MiG-31BM/Κ Interceptor/Attack aircraft: News #2

Well the point is that the programme name is PAK DA, like the PAK FA for the Su-57, but while MiG can call their prototype MiG-41 it is the Russian Air Force (or Army or Navy) that gives the aircraft its designation, so they can use any designation they please... until it enters service or normally before we wont find out what it will be officially called, though MiG-41 is a reasonable guess for it.

BTW, what is the chance for kazakhstan to donate mig-31s to ukraine or turkey? What will russia do if it donates?

Their version MiG-31 are not upgraded up to date aircraft... Turkey couldn't operate them without support and they wouldn't last a day in the Ukraine... there would only be a few places they could even take off and those locations would be well within S-400 reach.

MiG-31 is not just an aircraft, it's a spaceship, you can't just move it around Ukraine and launch it from the dirt stripes. It would be like USA gave Ukrainians two Ticonderogas, it would just result in a missile hellfire from Russian position on their general whereabouts.

The MiG-31 has serious support requirements and can't just operate from the side of any old motorway... once airborne its position is given away with its radar and without its radar operating it is blind... it is not intended to operate in contested air space with enemy fighters, though it is not slouch as an interceptor, it would attract attention very quickly and a former Soviet model probably wouldn't be able to defend itself from S-400 etc systems around the place.

I wanted to ask thread visitors whether do they take Ukrainian R-37 claims at face value. It's easy to dig into this, but it could also be counter-propaganda to hide losses from frontline fighters fighting with R-77 - consequently the same platforms Russia is selling around the world.

Not clear what you are asking, R-37s can be used against enemy fighters but equally have been tested against anti ship missiles and other ballistic missile threats.

Recovering parts of R-37s could be from a range of sources and situations and not every missile hits its target.

Do you all think a MiG-29 isn't able to shake off a R-37 using the basic radar warning receiver?

An old model MiG-29 is more vulnerable than an upgraded one, but the R-37 fired at range is lofted rather high in terms of trajectory so shaking off a incoming missile moving mach 5 plus coming down at you at high speed would be an impressive dance I would pay to see.

But equally it might have been fired at a Tochka-U missile fired earlier in the war and only recently discovered...

Pretty hard to determine what actually happened... it has a 60kg warhead with directional fragmentation effect, so it sprays fragments in the direction of the target when it reaches an optimal intercept point.

I'm also highly skeptical about the claim that Russians are spamming 3-4 missiles just to achieve a mission kill, and it comes from the same camp.

That is funny... suggesting the Russians are launching 3-4 missiles per kill tells us they are not even close to running out of missiles, but what is the suggestion?

Russian missiles are inaccurate, which would mean firing more would not really help.

Ukrainian self defence systems are amazing... but they keep losing aircraft anyway.

Yeah the entire story is dubious since UK/Ukr claim that MiG-31/R-37 is a deadly combo for Ukr Air Force but then they go on about VVS spamming 3-4 R-37 from long range at a single target.

Obviously I am quite biased but I would suggest that this is just evidence that they are lying and can't be trusted on anything at all, but that is just me I guess.

MiG-29 should be able to outmaneuver it if it has enough situational awareness.

I think the ability to outmanouver air to air missiles comes from Hollywood movies... some big heavy SAMs that come up at a shallow angle you can out manouver like the SA-6 because you can see the smoke from the ground moving up towards you and therefore you can see the missiles turn towards you so turning to make the missiles turn harder and harder till it can't turn more would be a good way for a pilot to out turn the missile... but on the old MiG-29s the indicator shows the missile is coming from this direction... and from above... an R-37 heading directly towards you is smaller than the size of a manhole cover and it is moving at mach 4 plus speeds and the engine is burned out... so no massive smoke trail to work out if it is turning at all... giving the pilot no indication of which way to turn and how hard to turn to out turn it.

More importantly the R-37 has a 60kg warhead with advanced fusing that directs its fragment at the target, so even if the missile blows past your aircraft, the warhead will send a blast of fragments in your direction designed to disable and bring down a heavy bomber by removing a wing or tail surface or smashing the cockpit.

Obviously they are not super weapons that always kill their targets, there is no such thing, but most of the time I honestly think the target has no idea they are even under attack which would explain why they seem to get good kills fairly quickly.

I mean it's 20-30% faster than usual BVR AAM with G limit probably about 5 times less. MiG-29 and human pilot should have larger G limit than R-37.

The manufacturer rate the R-37 for export as capable of engaging targets pulling 8g.

That means most fully loaded fighters and all AWACS and tankers and other heavy types cannot evade these missiles.

I'm trying to imply that regular Flankers and regular R-77/RVV-AE have a lot of success against Ukr Air Force.

