Egyptian Air Force (EAF)

Grey with no markings... not sure they are live rounds and certainly cannot tell if they are ARMs or AShMs.

GarryB wrote:Grey with no markings... not sure they are live rounds and certainly cannot tell if they are ARMs or AShMs.

Well, this fella here probably has them rounded down to either one of these two anyway.

As Bozinovski notes, "it is unclear whether these missiles are the antiship variant (Kh-31AD) or the anti-radiation variant (Kh-31PD) designed to target long- and medium-range radar systems."

https://missilethreat.csis.org/egypt-shows-kh-31-missile-paired-with-mig-29/

Gomig-21 wrote:

Any idea which variant this is, Kh-31P or Kh-31PD or Kh-31A or Kh-31AD?

It's high probably that EAF acquired both variants ARM and AshMs , can't specify from the photos ,both variants have the same shape and dimensions .

The AshMs will be very effective to cut the supplies on both the Red sea and the mediterranean .

Anti radiation seeker .

The thing is that the newer ones are longer and heavier... but it is hard to tell from the photo given...

Irrespective of which they are I would expect they would offer to sell them the ones they wanted...

I would assume it could be used against the AWACS ( of course better to use another dual mode seeker missile with the ARM seeker for long range acquisition and homing and an established AAM seeker for terminal homing) .

If they changed the weight and range ,so i bet they put some changes on the parameters of proximity fusing timing and the guidance too .

My understanding is that the ARM version is designed for a diving top attack profile that climbs up high to fly to the target as high as it can and then dive almost vertically down on the target antenna...

This makes the missile more difficult for SAMs to engage it because of the elevation needed... most radars don't and can't look vertically up for targets to engage...

Plus if they want a specific AAWACS killing munition, they can either wait for the KH-31 AWACS killing version to be produced since I believe it's still being worked on, but it's not ready yet.  Instead, they just order a bunch of R-37Ms for the Su-35s and they'll have their super dedicated AWACS killer.

It is interesting because with all their big heavy anti ship missiles like the Kh-22 and Kh-22M they had one that just used inertial guidance so it basically flew to a specific coordinate and then boom... much like the German buzz bomb of WWII... the difference is that the Soviet missile was vastly more accurate so it could target smaller things than the city of London, but more so because it while it was more accurate it was certainly not accurate enough to hit a point target even as big as a very large ship, so the warhead was an 800 kiloton nuclear warhead and was intended for use on land and at sea.

At sea it could take out a group of ships operating together, while on land it was intended to take out major communications bases and their air defences and most of the stuff around them.

For anti ship use they generally used active radar homing missiles that would look for and find and home in on sea surface targets (on land they could detect major buildings or bridges etc, or could hit locations near such things...).

As the US Navy got better at air defence and improved its missiles and radars and aircraft and their missiles and radars and of course introduced an IADS called AEGIS they started looking at things like swarm attacks and anti radiation weapons to start the attack with and even super long range torpedoes that could be fired from 100km away that would be launched just at the right time so they would arrive amongst the group of ships just as the missiles were coming over the horizon... they would hear the torpedos coming (sound moves through water at 1.6km/s) and would be manouvering to effectively sail towards the incoming torpedos so their propellers are hidden by the hull of the ship and the width of the targets for the torpedos are the width of the ships instead of the much larger lengths... and then they detect missiles coming over the radar horizon...

Anyway... what I am getting at is that part of their plan was to use passive radar homing missiles in the second line of attack... the first line would find their target themselves and will try to hit and sink those ships but the second wave of the attack will be facing targets fully alert and looking for targets to shoot down to protect themselves so passive homing anti radiation missiles have a better chance... they could also be fired much later because they will fly very high and much faster than the lower flying missiles... relying on the fact that the enemy ships wont have their radars on because that would betray their position.

In a steep dive on the target an ARM could use a delay fuse to pass through the radar antenna and into the deck before exploding for better effect... so they could probably and actually should use both missiles for anti ship use...

EAF MiG-35s in Sudan carrying out a long awaited exercise with the Sudanese air force.

Carrying R-77s and R-73s.

They love to carry all 3 tanks. They are always on pictures.

Maybe they could make one with full air to air load.

Isos wrote:They love to carry all 3 tanks. They are always on pictures.

