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74 posters

    3M22 Zircon Hypersonic Cruise Missile

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    limb


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    Post  limb Tue Oct 13, 2020 9:22 pm

    PapaDragon wrote:
    flamming_python wrote:So much butthurt here. It's like I'm calling out the Emperor for having no clothes

    No, it's like you being butt naked and bleeding from your asshole while trying to call out Emperor for being naked while he is wearing Armani suit and pimp-cane



    flamming_python wrote:And yet. It's an Onyx clown

    Onyx that flies at Mach 8, yes

    Sounds like money well spent (You know who doesn't spend money well? Commies Razz )



    flamming_python wrote:Nothing new here by the new Russia, private property et al.

    Nothing new... except apparently a paintjob that makes missiles fly 4 times faster than material physically allows it

    If someone's dick suddenly grew to 4 times the original size I'd say we could definitely call him a new man Cool



    flamming_python wrote:Prove me wrong people. Prove me wrong.

    You asked and you received


    There is no spade nose. the missile is round. Therefore it can't be hypersonic. And no, the intake shroud cannot cover up a flattened hypersonic spade nose.

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    miketheterrible
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    Post  miketheterrible Tue Oct 13, 2020 9:27 pm

    The picture of what the missile looks like (rendering) was shown by Russia one already. Give it a break. If you guys think Russia is lying, then believe what you will, just don't dumb the rest of us down with your stupidity.

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    Post  limb Tue Oct 13, 2020 9:35 pm

    miketheterrible wrote:The picture of what the missile looks like (rendering) was shown by Russia one already.  Give it a break.  If you guys think Russia is lying, then believe what you will, just don't dumb the rest of us down with your stupidity.
    Its always some shitty animation of the waverider.

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    lyle6
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    Post  lyle6 Tue Oct 13, 2020 9:37 pm

    limb wrote:
    There is no spade nose. the missile is round. Therefore it can't be hypersonic. And no, the intake shroud cannot cover up a flattened hypersonic spade nose.
    Kholod had an annular inlet design and it was designed like, 30 years ago. No reason why they couldn't make a missile with more curves than the waverider.

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    miketheterrible
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    Post  miketheterrible Tue Oct 13, 2020 10:53 pm

    limb wrote:
    miketheterrible wrote:The picture of what the missile looks like (rendering) was shown by Russia one already.  Give it a break.  If you guys think Russia is lying, then believe what you will, just don't dumb the rest of us down with your stupidity.
    Its always some shitty animation of the waverider.

    Maybe for same missile which in this, maybe does look like what Lyle posted?

    Can you prove otherwise?

    Personally, it reached Mach 8 and thus I don't care how it looks. Just that it works.

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    GarryB
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    Post  GarryB Wed Oct 14, 2020 5:58 am

    Sure. We have time to see what happens in the end... I am pretty sure in ten years the carriers will not be gone but rather their AD will improve and their air wings will be able to operate much further from the CBG. I have patience

    Military development is measure and countermeasure... the US has been using aircraft carriers and carrier groups as their main strength, so up until now they have been the dominant force, but the combination of high speed and range making a missile difficult to intercept has changed the balance and now they are vulnerable... something the Russian Navy has been operating under the knowledge that they would be vulnerable to carrier group attack... well now for Russia with Kinzhal and MiG-31s, and Backfires and Kh-32s, and for ships with Zircon and improved Onyx they are now rather more dangerous to carrier groups than ever before in their past history.... and some people are squealing that carrier groups are obsolete dinosaurs and the Russians would be stupid to waste money making them.

    Russia needs aircraft carriers to defend their surface ships to make them a global force, because Russia will only grow with international trade and that means by sea, so once they start making destroyers and cruisers and carriers they can also start making ships to deliver goods to countries around the world and to bring in goods from around the world...

    Converging fleets can be detected and countered or avoided by the carrier fleet too.... they don't move faster or further than a CVN

    Who said fleets. We are talking about individual ships that will converge on the target...

    They cannot have their radars off unless they want to be defenceless against attacks. There are many assets in the battlefield emitting and they can be permanently under radiation from ships, aircraft and satellites, so their location can be perfectly available to a potential enemy that can attack anytime. Keeping your radar off in a battle is a suicide.

    Absolutely but not all of them would need their radars on.... and with AWACS they could keep their radars on listen rather than transmit and the AWACS aircraft can warn them about incoming threats, and can order fighters to investigate anything that gets their interest and those fighters could use radar and IRST sensors at close range to look at low flying fast targets or ships or whatever...

    I said surface carriers, I also said some posts above that against CBGs the proper tool are subs.

    They could take the idea of long range AAMs with small payload missiles for engaging groups of targets at long range with one big missile (ie an R-37M with its 60kg warhead replaced with 5 x 10kg Verba AAMs and a 10kg warhead left on board so in flight to targets 300km away it could release Verba missiles from high altitude and very high speed to fall down and then light up their own motors and attack targets on the flight path of the main missile.. with one missile launch you could potentially hit 6 targets up to 300km away... imagine an IRBM with a range of 4,500km with a payload of 6 scramjet powered warheads each able to radar scan for targets like ships that are released at the top of the atmosphere to fly down in a high speed powered dive flying a corkscrew flight path at mach 20 to hit targets below it on the sea surface... with no START treaty you could build as many IRBM and ICBM models as you want and located them in existing silos... they could even have truck and train mounted models...

    The first because this is how CBGs use to operate (outer battle order in the times of Cold War) in function of repair, preparation, station and travel times of the aircraft and how they determine the size of their AWACS wing, we know it can be increased but not by much.

    But that was calculated for Americas carriers whose job was land attack... it was the job of the AEGIS cruisers to keep the carrier safe... not the other way around...

    A Russian carrier might operate three AWACS aircraft at once... being a mix of Yak-44 type aircraft, Ka-31 type aircraft and drones... obviously the helicopter sticks near the ships and watches out for low flying sneak attacks, the Yak operates with any planes airborne and controls their operations and manages them during any attack from enemy aircraft, while the drones could be launched to find targets for ships weapons or to fill blind spots... obviously ship radar could also be used too.

    In the remote oceanic zones a CBG is king, but against Russian land based naval strike forces they are defenceless

    If I have told you once I have told you a billion times... don't exaggerate... first of all Russia is never as strong or as weak as the west likes to think... US carrier groups can go very close to Russia... just don't declare war and they will be fine. And a carrier battle group in the open ocean moves... so sending a dozen SSKs to sit and wait for the carrier group to pass by should get quite a few shots off before it is taken out... make those torpedos nuclear armed and you should be pretty good at killing that entire CBG... pirat

    Prove me wrong people. Prove me wrong.

    They called it Zircon. If they could get that sort of performance from Onyx then they are magicians...

    And the US and the west have even more to fear because if they can get this performance from Onyx they already have a large number of ships the west cannot stop.

