Russian Air-to-Air missiles

Interesting considering the aircraft it is mounted on... wonder if it can be used as an ARM against radar emitting ground targets... like that version of sidewinder for attacking Shilka radars.... I think they called is Sidearm or something... but the Sidewinder has a 10kg warhead and R-27 has a 40kg warhead... and rather longer range in most versions.... it is much like the AS-12 family of ARMs based on the Kh-25 family.

Well think about the implications of its original purpose... in the 1980s the west thought it would win in Europe because although the WP had the numbers, they believed they had the better trained pilots and would prevail in air to air combat.

Of course when the high off boresight R-73 became better understood they still thought they had the advantage because their Sparrows were better... except they weren't. The R-27 was faster and longer ranged than Sparrow and in theory could kill the F-15 before the F-15s Sparrow had hit its target meaning one nil in BVR combat.

This had them rather scared... but not as scared as they should be... for an F-15 to launch a sparrow it needed a lock and it needed to continously illuminate the target with that radar beam for the sparrow to have any chance of a hit.

The F-15 had a very good radar so tracking the target would not be a problem but a target as small as a missile would be a tough item to track and if you are illuminating the target you are not tracking anything.

Say I am in a MiG-29 and you are in an F-15 and we are 60km apart but closing rapidly... at 40km you illuminate my aircraft with a radar beam and launch a Sparrow... the illumination beam tells me what you are and what you are doing (F-16s generally only had sidewinders)... my R-27s are the shorter range models because I don't carry the bigger E model R-27s... they are for Flankers and later model Fulcrums.

I will of course launch a R-27P1, which will easily lock on the pencil radar beam directed at my aircraft... like a light seeking missile flying at a light house that is pointing its light at me.

You probably wont know my missile is coming because I don't even need to turn on my radar and the missile is passive homing... it is also faster than your Sparrow. Once I have fired I can turn and climb and accelerate away... you have to keep illuminating me or your sparrow will miss... if I turn and appear to run away it gives my missile more time to reach you and when it does a 40kg explosion a few metres from your nose mounted radar will kill you... you wont get a chance to eject... it will be moving at more than four times the speed of sound which means one second it is a kilometre away and next it is detonating a few metres away from you... ejection seats take more than one second to eject.

The explosion would shatter your radar so your missile goes dead as well...

AMRAAM suddenly got all the funding it needed... for years there was the plan for AMRAAM and ASRAAM... neither of which was funded very well and there was not much interest in it for most of the 80s. AMRAAM was going to be American and ASRAAM was going to be British and most NATO countries were supposed to use both.

Of course with examination of the MiG-29 they lost interest in short range AAMs because even if you got the other aircraft they would just have to launch an R-73 before they were destroyed to have quite a good chance of killing you too. They weren't interested in one all draws, so the focus shifted to BVR... which had always been mediocre in terms of kill probability.

Radar guidance would be too much of a give away.... a radar signal form the middle of the ocean where there are no surface vessels would attract enormous attention from any force hunting for subs.

How about an IIR guided R-27 that uses a lock on after launch guidance system like they are developing for the 9M100.

Some sort of simple IR sensor mount with 360 degree views as developed for the S-350 which uses both radar guided 9M96 missiles and the IIR guided 9M100 missiles... I would expect a passive detection mode where it uses IR sensors and optics to detect and track all sorts of targets and then can launch either IIR guided 9M100 missiles or 9M96 ARH missiles (the 50km range one... I doubt it could detect targets at 50km let alone 150km), so the system would exist... and to be honest a mast that can be raised to search for aerial targets passively without emitting radar waves would probably be quite useful for a sub anyway...

On a different topic, if the new model R-77M missiles have a range of 200km then are they going to upgrade the RVV-BD export R-37Ms which were supposed to have a range of 200km in the exported model (280km in the domestic model)...

With the new ARH 70km range buk it would be better.

The 9M96 should be plenty... the smaller 50km range one because I doubt they will be detecting targets at 70km let alone 50km, but having them operate no where near their max range should ensure they are more within their no escape zone for the targets they engage.

The UKSK-M launcher is supposed to be a unified system that can carry SAMs as well as anti ship, land attack, and anti sub weapons, so fitting them to a Yasen class SSGN means one tube with perhaps 16 9M96 missiles of the 50-60km range version would be ideal... apart from installing the UKSK-M launcher system and adding a mast you could probably get away with not having to do very much to give it that capability.

Anti sub helos and MPAs are not the most difficult targets... but then imagine an arsenal sub based on the Akula SSBN with UKSK-M launch tubes... you could fit the sail with enormous AESA radar panels and IR sensors and have it sit on the surface launching thousands of SAMs to defend a group of ships... a SAM and radar picket frigate would have nothing on it....