Maybe they could make one with full air to air load.

That's very true.  I think they flew all the way from Egypt to Sudan and just kept the tanks on instead of taking them off for the exercise.  That would be my only guess is that they're limiting the removal and reattaching of them.  Same with when they went to the Bernice air base opening was also because they were showing off the buddy-buddy refueling and that base was well south of their permanent base and a good flying distance, and so they probably did the same thing in keeping the tanks on for the short duration of the activity, whatever it is.

This is a rare shot of the one of only four 2-seaters in the whole batch of 46 aircraft.  I think the other MiG-29 flying off to the right is a Sudanese one.

They love to carry all 3 tanks. They are always on pictures.

Maybe they could make one with full air to air load.

To be fair this is just two planes on an exercise with a neighbouring country... carrying and using three external fuel tanks is simpler and easier than organising inflight refuelling in suitable places to support the planes.

Edit: after watching that video it was four planes but only when they arrived... near the end there was footage of them flying around in clean configuration.

GarryB wrote:

They love to carry all 3 tanks. They are always on pictures.

Maybe they could make one with full air to air load.

To be fair this is just two planes on an exercise with a neighbouring country... carrying and using three external fuel tanks is simpler and easier than organising inflight refuelling in suitable places to support the planes.

Edit: after watching that video it was four planes but only when they arrived... near the end there was footage of them flying around in clean configuration.

You have to take our videos with a bit of apprehension as to the authenticity of particular scenes in them due to the head of the military video editing department has a big habit of mixing and mish-mashing clips of different exercises together into one.  While the beginning and much of the first half of that video is the real thing in Sudan, a lot of the 2nd half and end is from another one in Egypt earlier this year.

Woah! Let's go!

Like an F-4 Phantom had sex with a MiG-21...

GarryB wrote:Like an F-4 Phantom had sex with a MiG-21...

And it's interesting that they use it in this capacity since it's really considered a trainer aircraft. But I suppose trainers might be a good thing to expose to such exercises with other air forces. The problem is that whomever is flying those might not be the most qualified if in training so let's hope they use veteran pilots at these exercises.

If it is being used in an exercise then you could put two veteran pilots in it to give more pilots experience during the exercises...

I would think an international exercise is not the time to be training rookies...

Of course trainer aircraft are cheap and light and with good flight performance... in the right hands they can embarrass less experienced pilots flying much better aircraft.

And its not like the Sudanese don't have any other aircraft!

So according to many online enthusiast who got a look at these pics here, claim that this missile handing off an EAF MiG-29M/M2 or like I like to simply call it the MiG-35 is in fact an R-77-1 or better yet, an RVV-SD.  Gary or Isos or AhmeFire what do you fellas think of that?

It's not easy to differencuate both missile. Maybe the laser fuze isn't the same.

Lot of the google images of the missile are the fake missiles used for exhibitions.

IMO they took the SD since its better and available with price being similar to AE version.

Not sure why they circled that area with the red tape or whatever that is. I think it was meant to cover the 3 holes in the missile that identify it as the SD variant since on one of the other forums, a fellow followed that same picture with this one:



I should have posted it in the same post also because that circling related to those 3 holes which if I'm not mistaken, are not on the AE variant. Question is, why would there be any holes behind that red tape?

I would think that they would use some type of captive training missile in an exercise like this and not an actual missile. Unless Russian missiles are designed differently and can just be programed to be a live missile or a training one either by pressing some buttons in the cockpit or on the missile itself, not sure.

So I magnified the red tape on the missile and I could see the 3 black dots or holes through the red, so that missile does have the 3 holes that the SD variant has but the AE doesn't. I guess that's what they're referring to and how they're making the determination that it is the 110k range variant RVVSD missile.

It doesn't make any sense that they would chose the shorter range if the medium/long range version is available. That's what I've been asking for the longest time trying to figure out what they ordered or were "allowed" to order since we're so used to restrictions that we tend to get defensive and upset about them now.

But this is a good sign that the EAF now has at least 46 aircraft that can fight enemies with the AIM-120C-7 missile and soon to have an addition 30 with the Su-35SEs which should also and hopefully incorporate the long range R-27 as well.

A gaggle of EAF MiG-35s!