    It was said not so long ago that Oniks would be modified for 5 M and 800 km range, what makes you think that Tsirkon cannot be similar? Not even to consider that having seen so little of the missile to make conclusions is clearly premature...

    They said with new fuel mach 5 and 800km range makes sense.... mach 8 would not be likely with a ramjet engine even with new high energy fuel.

    A turboprop doesn't offer the potential for supersonic speeds... high bypass turbofans are not for supersonic speeds... no matter what fuel you use... low bypass turbofan engine can be very good for high speed flight and supersonic flight... but only to about mach 2.8 or so... much above that and the design fails.

    Ramjets is another type of jet engine and is effective from very low speeds (a few hundred km/h) up to speeds of mach 5 or so no matter what fuel is used.

    Needless to say Onyx at mach 2 is not pushing the boundaries of what a ramjet can do... clearly new fuel to get it to mach 5 is.

    Mach 8 is just not realistic for a ramjet.


    There is a number of hypersonic weapons being developed in Russia, the ones for the Tu-22M3M and Su-57 are clearly smaller in size compared to Tsirkon in order to fit in the bays of those carriers, but (maybe) an air launched version of the later could fit in the bays of the Tu-160 or PAK-DA, or even be carried externally by Flanker family planes. It is always cheaper and faster to modify a weapon for a new use than designing it from scratch...

    There is no real history of going that way... the Sunburn was suggested and an airborne Onyx was also suggested but AFAIK only India has bothered with their Brahmos... other big surface launched Naval missiles end up on land based launchers or from ships and subs but almost never become airborne.

    That patent drawing shown above looks rather more like an old long range supersonic cruise missile called Alpha that had a big solid rocket booster portion and then a ramjet mounted beneath the missile itself... the ramjet was ejected when the fuel ran out and the body of the missile was a glider that coasted the rest of the way to the target at enormous speeds and high altitude in low drag.

    Dunno whether I'll be more chuffed or disappointed when it does turn out to be a modified Onyx

    Fundamentally it is still just an anti ship missile... why would there be a problem with it being an Onyx with scramjet propulsion instead of ramjet?

    The intake would need to be different... a rectangle would give more control which would be needed, which means the MiG-21 shaped nose is no longer an option... so it will look different, but it is launched from a UKSK launch tube which means it is going to be the same size and likely similar weight... but instead of mach 2 and 500km range it will have a mach 9 speed and 1,000km range... who gives a fuck what it is based on.

    The physics of flying at totally different speeds suggests they didn't just take the piston engine out of a MiG-3 and put an RD-33 jet engine in it and call it a MiG-29... because flying 5 times faster would rip it to pieces without substantial changes... in design and structure and materials...

    There is no spade nose. the missile is round. Therefore it can't be hypersonic. And no, the intake shroud cannot cover up a flattened hypersonic spade nose.

    Have you seen the air launched version of the Club missile?

    It is entirely contained in a tube case... it could have any shape at all but you would not know unless you saw the missile in mid flight.

    Personally, it reached Mach 8 and thus I don't care how it looks. Just that it works.

    Aerodynamics at mach 8 and 28km altitude are different from at mach 2 and 7m altitude....
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    Post  LMFS Wed Oct 14, 2020 9:29 am

    GarryB wrote:Absolutely but not all of them would need their radars on.... and with AWACS they could keep their radars on listen rather than transmit and the AWACS aircraft can warn them about incoming threats, and can order fighters to investigate anything that gets their interest and those fighters could use radar and IRST sensors at close range to look at low flying fast targets or ships or whatever...

    If they have AWACS and hence carriers then yes, they have the option of keeping radars off

    But that was calculated for Americas carriers whose job was land attack... it was the job of the AEGIS cruisers to keep the carrier safe... not the other way around...

    AEGIS without carrier-provided targeting are highly vulnerable too...

    A Russian carrier might operate three AWACS aircraft at once... being a mix of Yak-44 type aircraft, Ka-31 type aircraft and drones... obviously the helicopter sticks near the ships and watches out for low flying sneak attacks, the Yak operates with any planes airborne and controls their operations and manages them during any attack from enemy aircraft, while the drones could be launched to find targets for ships weapons or to fill blind spots... obviously ship radar could also be used too.

    The range and persistence of UAV in particular is going to be a revolution in AEW and allow to cover all directions, all the time, at extended ranges.

    They called it Zircon. If they could get that sort of performance from Onyx then they are magicians...

    Exactly, if they manage a Oniks to do fly at 9 M, then what is the f* problem??

    They said with new fuel mach 5 and 800km range makes sense.... mach 8 would not be likely with a ramjet engine even with new high energy fuel.

    I am not talking about ramjets, I have linked Kholod already like 20 posts above, it had an annular intake and combustion chamber for hypersonic flight. We just don't know how Tsirkon is built.

    flamming_python wrote:Dunno whether I'll be more chuffed or disappointed when it does turn out to be a modified Onyx

    I would bet relieved by the failure of Russia, as per the usual commie playbook. After seeing your crew doing the hard agitation work for DOS' libtards against a sovereignist constitution and sharing arguments with nazis and ultranationalists in order to rock the boat, that would be a perfect fit thumbsup

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    Post  kvs Wed Oct 14, 2020 1:56 pm

    All it takes is one poop form some troll and people have to run around acting like the troll had something important to add.

    Over Mach 8 and stratospheric flight cuts down massively on the time to hit the target. Wasting time fighting air drag
    in the troposphere simply reduces the effectiveness of any missile system in this class. Recall that air density attenuates
    exponentially with altitude (with a roughly 7 km e-folding). There is no point slowly flying near the ground using terrain to hide.
    This is an open ocean environment.

    The troll claimed Russia cannot design hypersonic missiles. The troll needs to be ignored.

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    Post  mnztr Wed Oct 14, 2020 2:33 pm

    GarryB wrote:

    In its current form I would agree but it is their best choice to develop a solution from and a reasonable starting point for use against air breathing hypersonic weapons and ballistic weapons launched from IRBMs.



    Problem is the defending missile always needs to be much more manuverable then the attacking missile. Which is why AAMs can pull far more G's then the fighters. (and of course they don't have to worry about killing the pilot). Also when you get to such altitudes, the air is too thin to manuver much, so responding to some very minor manuvers of Tsirkon will be almost impossible as the SAM will be only controlled by its rocket and other reaction thrusters. Its a very difficult problem to solve.
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    Post  mnztr Wed Oct 14, 2020 2:34 pm

    Interesting piece on Tsirkon, although I disagree with him on KH-32:

    https://www.rt.com/op-ed/503384-zircon-russia-hypersonic-anti-ship-missile/
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    Post  LMFS Wed Oct 14, 2020 3:52 pm

    mnztr wrote:Interesting piece on Tsirkon, although I disagree with him on KH-32:

    https://www.rt.com/op-ed/503384-zircon-russia-hypersonic-anti-ship-missile/

    I find it also strange that he assumes the Kh-32 can be "easily" shot down... I am not so sure about that. And he then forgets Kinzhal which already more than solves the defence of Russian shores. It is interesting though that he alleges the very low RCS of the Tsirkon, I had not heard comments about that and frankly assumed it flying so high and fast would make it an ideal target to be tracked by airborne and space-based IR sensors. US is in fact creating a new network of satellites to counter hypersonic weapons:

    https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36909/work-begins-on-starlink-like-constellation-of-small-hypersonic-missile-tracking-satellites

    Peresvet@Sea will certainly gain lots of small and fragile targets in the future Wink

    Problem is the defending missile always needs to be much more manuverable then the attacking missile. Which is why AAMs can pull far more G's then the fighters. (and of course they don't have to worry about killing the pilot). Also when you get to such altitudes, the air is too thin to manuver much, so responding to some very minor manuvers of Tsirkon will be almost impossible as the SAM will be only controlled by its rocket and other reaction thrusters. Its a very difficult problem to solve.

