Russian Air-to-Air missiles

Viktor wrote:

mack8 wrote:Could that be taken as confirmation that Su-35 can carry 4 RVV-BD? 200km range, active radar seeker, 8g capability, quite a headache to any potential opponent.

This is an export model. Domestic one probably goes even further.

Indeed, the domestic model will probably be called R-37M and should equip MiG-31BM and maybe Su-35S no? How about Su-30SM, can't see any reason why it shouldn't carry it too, the radar certainly has the range?

I know, they test in past a missile (R-37) with 300 km range. Is RVV-BD the same missile? I'm sure this missile will be as well in armament of PAK-FA and Su-30SM, not only for Su-35 and MiG-31BM.

Pretty sure RVV-BD/K-37M/R-37M is a thoroughly up to date version of R-37 tested in early nineties.

The question is like above, is the X-25ML completley autonomous in its guidance and does not need any special software to be operated by aircrafts?

The reason i ask is because the X-25 missile can be launched from APU-68UM3 racks which are available for all russian helicopters and the missile where ever i've watched for information it is claimed it has selfguidance autonomous seeker, which should give it all necessary capabilities to lockon targets without specific software on the launching plattform to do so.

What is the typical shelf life of an air to air missile, for example the R-77?

After the expiry of their shelf life are they "recycled"? In other words simply replace the guidance kit coz I guess the warhead need not have to be changed.

RTN wrote:What is the typical shelf life of an air to air missile, for example the R-77?

After the expiry of their shelf life are they "recycled"? In other words simply replace the guidance kit coz I guess the warhead need not have to be changed.

Good question.... Due to the vast majority of them using solid-fuel, the lifespan should primarily rely on the fuels' lifespan (probably over 30 years if not more).

The electronics inside should last forever given they are protected properly. 

Warheads never need changing AFAIK.

I would guess about the same or near same shelf life of modern IIR/CCD ATGM's which have a shelf life of around 15-20 years.

The worst thing for electronics and seeker is if they would be constantly fed by the internal batterie because the life of it would decrease to less than few hours at least of some internals.

Werewolf wrote:I would guess about the same or near same shelf life of modern IIR/CCD ATGM's which have a shelf life of around 15-20 years.

The worst thing for electronics and seeker is if they would be constantly fed by the internal batterie because the life of it would decrease to less than few hours at least of some internals.

Hmm... What do you think would be the first to go?

My guess would be the battery as you mentioned, but those are probably the easiest parts to replace.

I recall reading R-27 had a limited number of take off/landing service life- I would guess this applies to most missiles to. Would need to be checked after certified number of cycles were completed, even if actual service life was not exhausted.

Don't know about the newer missiles but the R-73 and R-27 had pylon hours of something like 22 from memory. The speed and vibration meant they needed checks and disassembly to make sure they were still OK and for any coolant to be replaced for cooling the electronics in high speed flight.

Shelf life was something like 10-15 years, but taking them on an aircraft where temperatures could change in minute from plus 40 degrees C to minus 60 degrees or colder, while launching the weapon could friction heat it to 300 degrees for short periods... it is a difficult thing to make sure it works. In comparison your lap top or desk top computer has a much easier life. rain snow hail too.

Mike E wrote:

Werewolf wrote:I would guess about the same or near same shelf life of modern IIR/CCD ATGM's which have a shelf life of around 15-20 years.

The worst thing for electronics and seeker is if they would be constantly fed by the internal batterie because the life of it would decrease to less than few hours at least of some internals.

Hmm... What do you think would be the first to go?

My guess would be the battery as you mentioned, but those are probably the easiest parts to replace.

Just like mentioned by TR1 and GarryB, and to add something the operators of aircrafts try to avoid flying exercises with such missiles, because they are always "on" and contected to powersupply which over time reduces the quality of the seeker of the missile, which was already designed for "one-way-use" since it is a missile and usually to get the necessary electric power the batteries are different and have a very short life, which is again good for cost factor since it will epxlode anyway, the batterie with its short lifespan can produce more than necessary elecrtic power and that can damage some fine internal parts especially the hotter batteries get the more power they can sometimes produce.

The shelf-life relative long around 15-20 years but during use for excercises they reduce the service life drastically or increase the maintenance cost, but they can not be maintained for years, they were not designed to last long once in active operations anyway.

Indeed, for practise, quite often dummies will be used... because of the limited pylon life of the real weapons a range of dummies are available.