I would tend to agree. The Orcs will be jumpy and have communication with HATO who will likely be trying to spot Russian fighters and warn nazi fighters to not get airborne when they are around so WVR combat becomes unlikely, so the longer ranged missiles are going to make more sense to carry and use.

Which they actually use I suspect will depend on the actual situation at the time of launch I suppose.

In turn Ukr tries to "put blame" on a high flying impunity spaceship launching torpedoes from deep inside its home territory. In turn it makes Ukr look like they're fighting some wunderwaffe that can be taken care of only if USA gives them long range missiles they can use against MiG-31s launch bases, and not that they're dying in regular A2A combat against a better foe.

That is true, because obviously the MiG-31 and R-37s are both Ukrainian designs so how can they defeat them...

That and of course they don't have enough Abrams and Leopards... if they had more they could beat the Russian AF too.

The public information about R-37 successes was disseminated by british Royal United Service. I'm in disbelief due to who's saying it, not what's been said.

Wouldn't believe any official statement from the British sources... they are not interested in the truth or reality... just bending hearts and minds to their way of thinking.

Somewhat like if you had a small business and you decided to get a million dollar networking rack for the sake of network security. Tomorrow some punk breaks your door with a crowbar loots your company and loads the entire rack onto a truck and off goes in to the sunset...together with your equipment and trade secrets because you didn't have all the security layers needed.

Actually I think a better explanation would be for a third world country to buy a MiG-31 and expect it operating on its own without any C4ISTAR support to be as effective as it is in a first world countries armed forces.

For these things to work they need lots of things and not just support stuff to keep them operational, but they need command and control and communications as well as platforms to communicate with it to supply enemy information about targets and threats... on its own it is limited by what it can detect with its own sensors... in Russian service, on a patrol, it might not even turn its radar on transmit at all.... just launch a missile using target data from other platforms... if they keep the target data up to date the MiG can direct its missile to an advantageous interception point where it will start scanning and immediately find the target in the centre of its view and fly down and hit the target.

Exactly. Pairing missiles is old tactic from semi-active homing age.

Also to launch most IR guided missiles you need to get rather closer than these engagements are likely to be at and firing two missiles of the same type at the same target is always a waste... only happens in video games.

So why believe them when they say R-37 is responsible for most damage against Ukrs lately? They're not certainly singing praises of honesty, there is agenda behind everything Brits publish.

Indeed. It is probably an effective missile, but they are trying to use false praise of that missile to suggest the rest of the Russian AF is useless or afraid.

It is not a new propaganda tactic... in the late 1980s the MiG-29 was the boogeyman and was the most powerful Soviet fighter they knew much about, but then the cold war ended and Germany reunited and it was at first a shock and how amazing and how basic the MiG-29 was... the R-73 missile and helmet mounted sight meant WVR combat was a nogo for HATO, so they focussed money and energy on getting AMRAAM right and dropped the whole original plan that America would make the AMRAAM, which everyone in HATO would use, while Britain would make ASRAAM for everyone to use in HATO as the short range AAM... but like in everything else the US screwed their allies again... whether it was rifle ammo or assault rifles or tanks or planes and now AAMs... you would think the Euros would learn but they never do.

So once they trained against the MiG-29 they could say they learned its secrets... which amounted to never fight it in large numbers, and use an AWACS and launch missiles from max range and never get close... but even then lots of former WP countries had them so they had to claim they were useless and ineffective to get them to buy western fighters... fortunately there was the Flanker to justify high spending in the west...

So ask yourself, why should Russians detect low flying MiG-29 and then engage it with high-value AAM from 200km away?

I appreciate your comments and reasoning there, but another factor is that aircraft operations will be based on C4ISTAR support from HATO countries so if there are several Russian fighters operating somewhere the Orc flights might be cancelled.

Another factor is where they detect them too, they wont be operating anywhere near the front line so assuming they are operating 100km behind the front line and the Russian planes are operating in or near Russian airspace then there will be issues over range too... they will want to hit them as far away as possible because they will be flying towards the front line likely with anti radiation missiles trying to hit Russian radar arrays, so low flight at high speed and then a zoom climb and launch in the direction of Russian forces then a turn and run away if they survive that long... the climb would have the added bonus of attracting enemy radar to detect their presence and turn on their radars to see what is happening...

Of course HARMs record is pretty poor and TOR and Pantsir and BUK are designed to shoot down such threats.

This conflict will be a valuable learning exercise for the Russian AF so they can learn what works and what does not.

Even AMRAAM does not have a sterling record in combat... by no means does it achieve a very high kill probability in most engagements... there is a reason they are called Miss-iles.