    Actually if the target of the anti-ship missile is defending itself, there is a progressively reduced degree of freedom for the attacking missile to manoeuver as it approaches and that can be used by the interceptor. Also the speed difference between the target and the interceptor influences the manoeuvrability needed by the later. Of course I agree that to intercept a hypersonic missile transversally crossing the area of the AD is and will be a big challenge.

    kvs wrote:
    All it takes is one poop form some troll and people have to run around acting like the troll had something important to add.

    Agree, in this case I just wanted to call out the disingenuous agenda behind the trolling...

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    Post  GarryB Wed Oct 14, 2020 11:25 pm

    AEGIS without carrier-provided targeting are highly vulnerable too...

    That is what I am saying... ship based air defence, just like land based air defence is not as good as surface and air based air defence, and it is not just being able to send out planes to check potential intruders or targets, it is airborne radars that stop low level sneak attacks through mountains or from behind islands etc etc or even in the radar shadow of a large number of civilian cargo ships... you could hide destroyers and cruisers behind a fully laden container ship...

    The range and persistence of UAV in particular is going to be a revolution in AEW and allow to cover all directions, all the time, at extended ranges.

    Especially HALE because the high altitude is excellent for radar... with these surface skin mounted photonic radar antenna... long endurance drones could become amazing in terms of antenna size... the full length and wingspan of the aircraft... it could orbit the carrier group for days at a time and use laser communications that can't be intercepted unless you get between the beam transmitters, so while the drone will be easy to spot with its radar emissions the ships operating with it should be quiet. It could send commands to fighters too, but they can just receive most of the time so they don't have to reveal their location to anyone either...

    The purpose of a larger carrier is to allow bigger aircraft with longer flight range and endurance like the Su-57 or a naval version plus an AWACS platform that can operate at altitude with a big radar. Whether it is a drone or not is not important. An Airship would be fine too, but a Yak-44 like aircraft means they could also carry a few extra aircraft of that type for inflight refuelling operations which would be useful. They could also be designed to carry long range missiles like 4,500km range cruise missiles for a strike role from standoff distances rather than an Intruder like aircraft intended to penetrate enemy air defences.

    I am not talking about ramjets, I have linked Kholod already like 20 posts above, it had an annular intake and combustion chamber for hypersonic flight. We just don't know how Tsirkon is built.

    The tests they did in the 1990s based on a tiny ramjet engine attached to the nose of an SA-5 SAM suggests to get the airflow control they need for supersonic combustion means a round intake is not good enough...

    3M22 Zircon Hypersonic Cruise Missile - Page 21 Lf14_r10

    The warhead was replaced with fuel and the seeker area replaced with instruments so there was about 150kgs of fuel... the missile was launched normally... those solid rocket boosters and the main rocket engine accelerated the whole vehicle up to high altitude and mach 5 speed. The ramjet kicked in and accelerated the entire missile from mach 5 to mach 6 and operated for about 90 seconds, during which the missile travelled almost 200km...

    The solid rocket boosters fell away after they were spent but that little scramjet on the nose powered the whole vehicle for that minute and a half...

    Ramjets are cool, but right now scramjets are 🔥

    Problem is the defending missile always needs to be much more manuverable then the attacking missile.

    Scramjet engines don't need to be big... look at the one above on the nose of an SA-5 SAM... you could mount it so that it can be physically turned to create vectored thrust. Also because its range is much shorter and warhead is much smaller than any anti ship missile it can be made much smaller and lighter which makes it easier to be more manouverable too.

    It hasn't been solved yet, but being able to fly to the moon wasn't possible till it was done either.

    Which is why AAMs can pull far more G's then the fighters. (and of course they don't have to worry about killing the pilot).

    The speeds AAMs fly at they have to pull more G than fighters. When you are moving at mach 2 a 180 degree turn at 40g means a 600km/h fighter jet could out turn you with a 5 g turn.

    In fact WWI biplanes often couldn't fly fast enough to turn at 9 g.... it was only WWII where flight speeds increased and control surfaces became more responsive that high g turns and blackouts started being a problem... but even then a biplane flying at 150km/h pulling 3g would probably outturn any Bf-109 at 450km/h pulling 7 or 8 g...

    Also when you get to such altitudes, the air is too thin to manuver much, so responding to some very minor manuvers of Tsirkon will be almost impossible as the SAM will be only controlled by its rocket and other reaction thrusters. Its a very difficult problem to solve.

    It wont be easy... but it wont be impossible either. They likely wont be launching one Zircon at targets, so any problems are going to be compounded by having to deal with multiple threats... but lets put it this way... if you look at threats from space then having an advanced air defence system might be a very useful thing that can act on the fly and deal with new targets as incoming objects break up into multiple smaller dangerous objects...

    I would expect the US will work out the most expensive way of solving the problem and spend trillions on that, so the company that lands that deal will join Google and Apple and Microsoft and Amazon, but the Russians will likely develop multiple solutions... they are talking about a 180km shell for their 152mm gun... imagine and airburst shell that showers an area with ball bearings... fire a 20 round burst to set a shower of ballbearings 150km from the ship at the altitude the target missiles are flying at... even if they only contact one or two individual balls... a ballbearing moving at a relative speed of mach 10 from the missile speed and say mach 2 with the speed of the shell and the bursting charge... a ball bearing hits a missile at mach 12 it is going to do some damage... if it sets off the warhead then game over for that missile but if it damages the radar or something else it could be rendered more vulnerable to the next line of defence...

    The point is that it is a missile, so jammers and decoys and flares and smoke and chaff all have a part to play as well...

    Anti tank missiles means different technology for tanks like APS and ERA and Shtora and Jammers and Nakidka and just not sitting out in the open like a dick, but tanks are necessary... they are just used differently to keep them safe... same with aircraft with SAMs and MANPADS... same with aircraft carriers.

    When ATGMs were widely used for the first time in the ME or Afghanistan when MANPADS seemed to make helicopters obsolete everybody said tanks and helicopters were dead... but they survive because they are useful and they are needed.