They range from just dumb masses that mimic the mass and drag of the real weapon but with no functioning components, through to captive missiles with working seekers so lock ons can be practised through to test missiles with real seekers and real motors but dummy warheads that might have telemetry equipment to measure miss distance from the target drone.

Old stock missiles are used for live fire tests.

For operational missiles they will only be loaded onto aircraft that are likely to actually use them, in other cases dummies of various types are used.

is it true that R-74 and R-27ET can pull 90gs ?

R-74 maybe yes... R-73 is supposedly able to pull 60 G's

R-27 however, might not so much considering it's heavier and have no Thrust vector control. 40G's are more likely.

The R-27 doesn't have TVC rocket motors, but it does have large forward control fins so it is possible that it might be able to pull extreme g turns.

The reverse butterfly shape of the control surfaces should make them able to pull turns with less drag and speed loss in the turns than conventional missiles.

Main barriers to high speed turns are small control surfaces limiting their rate of turn so high gs can't be acheived before they stall and stop turning the missile at all, and of course the structural strength to endure such high energy turns.

Even just the 47kg warhead in the R-27 acts like a 4.2 ton mass at 90gs...

GarryB wrote:The R-27 doesn't have TVC rocket motors, but it does have large forward control fins so it is possible that it might be able to pull extreme g turns.

The reverse butterfly shape of the control surfaces should make them able to pull turns with less drag and speed loss in the turns than conventional missiles.

Main barriers to high speed turns are small control surfaces limiting their rate of turn so high gs can't be acheived before they stall and stop turning the missile at all, and of course the structural strength to endure such high energy turns.

Even just the 47kg warhead in the R-27 acts like a 4.2 ton mass at 90gs...

thanks a lot but i got to ask which of the air to air missile that have the best maneuverability ?
where can i learn about the shape of the control surfaces and more importantly how they effect the maneuverability ?
(47kg warhead in the R-27 acts like a 4.2 ton mass at 90gs) WOW , i need to learn this info too or the equation .

thanks again and sorry for the many questions but i love learn

thanks a lot but i got to ask which of the air to air missile that have the best maneuverability ?

I am simplifying this quite a bit but a good rule of thumb is the size of a control surface will matter in that the larger the surface for a given speed will have more turning force applied and give better manouver capability.

An exception of course is when the control surface stalls... the front control surfaces of the R-27 where is starts out narrow and gets wider is designed to reduce drag and delay stall to give better turn performance than a standard triangular fin.

The potatoe masher type rear fins on the R-77 are also designed to give max turning force with a compact shape and high angles of attack before stalling.

the thrust vector engine gives excellent manouver capability, but only while the rocket motor is burning... just like aircraft a TVC missile has excellent turning ability.

the R-73 is smaller and lighter and has TVC so it can turn harder than the R-27.

The R-27ET has much longer range and a wider field of view because the missile body is wider.

If you were chasing down a target at low level the R-27 would have a better chance of running it down... otherwise the R-73 would be the preferred weapon... both don't just tail chase... they track the target and fly an intercept course to meet the target at a location ahead of where the target is at that time.

Makes them quite hard to evade.

(47kg warhead in the R-27 acts like a 4.2 ton mass at 90gs) WOW , i need to learn this info too or the equation .

Sorry... bad choice of words... everything has mass and mass does not change under acceleration due to another mass or movement.

the 47kg warhead weighs 47kgs at one g... ie sitting on a table. At 1 g its weight is 47kgs.

At 2gs its weight is 96kgs... its weight at 90gs is just 90 x 47kgs = 4,230kgs.

Its mass does not change... think of weigh as momentum, where speed is measured in gs.

Anas Ali wrote:

GarryB wrote:The R-27 doesn't have TVC rocket motors, but it does have large forward control fins so it is possible that it might be able to pull extreme g turns.

The reverse butterfly shape of the control surfaces should make them able to pull turns with less drag and speed loss in the turns than conventional missiles.

Main barriers to high speed turns are small control surfaces limiting their rate of turn so high gs can't be acheived before they stall and stop turning the missile at all, and of course the structural strength to endure such high energy turns.

Even just the 47kg warhead in the R-27 acts like a 4.2 ton mass at 90gs...

thanks a lot but i got to ask which of the air to air missile that have the best maneuverability ?
where can i learn about the shape of the control surfaces and more importantly how they effect the maneuverability ?
(47kg warhead in the R-27 acts like a 4.2 ton mass at 90gs) WOW , i need to learn this info too or the equation .

thanks again and sorry for the many questions but i love learn

F = ma, where for "m" (mass) in kg and "a" (acceleration) in g, "force" would be in kgs (kilogram force). For "m" in kg and "a" in m/s^2 (meter per second squared), F would be in N (newton).

