing range is please? I think it is somewhere near Vorkuta above and to the East of the Polar Urals. I have read elsewhere that it has been used by Tu 160s for exercises. Also if possible does anyone know how long it has been in existence as I think it is fairly new, but I may be wrong.
Many Thanks
KeMac

Have not been able to pinpoint this location exactly myself however... northeast of Vorkuta about 100 km's around Chalmer-Yu there are some old abandoned Soviet Gulag camps. On some Russian language maps, this area is showing as a Proving Grounds, which is the literal translation for Training Range.

franco wrote:

KeMac wrote:Can anyone tell me exactly where the Pombey bombing range is please? I think it is somewhere near Vorkuta above and to the East of the Polar Urals. I have read elsewhere that it has been used by Tu 160s for exercises. Also if possible does anyone know how long it has been in existence as I think it is fairly new, but I may be wrong.
Many Thanks
KeMac

Have not been able to pinpoint this location exactly myself however... northeast of Vorkuta about 100 km's around Chalmer-Yu there are some old abandoned Soviet Gulag camps. On some Russian language maps, this area is showing as a Proving Grounds, which is the literal translation for Training Range.

Thank you Franco. That sounds about right. I think there was a big exercise last year and it was used then.

Just saw that kh-59 has an inertial guidance and last 10 km it switches to TV and is controled by the plane that launched it. The guy in the plane sees what the missile sees and controls it to the target.

Some question about that :

Isn't it easy to jam the data link ? Especially if an ELINT station recorded the first use of the missile, then they will know at what frequency they "talk".

Do the bomber needs to wait the first missile to hit before firing another one ?

The range should be limited so once the bomber launched the missile, he needs to stay high and in range to communicate. Isn't it dangerous ?

Is it widely bought ? Open sources say china ordered only 200 which is pretty low. Countries like France, GB and germany ordered like 300-400 each of the SCALP/ storm shadow/Taurus. Mk2 should be expensive but first generation kh-59m should be really affordable and a detterent weapon because of its precision.

Datalinks are not so easy to jam.

Especially directional ones as used by the Kazoo.

The datalink pod has two antenna so the missile is launched and then the carrier aircraft can turn 180 degrees and still control the missile using the rear facing datalink antenna.

Do the bomber needs to wait the first missile to hit before firing another one ?

AFAIK the datalink works with one missile so a missile can be launched and controlled by the launch aircraft, but another aircraft can launch and control their own missile too.

The range should be limited so once the bomber launched the missile, he needs to stay high and in range to communicate. Isn't it dangerous ?

I am not aware of any altitude restrictions for the launch aircraft, and as I mentioned once fired the aircraft can turn 180 degrees and head away from the target and still control the missile... the tracking and targeting range of most systems is dramatically reduced with receding targets.

Is it widely bought ? Open sources say china ordered only 200 which is pretty low. Countries like France, GB and germany ordered like 300-400 each of the SCALP/ storm shadow/Taurus. Mk2 should be expensive but first generation kh-59m should be really affordable and a detterent weapon because of its precision.

AFAIK not many aircraft can use it successfully, and generally only Su-24 units were fully equipped with guided weapons for air to ground use.

They revised the design in the 2000s to eliminate the Ukrainian parts and they are still in production AFAIK.

They are supposed to have three warhead options... He penetration type at 320kg, a 283kg sub-munition type and a nuke...

The latest models have active radar homing seekers for use against fixed known coordinate targets.

With full FBW and now modes that can detect pilots loss of consiousness to prevent GLOC accidents, is there any fighter that has an emergency escape mode that will remove G limitions and execute a sequence of climbs and turns to evade another plane or missile even if the pilot is rendered unconsious in the manuver? say short busts of 12-15 g turns?

Was going to say they have bright red handles on the seats they sit on...

On the MiG-29 and presumably later models you get a judder or other feedback when you reach a flight control system limit... but using force the pilot can actually pull through that limit if they want to.

For instance if you are flying along and suddenly out of the cloud appears a rather large mountain... you pull back on the stick to the normal limit but you don't think you will make it so you pull harder... the aircraft might stall or be damaged... but the idea is that the alternative of not stalling or damaging the wing but flying into the side of a mountain would be much worse.

Obviously such manouvers are recorded by the flight control system, so during the debrief the pilot might have to explain why he pulled 12 during a flight... if it was to avoid another aircraft or the ground or a missile or some such thing then he might not be put up on a charge... the plane would probably be checked thoroughly to ensure things were not damaged.