    Even if they hit the jackpot and get the opportunity to attack a carrier, its escort would easily shoot down all the incoming X-22/X-32 and P-700 missiles.

    There is no evidence that they could easily shoot down any of those missile types let alone the Zircon.

    They might get lucky and hit one or two...

    I would imagine the talk of the Indians looking at long range anti AWACS missiles for Brahmos... perhaps one of the earliest Zircon launches will be against the AWACS platforms operating over the carrier group... once that is taken down the ships will have to turn on their own radar and show their own positions which will also make them easier to target from enormous distances...
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    Post  LMFS Thu Oct 15, 2020 1:29 am

    GarryB wrote:Especially HALE because the high altitude is excellent for radar... with these surface skin mounted photonic radar antenna... long endurance drones could become amazing in terms of antenna size... the full length and wingspan of the aircraft... it could orbit the carrier group for days at a time and use laser communications that can't be intercepted unless you get between the beam transmitters, so while the drone will be easy to spot with its radar emissions the ships operating with it should be quiet. It could send commands to fighters too, but they can just receive most of the time so they don't have to reveal their location to anyone either...

    Why not use satellite comms?

    The antenna in the Helios-RLD presented at the Army this year was already a respectable 5x1 m, that is like 5 times the aperture of the Irbis-E. In fact with these kind of UAV and the advances in automation / AI that result in the unified battle management & information space, I am each time less convinced human operators inside an AWACS are needed anymore... the informational space will have instead a distributed architecture, at least in the theory: today some commenter was reporting about being at an online event where US Army was explaining how they planned to integrate every shooter and sensor in a huge network, and in the middle of the presentation very ironically sound connection was lost... if only real world would work like powerpoints Razz

    The tests they did in the 1990s based on a tiny ramjet engine attached to the nose of an SA-5 SAM suggests to get the airflow control they need for supersonic combustion means a round intake is not good enough...

    Why? How many Russian scramjets have you seen after Kholod? dunno

    It wont be easy... but it wont be impossible either.

    S-300V4, S-350 and S-400 should already have some serious counter-hypersonic capability and S-500, which is virtually tested already, is supposed to solve the problem... when US is able to create it. So agree, it is indeed doable. For the interceptors, it gets more and more difficult to match the kinematic capabilities of the target, but since these hypersonic weapons have become strategic weapons even when armed with conventional warheads, it will be worth the effort to make interceptors big and expensive enough to down them.
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    Post  mnztr Thu Oct 15, 2020 3:36 am

    LMFS wrote:
    Actually if the target of the anti-ship missile is defending itself, there is a progressively reduced degree of freedom for the attacking missile to manoeuver as it approaches and that can be used by the interceptor. Also the speed difference between the target and the interceptor influences the manoeuvrability needed by the later. Of course I agree that to intercept a hypersonic missile transversally crossing the area of the AD is and will be a big challenge.

    How is the defender going to know which target the missile is aimed at? Especially if it is using optical/infrared passive sensors for terminal guidance. The defender has to react, the missile will use some sort of algorithm to incorporate some approach manuvers... it may also release decoys. The missile can regain manuver as it hits the more dense amosphere at around 40-50K feet as well. Also targeting radars on the defender will probably assist terminal guidance and make things like flares, smoke and chaff less effective. Also reaction times are miniscule


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    Post  GarryB Thu Oct 15, 2020 5:37 am


    Why not use satellite comms?

    Because Satellite comms are vulnerable to attack and intercept.... having drones you carry with you and can be resupplied with at sea makes rather more sense... and frees those satellite comms for more urgent things.

    In fact with these kind of UAV and the advances in automation / AI that result in the unified battle management & information space, I am each time less convinced human operators inside an AWACS are needed anymore...

    So essentially you are suggesting a piece of software collect radar information gathered by a drone and issue orders to pilots and ships captains about how they deploy and the tactics they execute.... Hahahahaha... funny guy... I am sure the commander of the aircraft carrier would find it amusing that internet experts thinks he should run all his decisions and tactics through a computer to decide what should be done... he has been replaced by robbie the robot...

    The same thing on land would be vehicle commanders can be replaced with riflemen... the AI software can determine what the troops need to do in combat... they don't need a human slowing things down...

    Funny guy.

    Why? How many Russian scramjets have you seen after Kholod?

    They tested a ramjet to Mach 6 which is pretty damn impressive... how many other ramjet powered weapons reach that speed let alone ones dragging SA-5 missiles behind them...

    The finding of the tests was that they didn't get enough flow control with a round intake so they said they were looking at rectangular intakes moving forward into Scramjet testing...

    In other words with round intakes they could only get to mach 6 and thought they could get faster with more airflow control...

    S-300V4, S-350 and S-400 should already have some serious counter-hypersonic capability and S-500, which is virtually tested already, is supposed to solve the problem...

    A target like a cruise missile or ballistic rocket the problem is just speed and those weapons are excellent solutions to those problems with even eye wateringly fast but predictable targets. What we are talking about are eye wateringly fast targets that are also unpredictable... with a lot of work and testing and improvements it should be possible to deal with and it will incidental make them much more capable against much slower manouverable targets too...

    A Shilka is very good at shooting down straight and level flying targets, but a manouvering target is still tricky and difficult to knock down, guided shells and airburst shells makes it more effective, but replacing the projectiles with a beam of light makes the interception much simpler too.

    it will be worth the effort to make interceptors big and expensive enough to down them.

    The first interceptors might simply use brute force... nuclear warheads.

    For Russia it is fine because most countries on its border are hostile so when you spot a French mach 8 target being launched towards Russian territory it is fairly straight forward to launch a few interceptor missiles a few kilometres apart that explode above Poland or even Germany to intercept these missiles with a fiery wall of self defence... pre-emptive self defence.... clown

    Brings new meaning to the phrase... "Go Ahead... Make My Day...."

    How is the defender going to know which target the missile is aimed at?

    Spread the targets apart or bring them in close together so it is either obvious, or it does not matter...

    Especially if it is using optical/infrared passive sensors for terminal guidance.

    Russian Frigates and Corvettes have laser dazzling systems to defend against optically guided missiles including ATGMs so I would suspect their Cruisers and destroyers would have something even better... like full DIRCMS...

    The missile can regain manuver as it hits the more dense amosphere at around 40-50 feet as well. Also targeting radars on the defender will probably assist terminal guidance and make things like flares, smoke and chaff less effective. Also reaction times are miniscule

    It is going to be complex... a tiny Buoy with a jammer on board could distract a lot of incoming weapons... they will likely land near it but would unlikely get a direct hit which means it could sit there all day jamming and distracting... there is no such thing as 100% effective... in attack or defence.