So if a 70 kg pilot is maneuvering at 6 g, the force on him/her (his/her apparent "weight") would be 420 kgs. In this example, a = 6 g, and it is the magnitude of the vector sum of all accelerations on the pilot, and it includes the acceleration due to earth's gravity.

By the way, Garry intended to say 4.2 tonne force.

The missile maneuverability is a complicated matter; it would be hard to cover it here.

Morpheus Eberhardt wrote:

Anas Ali wrote:

GarryB wrote:The R-27 doesn't have TVC rocket motors, but it does have large forward control fins so it is possible that it might be able to pull extreme g turns.

The reverse butterfly shape of the control surfaces should make them able to pull turns with less drag and speed loss in the turns than conventional missiles.

Main barriers to high speed turns are small control surfaces limiting their rate of turn so high gs can't be acheived before they stall and stop turning the missile at all, and of course the structural strength to endure such high energy turns.

Even just the 47kg warhead in the R-27 acts like a 4.2 ton mass at 90gs...

thanks a lot but i got to ask which of the air to air missile that have the best maneuverability ?
where can i learn about the shape of the control surfaces and more importantly how they effect the maneuverability ?
(47kg warhead in the R-27 acts like a 4.2 ton mass at 90gs) WOW , i need to learn this info too or the equation .

thanks again and sorry for the many questions but i love learn

F = ma, where for "m" (mass) in kg and "a" (acceleration) in g, "force" would be in kgs (kilogram force). For "m" in kg and "a" in m/s^2 (meter per second squared), F would be in N (newton).

So if a 70 kg pilot is maneuvering at 6 g, the force on him/her (his/her apparent "weight") would be 420 kgs. In this example, a = 6 g, and it is the magnitude of the vector sum of all accelerations on the pilot, and it includes the acceleration due to earth's gravity.

By the way, Garry intended to say 4.2 tonne force.

The missile maneuverability is a complicated matter; it would be hard to cover it here.

By the way, kgs is a unit of force (also weight); the "s" in it comes from the Russian word сила (force). Sometimes it's written as "kgf".

On the other hand, "kg" is a unit of mass.

Morpheus Eberhardt wrote:

Morpheus Eberhardt wrote:

Anas Ali wrote:

GarryB wrote:The R-27 doesn't have TVC rocket motors, but it does have large forward control fins so it is possible that it might be able to pull extreme g turns.

The reverse butterfly shape of the control surfaces should make them able to pull turns with less drag and speed loss in the turns than conventional missiles.

Main barriers to high speed turns are small control surfaces limiting their rate of turn so high gs can't be acheived before they stall and stop turning the missile at all, and of course the structural strength to endure such high energy turns.

Even just the 47kg warhead in the R-27 acts like a 4.2 ton mass at 90gs...

thanks a lot but i got to ask which of the air to air missile that have the best maneuverability ?
where can i learn about the shape of the control surfaces and more importantly how they effect the maneuverability ?
(47kg warhead in the R-27 acts like a 4.2 ton mass at 90gs) WOW , i need to learn this info too or the equation .

thanks again and sorry for the many questions but i love learn

F = ma, where for "m" (mass) in kg and "a" (acceleration) in g, "force" would be in kgs (kilogram force). For "m" in kg and "a" in m/s^2 (meter per second squared), F would be in N (newton).

So if a 70 kg pilot is maneuvering at 6 g, the force on him/her (his/her apparent "weight") would be 420 kgs. In this example, a = 6 g, and it is the magnitude of the vector sum of all accelerations on the pilot, and it includes the acceleration due to earth's gravity.

By the way, Garry intended to say 4.2 tonne force.

The missile maneuverability is a complicated matter; it would be hard to cover it here.

By the way, kgs is a unit of force (also weight); the "s" in it comes from the Russian word сила (force). Sometimes it's written as "kgf".

On the other hand, "kg" is a unit of mass.

i dont know how to thank you , i really appreciated
thanks so so much

GarryB wrote:

thanks a lot but i got to ask which of the air to air missile that have the best maneuverability ?

I am simplifying this quite a bit but a good rule of thumb is the size of a control surface will matter in that the larger the surface for a given speed will have more turning force applied and give better manouver capability.

An exception of course is when the control surface stalls... the front control surfaces of the R-27 where is starts out narrow and gets wider is designed to reduce drag and delay stall to give better turn performance than a standard triangular fin.