That is all very true but even for normal interceptors it depends on where the target is... if the target is not headed for your airbase and is heading for a target your ground controllers might not be able to get you into an ideal firing position... sometimes you fire at crossing targets and sometimes you had to chase down targets to get within range.

The interesting thing about radar tracking is that it is rather more effective against a closing target, while with an IR guided missile firing from behind exposes the view of the engine exhausts and considering most targets over Soviet airspace will be low and moving as fast as they can will be at or near full engine thrust with a receeding target often the IR guided weapons had the best range performance... but obviously in a low altitude chase down small missiles like AA-2 and AA-8 and even AA-11 lacked the flight range to chase down a target at low altitude so they made IR guided versions of their big BVR missiles... not to allow them to shoot at targets 100km away because their IR sensors simply could not lock on to targets at such distances and they needed locks before they could be launched.

The big model BVR missiles like R-23 and R-24 as well as R-27 were to chase down targets at medium and lower altitudes over distances normal short range IR guided missiles couldn't reach and a receeding target was not a good target for SARH missile guidance.

Of course the R-40T and R-40TD were special because SR-71 type targets were hot enough to engage front on at distances that matched or exceeded the distance they could launch the SARH model R-40s at a closing SR-71, and were probably the most likely missile to defeat the SR-71 in either direction, with head on engagements the most likely to succeed.

They were good enough to the point that they kept carrying the upgraded IR version R-40TD on the MiG-31 because it was the only IR missile it could carry that did not require it to remain relatively slow speed... with twin R-60s it could not fly faster than mach 2 for any great period of time.

As an edit to my above post I have a doubt now.... through the cold war we often saw Soviet interceptors carrying four missiles fire them all off at targets in one salvo... this was normally described in the west as showing off, or more cynically as a sign the kill probability was very low so they launched extra missiles to improve their chances of a hit.

I used to just give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it was the former, but now that the conflict in the Ukraine has shown the old practise of lofting rockets into the air is something they actually do in combat then I am not so sure... but what other explanation could there be?

I am guessing that in a flight of aircraft (usually four) that you are not going to get all the aircraft to launch all their missiles at once, but having one aircraft launch all its missiles (usually four missiles) if the launching aircraft controls one SARH missile and one of the other aircraft controls a second missile then the other two missiles are IR self guided, this would allow one aircraft to turn back to base while the remaining aircraft continued to launch missiles at the incoming threats.

Not sure what advantages that would create... maybe the aircraft that has fired its missiles can then go after any cruise missiles the threats have already launched using its guns while the rest chase the bombers... have not really given it a lot of thought yet.

That is interesting... I didn't realise they had lock on after launch for their IR guided T-40Ds... I knew they upgraded them all, but didn't know that detail.

What is interesting regarding all this Soviets were idiots stuff, is that when they copied the Sidewinder they didn't copy everything... the rolleron gyro system was copied because it was compact and effective and simple and cheap and clever, but they used a Soviet rocket motor and a Soviet IR sensor on their copy of the Sidewinder.

What was revolutionary about the sidewinder was not how advanced it was, but how modular and simple it was... Soviet AAMs were complex messes with bits and pieces all over the place, whereas the Sidewinder copy the R-3 and R-13 could be broken down into separate segments with seeker, warhead, control and battery section, control surface and motors, and rocket motor section... that could be assembled from parts from damaged or faulty missiles... unlike any Soviet AAM before it.

They copied the Sidewider so they could get a new missile into service quickly while their missile development teams absorbed the new concept in missile design... eventually resulting in the most modular missile there is... the R-27... you could probably write a whole book about the different versions of that missile there were dozens and dozens of different types.

Which essentially means for a normal engagement at expected range against an aware target (one presumes) it generally took two R-23Rs to get a good chance of a kill while the IR guided R-23T and R-60s were more like hittles.

Not sure about EW but I rather suspect these figures are against bombers perhaps because that is a rather good kill rate even in testing.

Of course they also upgraded the R-23... perhaps because of those results with the R-24 being the standard new model for the MiG-23, but then they went for the generic R-27 family for all platforms for BVR radar and IR and passive radar homing.

Most western experts rubbish the R-27, but then that is because most of the time they are comparing the old analog R-27s of the cold war with the new AMRAAM types.

I would guess a modern digital R-27 could have rather good performance... its front wings do not lose effect in turns like the smaller triangular wings of western missiles like Sparrow and AMRAAM, they actually tested the missile against a Sparrow copy and it was found to be better... and in tests in Germany it was found the R-27R and R-73 armed MiG-29 was something F-16s with Sidewinders and F-15s with Sparrows could not really deal with, the R-27R was faster than the Sparrow and had better range, while the helmet mounted sight and R-73s made close combat suicide for either western fighter against the MiG.