    The Zircon is going to be a very very powerful weapon... it is very exciting.... but just like those tank gun launched missiles that missed their targets... they wont be perfect and they will stay dangerous but wont be one Zircon one ship....
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    Post  Arrow Thu Oct 15, 2020 8:19 am

    GarryB wrote:





    They tested a ramjet to Mach 6 which is pretty damn impressive... how many other ramjet powered weapons reach that speed let alone ones dragging SA-5 missiles behind them...

    The finding of the tests was that they didn't get enough flow control with a round intake so they said they were looking at rectangular intakes moving forward into Scramjet testing...

    In other words with round intakes they could only get to mach 6 and thought they could get faster with more airflow control...


    Interestingly, there are no square side air intakes visible in the Zircon test photos. Well, unless they are almost at the front where they were covered by a cover.
    Interestingly, the movie is assembled from two different starts? For what ?
    The Zircon remains the most mysterious cruise missile. They even showed more on Burevestnik.

    ussia needs aircraft carriers to defend their surface ships to make them a global force, because Russia will only grow with international trade and that means by sea, so once they start making destroyers and cruisers and carriers they can also start making ships to deliver goods to countries around the world and to bring in goods from around the world... wrote:

    The issue of aircraft carriers is a very distant topic for Russia. Maybe in 2040 we will see the first Russian carrier only when it goes well. Currently, it is important for Russia to control the northern sea route. Russia can control almost the entire art because it is within the range of their air force, frigates, corvettes, and they are building a fleet of icebreakers.
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    Post  william.boutros Thu Oct 15, 2020 10:08 am

    Arrow wrote:
    GarryB wrote:





    They tested a ramjet to Mach 6 which is pretty damn impressive... how many other ramjet powered weapons reach that speed let alone ones dragging SA-5 missiles behind them...

    The finding of the tests was that they didn't get enough flow control with a round intake so they said they were looking at rectangular intakes moving forward into Scramjet testing...

    In other words with round intakes they could only get to mach 6 and thought they could get faster with more airflow control...


    Interestingly, there are no square side air intakes visible in the Zircon test photos. Well, unless they are almost at the front where they were covered by a cover.
    Interestingly, the movie is assembled from two different starts? For what ?
    The Zircon remains the most mysterious cruise missile. They even showed more on Burevestnik.

    This is correct and it seems that the idea of having vertical take off planes on smaller carriers not bad given the doctrine of limited intervention in wars. Of course they would see limited use in a global conflict.



    The issue of aircraft carriers is a very distant topic for Russia. Maybe in 2040 we will see the first Russian carrier only when it goes well. Currently, it is important for Russia to control the northern sea route. Russia can control almost the entire art because it is within the range of their air force, frigates, corvettes, and they are building a fleet of icebreakers.
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    Post  LMFS Thu Oct 15, 2020 6:07 pm

    GarryB wrote:So essentially you are suggesting a piece of software collect radar information gathered by a drone and issue orders to pilots and ships captains about how they deploy and the tactics they execute.... Hahahahaha... funny guy... I am sure the commander of the aircraft carrier would find it amusing that internet experts thinks he should run all his decisions and tactics through a computer to decide what should be done... he has been replaced by robbie the robot...

    The same thing on land would be vehicle commanders can be replaced with riflemen... the AI software can determine what the troops need to do in combat... they don't need a human slowing things down...

    Funny guy.

    Not as funny as to apparently think that generals are sitting in AWACS issuing orders to pilots  Shocked

    Who says that replacing AWACS operators equals eliminating the whole chain of command??

    SW will be able to process and consolidate radar, ESM, EO sensors etc all over the fleet and therefore clean all the informational noise so the command can take informed decisions and relay them to fighters.

    In regards of humans being in charge of "everything", I remind you modern SAM systems don't even need humans to press the proverbial button, they are completely automated from target detection to recognition to prioritization to shoot-down... this is not done as a concession for making AD systems easier to operate, but rather because the performance of the systems grows significantly, to the point that in the fight against hypersonic missiles humans are not intended to be in the loop. The trend is clear, that is why I say that a centralized structure based on big, manned and scarce AWACS can be progressively substituted by a far more robust, distributed, unmanned structure. Let us see what happens and who is funny in the end ok?

    The finding of the tests was that they didn't get enough flow control with a round intake so they said they were looking at rectangular intakes moving forward into Scramjet testing...

    Do you have some proof of that?

    A target like a cruise missile or ballistic rocket the problem is just speed and those weapons are excellent solutions to those problems with even eye wateringly fast but predictable targets. What we are talking about are eye wateringly fast targets that are also unpredictable...

    That is not what recent tests seem to indicate and remember S-300V was from inception intended to intercept Pershing's MARVs. A certain capability against hypersonic, manoeuvrable targets is what I am talking about.

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    Post  GarryB Fri Oct 16, 2020 4:44 am

    Interestingly, there are no square side air intakes visible in the Zircon test photos. Well, unless they are almost at the front where they were covered by a cover.

    I haven't seen any clear photos at all of the air intakes of Zircon, so that is moot.

    Interestingly, the movie is assembled from two different starts? For what ?

    Movies released to the public often come from multiple camera angles and are edited together... but who is to say they released all the camera footage... the footage from one angle might release information and give a view they are not ready to reveal to the public yet... those camera locations are fixed for the launches so a previous launch of a different older missile could be substituted in to avoid revealing something they want to keep secret.

    The US is BEHIND... you can bet your ass they will give hands full of money to anyone who can show them what Zircon looks like because in this case it indicated the shape needed to fly for reasonable periods at high altitude and very high speed... and getting someone to copy from will save them billions of dollars and years of testing to get right.

    The Zircon remains the most mysterious cruise missile. They even showed more on Burevestnik.

    The speeds Burevestnik operates at do not require sophisticated aerodynamics or a new technology scramjet air intake.

    The issue of aircraft carriers is a very distant topic for Russia. Maybe in 2040 we will see the first Russian carrier only when it goes well. Currently, it is important for Russia to control the northern sea route. Russia can control almost the entire art because it is within the range of their air force, frigates, corvettes, and they are building a fleet of icebreakers.

    Managing the northern sea route can be solved by investment in bases and ports along the NSR path and is already either sorted out or in the process of being so. New roads and rail connections will further improve the situation and make exploitation of the Russian Far East easier and safer and cheaper...

    Larger ships like transport ships and larger military ships are the next step.

    This is correct and it seems that the idea of having vertical take off planes on smaller carriers not bad given the doctrine of limited intervention in wars. Of course they would see limited use in a global conflict.

    The whole point of planes on carriers is range and speed and reach... if you want to fuck that up with small vertical takeoff fighters you might as well not bother with the cost of carriers in the first place. Smaller carriers cost ships

    Look at the Falklands.

    Because they had shitty little carriers they had to take the enormous risk of sending Vulcan bombers from the UK to strike the airfields on the islands to prevent the Argentines from forward basing their fighters on the islands... without that attack argentine fighters could have met the British Armata out at sea and likely would have blunted the attack completely. By damaging the airfield on the island the Argentine fighters had to operate from the Argentine mainland so they only had 5 minutes to fight and then had to head back home.... making them much less of a threat.