Or it could use an IR sensor and not emit any signal.... it might only detect aircraft out to 20-30km but that is fine because it would do so passively... if it is raising a mast then it might as well raise its ESM mast which would detect emissions from helicopters and MPAs at pretty good distances and with an ARH missile like the 9M96 it should be able to work out where the missile needs to start looking for targets on its flight out.

I agree this will be used for defence, but equally it could be part of an attack strategy... come close to the surface and look for air threats... once the coast is clear or is made clear a UAV could be launched with passive sensors that climbs to 5-10km altitude.... if you just shot down a helo or MPA then you can expect enemy forces to start closing in even just to try to recover the crews.... a rapidly approaching destroyer or smaller aircraft could then be located and identified by the UAV and an anti ship missile launched by the sub to deal with the target...

Against a small or relatively weak enemy a sub captain could get quite aggressive... I mean look at the UK SSNs in the Falklands campaign and the Argentine navy was not exactly the weakest on the planet... they had subs and carriers etc...

There was talk if I remember correctly about a 9M100 missile defence system for Subs, but AFAIK they only deployed Igla MANPADS to their Kilos and other subs as the Kilos of course being diesel electric had to surface to snorkle and run their diesels to charge their batteries. It would make less sense to fit them to SSNs or SSGNs because masts sticking out of the water are a good way to get found and hunted down...

GarryB wrote:Anti sub helos and MPAs are not the most difficult targets... but then imagine an arsenal sub based on the Akula SSBN with UKSK-M launch tubes... you could fit the sail with enormous AESA radar panels and IR sensors and have it sit on the surface launching thousands of SAMs to defend a group of ships... a SAM and radar picket frigate would have nothing on it....  

It's a good idea, but not in the way of an anti-air asset for a naval group.
Surface combatants have their own anti-air radars and missiles, and there will typically be a ship with a Redut system capable of launching missiles at up to 120km ranges. It's sufficient. Their radars will be further above the horizon than the sub's would be. Surface vessels are a lot more survivable than subs; one missile getting through won't take them out. They are also immediately ready for action at any moment without having to surface to track and engage targets, or even be aware that there are targets. There is no real advantage to having a surface group rely on a sub as its most capable anti-air asset. You might as well have a dedicated large surface ship for that if that's what you want, or better yet a multirole vessel - both would be a lot cheaper than an Akula and more capable.

An anti-air Akula's real advantage lies in its ability to surface in any unexpected place at any time and turn an area of assumed safe airspace into a denied one. It can catch entire flights, or vulnerable planes such as transports, AWACS, reconnaisance, etc... completely off-guard and destroy them before the hostile airforce even realizes where the missiles are coming from. After the sub has destroyed a few targets, it can submerge, retire and then surface somewhere else at another time; this will save it from anti-radiation missiles. Anti-air guerilla warfare if you will. The danger of course is the enemy promptly deploying ASuW aircraft and warships to hunt for it; they will know its last known position to a high degree of accuracy and can conduct sweeps from there, deploy sonar buoys along presumed routes, deploy autonomous torpedoes to hunt for it and so on. An under-water anti-air launch capability for SHORAD class missiles and some sort of deployable floating short-range radar array might be neccessary for self-defence from ASuW aircraft, together with extensive decoy and anti-torpedo measures.

All in all not cheap, especially for a one-off vessel. An Akula could be used as a test-bed to experiment with the concept, with various ad-hoc temporary additions and equipment - but a smaller, serial sub design modified from a more modern model already in production might be optimal for actually implementing it; with a deployable radar mast with IR sensors and so on.

Not really suggesting an upgraded Akula as an AEGIS replacement... Russian vessels are already pretty well equipped in that regard anyway...

With the Sigma data sharing system they use the Akula wouldn't even need its own radar strictly speaking it could be a missile arsenal ship that can launch SAMs or anti ship or anti sub or land attack missiles at anything that needs to be attacked... it might be operating with two corvettes or a full surface fleet of carriers and cruisers and destroyers... it just provides extra missiles of a wide variety that are all ready to use as needed... if it has 200 tubes it might be fitted with 100 tubes with 150km 9M96 SAMs and 100 Zircons for anti ship or land attack use... so with 100 Zircon missiles it will be a rather potent vessel... even converted Kirovs have 80 tubes but it is rather unlikely they will be all one type of missile loaded in those, and 100 UKSK-M tubes should be able to hold 16 9M96 missiles each... so 1600 150km range SAMs is a potent capacity in anyones book... a nearby helicopter (Ka-31) or AWACS platform operating from a Carrier and it can intercept targets out to 150km even down to sea surface level... you talk about the cost.... well I would wager those missiles will cost more than the upgrade... the question is do you want that capability... the alternative is going cheap on some sort of container or tanker ship, or converting a Delta... converting a Borei is just a waste of a Borei... it would be more useful with SLBMs in it.