The potatoe masher type rear fins on the R-77 are also designed to give max turning force with a compact shape and high angles of attack before stalling.

the thrust vector engine gives excellent manouver capability, but only while the rocket motor is burning... just like aircraft a TVC missile has excellent turning ability.

the R-73 is smaller and lighter and has TVC so it can turn harder than the R-27.

The R-27ET has much longer range and a wider field of view because the missile body is wider.

If you were chasing down a target at low level the R-27 would have a better chance of running it down... otherwise the R-73 would be the preferred weapon... both don't just tail chase... they track the target and fly an intercept course to meet the target at a location ahead of where the target is at that time.

Makes them quite hard to evade.

(47kg warhead in the R-27 acts like a 4.2 ton mass at 90gs) WOW , i need to learn this info too or the equation .

Sorry... bad choice of words... everything has mass and mass does not change under acceleration due to another mass or movement.

the 47kg warhead weighs 47kgs at one g... ie sitting on a table. At 1 g its weight is 47kgs.

At 2gs its weight is 96kgs... its weight at 90gs is just 90 x 47kgs = 4,230kgs.

Its mass does not change... think of weigh as momentum, where speed is measured in gs.

thank you so much , that was really helpful i really appreciate your help

Anas Ali wrote:

Morpheus Eberhardt wrote:

Morpheus Eberhardt wrote:

Anas Ali wrote:

GarryB wrote:The R-27 doesn't have TVC rocket motors, but it does have large forward control fins so it is possible that it might be able to pull extreme g turns.

The reverse butterfly shape of the control surfaces should make them able to pull turns with less drag and speed loss in the turns than conventional missiles.

Main barriers to high speed turns are small control surfaces limiting their rate of turn so high gs can't be acheived before they stall and stop turning the missile at all, and of course the structural strength to endure such high energy turns.

Even just the 47kg warhead in the R-27 acts like a 4.2 ton mass at 90gs...

thanks a lot but i got to ask which of the air to air missile that have the best maneuverability ?
where can i learn about the shape of the control surfaces and more importantly how they effect the maneuverability ?
(47kg warhead in the R-27 acts like a 4.2 ton mass at 90gs) WOW , i need to learn this info too or the equation .

thanks again and sorry for the many questions but i love learn

F = ma, where for "m" (mass) in kg and "a" (acceleration) in g, "force" would be in kgs (kilogram force). For "m" in kg and "a" in m/s^2 (meter per second squared), F would be in N (newton).

So if a 70 kg pilot is maneuvering at 6 g, the force on him/her (his/her apparent "weight") would be 420 kgs. In this example, a = 6 g, and it is the magnitude of the vector sum of all accelerations on the pilot, and it includes the acceleration due to earth's gravity.

By the way, Garry intended to say 4.2 tonne force.

The missile maneuverability is a complicated matter; it would be hard to cover it here.

By the way, kgs is a unit of force (also weight); the "s" in it comes from the Russian word сила (force). Sometimes it's written as "kgf".

On the other hand, "kg" is a unit of mass.

i dont know how to thank you , i really appreciated
thanks so so much  

You're welcome.

Yes, by all means, don't be afraid of asking questions...

I myself have learned a lot more because people have asked about things I have replied to, which led me to think about some things more and realised some of what I thought I knew was wrong...

one obvious example was my mistake in thinking that the D-30 engine in the Il-76 is related to the D-30 engine in the MiG-31...

Morpheus Eberhardt wrote:
… if a 70 kg pilot is maneuvering at 6 g, the force on him/her (his/her apparent "weight") would be 420 kgs. In this example, a = 6 g, and it is the magnitude of the vector sum of all accelerations on the pilot, and it includes the acceleration due to earth's gravity.

A more correct way of saying this is that

"… if a 70 kg pilot is making a horizontal 6 g turn, the force on him/her (his/her apparent "weight") would be 420 kgs. In this example, a = 6 g, and it is the magnitude of the vector sum of all accelerations on the pilot, and it includes the acceleration that counteracts the earth's gravitational acceleration".

Hi does anyone know of any of the average costs of bombs, missiles etc and how they compare to there western counterparts, i would expect as normal is the case that the Russian equivalent will be cheaper. any info would be great

d_taddei2 wrote:Hi does anyone know of any of the average costs of bombs, missiles etc and how they compare to there western counterparts, i would expect as normal is the case that the Russian equivalent will be cheaper. any info would be great

even in the site of tactical missiles corp. there isnt any info for costs, but it has feedback if you ant to try

http://eng.ktrv.ru/conference_eng/