    Even still lots of ships were hit because without proper AWACS platforms the little carriers had to sit back and operate from a distance too, making ships near the islands much more vulnerable to argentine fighters flying from the mainland and coming in from behind the radar cover of the islands to attack low and fast the transport ships delivering troops and equipment for the landing.

    If Britain had a decent carrier with Phantoms and Buccaneers the Buccs could have wasted the Island based airfields easily and much more cheaply than a Vulcan flying from the UK could. The Phantoms would have dominated the air, with Sky Flash missiles probably fired in enormous numbers with probably not a great kill probability but enough to scare the Argentine pilots from even getting near British fighters. Instead they came up against slow Sea Harriers whose only AAM armament was Sidewinders...

    The money the British taxpayers saved by having 20K ton carriers with Dinky little VSTOL SH fighters, they ended up paying in ships lost and lives lost...

    Of course with no carriers they could not have even bothered trying to take those islands back because they would have gotten a thrashing.

    Not as funny as to apparently think that generals are sitting in AWACS issuing orders to pilots Shocked

    Who says that replacing AWACS operators equals eliminating the whole chain of command??

    SW will be able to process and consolidate radar, ESM, EO sensors etc all over the fleet and therefore clean all the informational noise so the command can take informed decisions and relay them to fighters.

    Are you suggesting that current AWACS are just AEW and that the decisions and commands come from somewhere else?

    The guys in AWACS are like the guys in vans in ground based air defence, they coordinate the defence against all attacking forces by making decisions and issuing orders.

    In regards of humans being in charge of "everything", I remind you modern SAM systems don't even need humans to press the proverbial button, they are completely automated from target detection to recognition to prioritization to shoot-down... this is not done as a concession for making AD systems easier to operate, but rather because the performance of the systems grows significantly, to the point that in the fight against hypersonic missiles humans are not intended to be in the loop.

    Humans are always in the loop... an air defence system that just shoots down targets based on IFF code responses will shoot down a lot of friendlies and neutrals...

    The trend is clear, that is why I say that a centralized structure based on big, manned and scarce AWACS can be progressively substituted by a far more robust, distributed, unmanned structure. Let us see what happens and who is funny in the end ok?

    So what are you saying... carriers will be replaced with corvettes and each corvette will have a hand launched drone to cover that corvettes 5 square kilometres of airspace allocation and some computer bank will be making all the decisions?

    They will continue to need big carriers for big fighters so that will always be the obvious location for command and control... whether there is a Yak44 or a dozen drones doing the same thing, the point is that putting the command and control in the Yak means it communicates with ships and fighter planes... if you want to convert the radar aircraft to just an AEW role like a Ka-31 then the datalink traffic will become enormous between the AEW aircraft and teh ships that process the information and so the AEW aircraft will always be easy to spot because of the emissions traffic, but the command ship processing its data and issuing commands will also become visible because of its transmissions now too... or does the future of AI include Telepathy?

    Do you have some proof of that?

    Sorry, I didn't realise I was being interrogated and would need to back up what I say with sources...

    That is not what recent tests seem to indicate and remember S-300V was from inception intended to intercept Pershing's MARVs. A certain capability against hypersonic, manoeuvrable targets is what I am talking about.

    MARV was more about warheads from one bus being able to independently target separate discrete targets with their own propulsion... in comparison to MIRV which is more akin to an Su-24 bomber with 6 x 500kg bombs and the Gefest & T upgrade where it flies a path that takes it over the targets where the dumb bombs are released to hit the target on a purely ballistic profile... the warheads are dumb free fall munitions that are released to hit their targets...

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    Post  LMFS Fri Oct 16, 2020 11:16 am

    GarryB wrote:Are you suggesting that current AWACS are just AEW and that the decisions and commands come from somewhere else?

    No, but they belong into a bigger command chain, they pass and receive orders and data. That can be done with unmanned platforms as well. Do you suggest AWACS crews take orders from nobody?

    Humans are always in the loop... an air defence system that just shoots down targets based on IFF code responses will shoot down a lot of friendlies and neutrals...

    Against hypersonic weapons as explained there is no time for humans picking up phones, it has been stated by Russian sources that the highest end systems do not actually need humans and in fact are better off without them. I am just transmitting what I have read, I am not against humans overseeing the operations and issuing at least the final order to fire, though they fail too, as we have seen recently.

    So what are you saying... carriers will be replaced with corvettes and each corvette will have a hand launched drone to cover that corvettes 5 square kilometres of airspace allocation and some computer bank will be making all the decisions?

    No idea where your are taking this conclusion from what I said. I just said that UAVs are getting more and more capable, and having such huge advantage in persistence, it makes a lot of sense to use them more and more, to the point that maybe VMF does not actually need a new "classical" manned AWACS like E-2 or Yak-44 and can have more surveillance platforms of smaller size and much longer persistence to cover more space much cheaper than it would do with conventional AWACS. It is just a possibility, we will see, but I would not be surprised if they go directly to unmanned RLD aircraft.

    They will continue to need big carriers for big fighters so that will always be the obvious location for command and control... whether there is a Yak44 or a dozen drones doing the same thing, the point is that putting the command and control in the Yak means it communicates with ships and fighter planes... if you want to convert the radar aircraft to just an AEW role like a Ka-31 then the datalink traffic will become enormous between the AEW aircraft and teh ships that process the information and so the AEW aircraft will always be easy to spot because of the emissions traffic, but the command ship processing its data and issuing commands will also become visible because of its transmissions now too... or does the future of AI include Telepathy?

    I am in favour of carriers using long range/persistence UAVs of the Helios-RLD type, which have 30 h flight time vs. 5-6 on an AWACS like E-2. The issue of the data traffic needs clarifying, there are many ways to allow the carrier to minimize the possibility of being located by its emissions:

    - On the one hand, carriers coordinating operations of an air group are not going to be completely in silence, since the fleets command is at the ship and not in the AWACS and there are necessary comms to coordinate landings etc. So that is an existing underlying limitation, also with AWACS. The position of AWACS gives away the carrier too, BTW.
    - Modern AEW UAVs will not need to transmit raw data, they can simply send asynchronous situational updates and commands / events
    - There are satellite communications which are supposedly the ones you proposed for VMF ships to get targeting info to be able to attack USN
    - There are highly directional comms links, like those laser comms you proposed yourself or more conventional like RF ones.
    - Once you have many interconnected nodes in the air with fighters, UAVs etc, there are many ways you can relay the information in the best way to make it robust and difficult to intercept, and to make more difficult to locate the center of command, since the network has a distributed structure.

    Both VMF and USN (CEC, Project Overmatch) are developing these capabilities as we speak, and actually as some of their highest priorities.