I was recently wondering what countermeasures Russia had deployed against western passenger aircraft being fitted with nuclear warheads in an attempt to conduct a first strike.

Obviously such an attack could bypass Russian ABM systems, though fortunately this would be of little issue if Russia launched the first strike.

Is there anything being done to prevent such an attack?
Are airports located far away from major cities? Or do they scan each aircraft for signs of radiation?

They can't fly above military airports or bases. Such first attack would destroy civilian targets but not enemy nuks allowing a counter attack.

Back in cold war they had suitcases with tactical nuks. That could also be used for a first strike. But that won't solve the issue of the counter attack.

No country can protect itself from nuks. What nuclear armed countries protect is their own arsenal to be sure to hit back. Mutual destruction keeps everyone calm.

So, I've been making a livery for the Mig-21bis in DCS this past week, and it got me thinking.

How exactly did/does Soviet/Russian GCI work? What are the tricks of the trade, as it were? I assume it wouldn't be as simple as getting the intercept bearing based on target speed, altitude and direction, and passing it to the pilot; especially if they were intercepting something genuinely hostile as opposed to an encroaching US P-3. Did they have any special flight patterns they adhered to; Perhaps strict altitude envelopes and angular offsets from the target that they'd follow?

More simple put, if it were the 1960s, and the Soviets had a flight of hostile fighter aircraft inbound, exactly what information/instructions would the GCI pass the pilots?

Hi folks

I'm new here and I'm wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction. I'm looking for a list of all Russian/Soviet air bases including historic ones.

Does anyone have such resources?

Thanks
Graham

You can find this on wikipedia IMO.

Welcome. Interesting that your first post was to start a strategically important thread rather than just post a comment.

However, your first post should have been in the Introductions area of the Forum.

gmsmith1985 wrote:Hi folks

I'm new here and I'm wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction. I'm looking for a list of all Russian/Soviet air bases including historic ones.

Does anyone have such resources?

Thanks
Graham

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

I was just wondering, isn't the technology today advanced enough to design a helicopter turbine like this and eliminate the need for the spinning blade?

PhSt wrote:
I was just wondering, isn't the technology today advanced enough to design a helicopter turbine like this and eliminate the need for the spinning blade?

These are less efficient than the regular blades. Aside from the fact that they lose on not being as long (a big deal),
they lose from the turbulence inside the conduit.

The store drones and even fancier designs that use these ducted fans in multiples are not as affected since they
are much lighter and they are more safe for their target users.

https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-helicopters-use-ducted-fans-for-their-main-rotors

Here is an attempt to use them in real helicopter:

https://www.rotorandwing.com/2019/01/07/meet-bell-nexus-six-ducted-fan-air-taxi-future/

How exactly did/does Soviet/Russian GCI work?

What a complex question.

AFAIK GCI was for PVO aircraft and got to the level of sophistication where incoming threats were tracked and monitored and interceptors were launched to evade their path and therefore also their radar sensors and were essentially directed to a launch position from the most advantageous location giving them their best chance of a kill. They operated purely with ground based radar information and also IRST information from their own aircraft. Their own radars were used for the missile launch but until then they kept to radio and radar silence in war time... in peace time they would relay visual information about the target for interception options to be decided higher up.

AFAIK the Su27 and MiG-31 and also the Su-15 received flight commands directly to their autopilots so essentially the GCI directed the aircraft to the intercept launch position that would give them their best chance of a kill (ie behind the targets at a good closing rate).

I feel you would struggle to get a lot of detail regarding this subject.... probably your best bets on this forum would be Mindstorm and Medo I suspect.

I am new to this forum, hence sorry if this question has already been answered, but is it not confusing how Russia is building stealth aircraft and drones whilst claiming it is developing radars that can defeat stealth? Russian efforts at developing stealth-defeating photonic radar have long been in the news, see here:

https://russiadaily.news/russia/1063-russia-completes-tests-of-a-photonic-radar-to-search-for-stealth-targets

The Su-57 is perhaps not totally convincing as an effort at building a stealth aircraft, the Okhotnik drone, on the other hand, certainly looks like the real deal.

So what gives? Does one hand not know what the other does in Russia, may the photonic radar be overhyped, are the Russians putting up a show of 'maskirovka' one way or the other, trying to deceive all the others into over-investing in stealth? You surely cannot build a stealth-defeating radar without assuming that your enemy will eventually be able copy the technology, whereupon everybody goes back to square one.

Maybe instead of asking dumb questions, read the forum and threads where discussions already done?

It really isn't hard. You click section you want, look at the threads, find thread you want and your good.

But you are probably another member recreating an account and trolling.