An anti-air Akula's real advantage lies in its ability to surface in any unexpected place at any time and turn an area of assumed safe airspace into a denied one. It can catch entire flights, or vulnerable planes such as transports, AWACS, reconnaisance, etc... completely off-guard and destroy them before the hostile airforce even realizes where the missiles are coming from. After the sub has destroyed a few targets, it can submerge, retire and then surface somewhere else at another time; this will save it from anti-radiation missiles. Anti-air guerilla warfare if you will. The danger of course is the enemy promptly deploying ASuW aircraft and warships to hunt for it; they will know its last known position to a high degree of accuracy and can conduct sweeps from there, deploy sonar buoys along presumed routes, deploy autonomous torpedoes to hunt for it and so on. An under-water anti-air launch capability for SHORAD class missiles and some sort of deployable floating short-range radar array might be neccessary for self-defence from ASuW aircraft, together with extensive decoy and anti-torpedo measures.

All in all not cheap, especially for a one-off vessel. An Akula could be used as a test-bed to experiment with the concept, with various ad-hoc temporary additions and equipment - but a smaller, serial sub design modified from a more modern model already in production might be optimal for actually implementing it; with a deployable radar mast with IR sensors and so on.

That is another interesting use, but considering the size of the Akula they could easily have decoy UUVs to distract, and of course ambush surface vessels hunting the sub and the SAMs it carries would make aircraft very vulnerable... any sonobouys hitting the water could be jammed or EMPed or used to locate the aircraft deploying them for attack...

RVV-MD is an export model missile... the original R-73 was a very potent weapon without an imaging seeker, I suspect a two colour IR sensor makes it even more capable, without making it as expensive as an imaging sensor.

The human eye is a very capable sensor and creates a very detailed view of the world, but the enormous amounts of information the eye can collect is overwhelming to the human brain, so over the period of a second you can fool a human being into thinking 25 still images per second is real time movement.

The eye of a house fly is much more basic and does not give the fly the detailed view of the world that a human eye does.

A house fly eye is often depicted in movies as being made up of thousands of little eye receptors and when viewing what the fly supposedly sees we see the same detailed view a human sees but repeated thousands of times by each eye sensor, but in actual fact the fly only sees basic shape and movement from many angles at once.

It trades quality for a much wider field of view, and it is more of a warning system of movement than something they can use to examine the world in detail.

If you try to slap a fly on a table surface it will always be in the air before your hand hits where the fly was.

If you want to kill a fly don't slap your hand where it is when you start your attack, aim in the air above where the fly is at the moment and catch it as it takes off.

The fly will detect the movement of your incoming hand, but it does not see your hand... it just recognises danger and the need to fly to a different location... you see things happen every 25th of a second... it sees things in much more like real time so it appears it has better reactions, but it is still a stupid fly.

The point is that its simple eyes make it one of the most numerous and successful living things on the planet.

Note the 9M100 is supposed to use an IIR seeker, and have a mobile phone like computer brain with an onboard library of the IR signature of various objects.

These IR signatures are 3D so it can identify most targets from any direction on its own... which means if you are in your Su-57 and the 9M100 missile is in the internal wing weapon bay, and you detect a target using your IRST and the thermal imager to ID the target the coordinates and ID of the target can be passed to the 9M100 missile and it can be launched and it can fly on autopilot towards the targets location with its IR sensor looking to find the target.

A longer range launch could use a datalink between the aircraft at missile to keep the missile updated on any direction or speed changes the target might make so it intercepts it even if it makes some serious manouvers after launch but before lock on.

With external weapons you generally rely on a lock on before launch to prevent wasting missiles, but with internal weapon bays you need lock on after launch, or all the stealth of internal weapons is wasted because you have to lower the weapons like AIM-9X for it to get a lock on target before you can launch it... which isn't really that stealthy.

There are more than that... some have radio proximity fuses and some have laser proximity fuses...

It gets a bit of stick for not being AMRAAM, but the butterfly wing is designed to reduce drag during manouvers and improve turning performance.

It is also fully modular and comes in an enormous range of seeker and motor combinations.

You could write an entire book just on the variations of that one missile system.

If you look at this Indian R-73 mounted on an aircraft the two vertical optical ports visible near the front of the weapon pylon on the missile indicates this is an R-73EL with a laser fuse...