    “The Navy’s ability to establish and sustain sea control in the future is at risk," Gilday said in his letter. “I am confident that closing this risk is dependent on enhancing Distributed Maritime Operations through a teamed manned/unmanned force that exploits artificial intelligence and machine learning. I am not confident we are building the Naval Operational Architecture connecting and enabling this future force as quickly as we must.”

    Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday tasked Rear Adm. Douglas Small to lead an effort that will “develop networks, infrastructure, data architecture, tools, and analytics that support the operational and developmental environment that will enable our sustained maritime dominance.”

    “Beyond recapitalizing our undersea deterrent, there is no higher developmental priority in the U.S. Navy,” Gilday said. “All other efforts are supporting you. Your goal is to enable a Navy that swarms the sea, delivering synchronized lethal and non-lethal effects from near-and-far, every axis, and every domain.”

    https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/10/14/the-us-navys-manhattan-project-has-its-leader

    Sorry, I didn't realise I was being interrogated and would need to back up what I say with sources...

    My bad, I didn't realize you were just giving your personal opinion.

    MARV was more about warheads from one bus being able to independently target separate discrete targets with their own propulsion... in comparison to MIRV which is more akin to an Su-24 bomber with 6 x 500kg bombs and the Gefest & T upgrade where it flies a path that takes it over the targets where the dumb bombs are released to hit the target on a purely ballistic profile... the warheads are dumb free fall munitions that are released to hit their targets...

    Well, they are not ballistic and intercepting them implies some ability both kinematically and in terms of guidance against manoeuvring targets, see the pictures above.
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    Post  magnumcromagnon Fri Oct 16, 2020 3:12 pm

    LMFS wrote:Well, they are not ballistic and intercepting them implies some ability both kinematically and in terms of guidance against manoeuvring targets, see the pictures above.

    The maneuvering of MARV is exclusively to attain higher accuracy against targets, as the ability to accurately hit hardened bunkers and silos were crucial in defeating them. MARV technology is almost half a century old, and their maneuvering is not to avoid interception. The first proper hypersonic maneuvering weapon didn't appear until the late 90's (Topol-M).
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    Post  LMFS Fri Oct 16, 2020 4:40 pm

    magnumcromagnon wrote:The maneuvering of MARV is exclusively to attain higher accuracy against targets, as the ability to accurately hit hardened bunkers and silos were crucial in defeating them. MARV technology is almost half a century old, and their maneuvering is not to avoid interception. The first proper hypersonic maneuvering weapon didn't appear until the late 90's (Topol-M).

    Yes, I know MARVS were mainly intended to hit targets and not to dodge AD, but if the original argument is that current SAM can only take on exclusively ballistic hypersonic targets, then it needs to be said that is not exactly true...
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    Post  GarryB Sat Oct 17, 2020 4:33 am

    No, but they belong into a bigger command chain, they pass and receive orders and data. That can be done with unmanned platforms as well. Do you suggest AWACS crews take orders from nobody?

    The more interconnected links of communication you have constantly transmitting information back and forth... well you might as well broadcast heavy metal and paint a target sign on your ass..

    If you think every command decision has to go to Putin...

    A carrier group has a clear chain of command and some pretty obvious and clear goals and the advantage of AWACS as opposed to AEW is that there are fewer delays and decision making needed.


    Against hypersonic weapons as explained there is no time for humans picking up phones, it has been stated by Russian sources that the highest end systems do not actually need humans and in fact are better off without them.

    And a flying target takes off from an airfield in an unfriendly country and starts heading towards your position... shoot it down right?

    The Americans gave their ship commander and first officer a medal for murdering just under 300 civilians in Iranian airspace, but how do you justify that if you come from any other country?

    I am just transmitting what I have read, I am not against humans overseeing the operations and issuing at least the final order to fire, though they fail too, as we have seen recently.

    So you were only following orders... I see... Twisted Evil

    No idea where your are taking this conclusion from what I said. I just said that UAVs are getting more and more capable, and having such huge advantage in persistence, it makes a lot of sense to use them more and more, to the point that maybe VMF does not actually need a new "classical" manned AWACS like E-2 or Yak-44 and can have more surveillance platforms of smaller size and much longer persistence to cover more space much cheaper than it would do with conventional AWACS. It is just a possibility, we will see, but I would not be surprised if they go directly to unmanned RLD aircraft.

    Because we have already identified... range is key... range of detection and flight endurance... so the bigger the aircraft carrying the biggest radar with the most fuel and the ability to refuel in flight is best isn't it? Using drones is nice and all, but when they can do everything a drone fleet can go out and do all the jobs needed so there wont be any navy at all essentially.

    Using drones makes sense but drones like HALEs are easy kills which means they are expensive for what they are... or is there a long range radar design with datalink and processing equipment you can think of that is so cheap it becomes expendable.

    Don't confuse AEW or AWACS drones as being cheap and expendable because it is something they can never be by definition.

    It is like the western idea that rocket artillery is long range and can be guided so it can replace all tube artillery too.

    Drones have lots of very useful features, but replacing AWACS platforms is not one of them.

    In fact I would go the other way and say manned naval AWACS planes would actually sell rather better than much bigger much more expensive land based versions like the A-100 because while they will not be actually cheap, they offer a high percentage of the performance of the big planes at a reduced cost that matches smaller budgets in smaller air forces... buy a few of them and save even more, because having quite a few of them would be useful.

    A bit like what the Russian AF might be doing with Su-35 upgrades of their Su-30s perhaps to operate as mini AWACS platforms for smaller fighters like MiG-29M2 or MiG-35.

    The difference is that the much more powerful 360 degree radar of a Yak-44 equivalent means the one plane could carry a dozen R-37Ms under its wings for long range self defence and it could probably control 24 or perhaps even 48 defending interceptors at a time against multiple enemy air borne threats.

    I am in favour of carriers using long range/persistence UAVs of the Helios-RLD type, which have 30 h flight time vs. 5-6 on an AWACS like E-2. The issue of the data traffic needs clarifying, there are many ways to allow the carrier to minimize the possibility of being located by its emissions:

    The platform needs to operate from the carrier... most HALEs wont fit on the deck lifts. Folding them up reduces strength and increases weight which also reduces performance.

    Carrier based AWACS could use inflight refuelling to remain on station for longer periods... being able to stand up and having a toilet and galley on board can improve comfort for the crew and operators and make it more autonomous. (if they do it for strike aircraft they can do it for these planes)...

    Russia and the Soviet Union have experience with carriers... with dinky little Kiev class ships with VSTOL fighters... and their conclusion was that bigger was better... they designed and built two kuznetsov types and decided that a bigger carrier with catapults would be even better... hense Ulyanovsk carriers were designed and commenced building... and surprise surprise... the British carriers are in a similar weight class... does anyone thinking dinky little carriers with VSTOL fighters could save some money think they are idiots?

    - On the one hand, carriers coordinating operations of an air group are not going to be completely in silence, since the fleets command is at the ship and not in the AWACS and there are necessary comms to coordinate landings etc. So that is an existing underlying limitation, also with AWACS. The position of AWACS gives away the carrier too, BTW.

    You are missing the point... AWACS platforms will be continuously scanning for air threats... up high, down low and everywhere between... the entire force will be using the Sigma battle management system discretely sharing information between platforms as information is collected by active and passive sensors and equipment.

    In comparison the orders given to ships and aircraft will be rare and brief and not voice communications but broad band burst transmissions.

    Having 20 drones flying around the place is just going to say search here for the carrier group isn't it?

    Either way 20 drones would be easier to shoot down because their radars will be smaller to fit on a drone... high or medium altitude drones have huge wingspans and simply would not have the power to weight ratio to get airborne from a ski jump ramp... which helps all the fighters get airborne... so it would not only need catapults to reliably get airborne landing will be an issue too because those things are all wing so you would need clear decks and no ski jump for takeoff (meaning a reduction in performance for fighters who benefit from the ski jump takeoffs) but also with landings the entire rear of the carrier would need to be kept clear in case a long thin wing of a drone clips them during landing and results in a crash.

    Actually an old Soviet design of a plane with two wings... ie a biplane, where when the aircraft was on the ground had good lift for low speed takeoffs and landings, but once up in the air the undercarriage and the bottom wing folded up into the fuselage and top wing respectively to create a single wing much faster fighter...

    Some creative thinking like that could allow a high lift takeoff and landing plane that can operate from an aircraft carrier but in flight it can turn into a low drag shape able to fly higher and slower for long periods of time.

    Hell.. a Yak-44 with a small nuclear reactor and electric motor to fly for years.

    Or an airship made of modern materials with fuel cell technology and solar panels and nuclear batteries and perhaps even a tether to a ship for power and communications... there are plenty of solutions...

    - Modern AEW UAVs will not need to transmit raw data, they can simply send asynchronous situational updates and commands / events

    Processing the data on board like an AWACS aircraft does means more weight and reduced endurance... might as well put people on there to create the orders instead of transmitting it to a ship for someone else to do the same.

    - There are satellite communications which are supposedly the ones you proposed for VMF ships to get targeting info to be able to attack USN

    Target info, not live real time tracking...

    - Once you have many interconnected nodes in the air with fighters, UAVs etc, there are many ways you can relay the information in the best way to make it robust and difficult to intercept, and to make more difficult to locate the center of command, since the network has a distributed structure.

    Their network system is already in place on new and upgraded ships... but using drones means more communications traffic.

    My bad, I didn't realize you were just giving your personal opinion.

    It is not my personal opinion... I am not an engineer... there is no way I could possibly come to the conclusion that they need rectangular air intakes on my own.... that is patently absurd...

    Well, they are not ballistic and intercepting them implies some ability both kinematically and in terms of guidance against manoeuvring targets, see the pictures above.

    They are ballistic, but are designed to manouver to hit their targets... they were never intended to evade defences... MARVS are not new.

    Continuing the analogy I started the difference is that between 4 x 500kg dumb iron bombs being carried by an Su-24 and dropped one at a time on a string of targets along a flight path that is calculated to fly over all four targets, and that same Su-24 having four Grom glide bombs flying a path that would allow all the glide bombs to reach their targets from a single release point.

    The difference of course is that the bus that carries both sets of payloads is a ballistically launched vehicle... the MIRV model has fuel and manouvers... but nothing like a cruise missile or ballistic missile... to release its warheads on a ballistic path to hit specific separate targets. The MARV bus is also a ballistic vehicle that does not need to manouver for each warhead... it just gets all the warheads to a specific point in its ballistic flight path where it can release all the warheads and each warhead can manouver its own flight direction and speed to fall on the target it is supposed to hit... it does not fly like a cruise missile... it has course correction ability but it is not flying like a plane or a cruise missile... it is falling like an artillery shell, but it has the capacity to steer itself like a laser guided bomb... ie copperhead or Kitilov, or the Gran 120mm mortar round...

    The maneuvering of MARV is exclusively to attain higher accuracy against targets, as the ability to accurately hit hardened bunkers and silos were crucial in defeating them. MARV technology is almost half a century old, and their maneuvering is not to avoid interception. The first proper hypersonic maneuvering weapon didn't appear until the late 90's (Topol-M).

    MARV technology is for extreme precision and also to hit targets that were further off the trajectory of the missile it is released from.

    For a MIRV bus to hit a target the whole bus has to manouver so the warhead released will hit the target.... then it has to manouver again to get the next target on line etc etc... it is a lot of manouvering and depending on the flight path of the missile some targets would not be an option.

    For instance launching a missile from Moscow towards London you could hit lots and lots of targets on the way... because there are a lot of big cities between Moscow and London, but some at the north and some at the south might not be reachable by that MIRV armed missile... a MARV armed missile can release warheads earlier and they can turn further and reach a much more spread out grouping of target centres and because each are powered and are designed to manouver for accuracy they can hit hard targets, as opposed to MIRVS which can get point targets but not as precisely as MARVs, and MRVs which are more your city killers.

    Yes, I know MARVS were mainly intended to hit targets and not to dodge AD, but if the original argument is that current SAM can only take on exclusively ballistic hypersonic targets, then it needs to be said that is not exactly true...

    The manouvering a MARV does is generally early in its flight to get it onto a collision path with its target... it wont do a lot of manouvering closer to the target except fine tuning its path to get a more accurate hit on a small point target... such minor corrections are not enormously difficult for SAMs to allow for...

    The S-300V is designed to shoot down Pershing II missiles which while not as fast as an ICBM will likely manouver rather more than any MARV would...
    LMFS
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    Post  LMFS Sat Oct 17, 2020 11:28 am

    GarryB wrote:The manouvering a MARV does is generally early in its flight to get it onto a collision path with its target... it wont do a lot of manouvering closer to the target except fine tuning its path to get a more accurate hit on a small point target... such minor corrections are not enormously difficult for SAMs to allow for...

    3M22 Zircon Hypersonic Cruise Missile - Page 21 Ev8szh10

    I posted that picture before in order to show the kind of vigorous manoeuvring MARV perform and prevent such allegations as those above, but it is clear each one sees things differently. So as personal tastes are concerned, this is neither "ballistic" at that stage nor "fine tuning" nor "minor corrections" to me, that is why I think S-300V4 in particular needs to be already a serious asset against hypersonic weapons. Not as much as S-500 will be but probably enough for most of the "super-duper" crap US will rush to deploy in the short term, more for PR reasons than for military value.

    As to the topic of whether UAVs will partially or completely replace AWACS in naval environment, I still think they make a lot of sense and their development and integration into carriers will be fast tracked, multiplying their surveillance capabilities, so we will see.
    GarryB
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    Post  GarryB Sun Oct 18, 2020 12:57 am

    Three dimensional trajectories represented in two dimensions can look strange, but such extreme manouvering likely rendered the flight speed a fraction of what it started out as being likely actually making the warhead easier to intercept... not harder.

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