Egyptian Air Force (EAF)

Can't see your images in posts 271 and 273....

Here is an R-73L with laser proximity fuse ports...



Specifically the two vertical rectangular ports below the front portion of the weapon pylon is the laser proximity fuse locations...

@Gary you might have a firewall or something that isn't allowing you to see certain pictures since they're all showing up and it appears all the other fellas are seeing them.

Are you uploading images or hotlinking?

Often hotlinking has the problem that sometimes media is not viewable in some countries because of rights issues etc.

Hotlinking is also not supposed to be used on this forum.

Well it seems RVV-AE has a longer fuze. You can see the long rectangular white antennas on your second picture and covered in red on the first.

Those are not laser fuse systems... the missiles with the round circles on the R-77 family missiles use the laser fuse... AFAIK.

Well, that's what I've been trying to find out for a while now and it doesn't make any sense whatsoever that the EAF would buy the shorter range R-77 when the longer range one is in fact available for export. Go figure that one out for the sake of our sanity unless Russia denied it to Egypt because of Israel?! Otherwise there is ABSOLUTELY zero reason or advantage to purchasing a missile that has an 80km range as the "medium" range missile in your inventory for your potent Russian aircraft when you could have the one that has the 110km range. Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever unless it was forced on them.

Yes... the Egyptians are bloody stupid.... they stop buying US fighters because the US wont sell them the AAMs they want, so they change and buy Russian fighters... who wont sell them the AAMs they want despite having even longer ranged missiles (RVV-BD) available for export too.

But lets just say they are not stupid... lets say they are smart... they just bought new powerful Russian fighters... Israel knows a little about them operating in Syria from their own and US experience... so easy to acquire public footage of new Egyptian Su-35s with R-77-1 missiles and R-37M long range missiles would get them upset... they will be exercising communication channels to Egypt and the US and Russia pretty damn quickly having a tantrum and making all sorts of threats and promises of attacks if things don't change.

Or Russia could sell them some cheaper older less capable R-77s to show off with their new shiny planes that will make the Israelis relax and remain a little calmer because they think they could get much closer and still take them because they have inferior missiles.

War stocks of proper missiles being kept away from the public eye... test them in Russia before you buy them to make sure they work as advertised and then keep them as "War Stocks".... a nice surprise for later.

IMO they will soon order su-57 too.

If Algeria are buying 14 then why not... they could form the core of a really powerful air force... for any region, let alone the one it is in.

The point is you got the platform , just arrange the timeline for what armament you need and when you need .

As a WVR missile the old R-77 missiles are rather potent high energy missiles... those grid fins offer very strong turning performance compared with much smaller surfaces like little triangular fins on the AMRAAM which allow only small low rate turns without stalling.

Range is imporyant, indian were outrange by pakistani AMRAAMs.

Range is important only if you have the advantage... even with older model missiles R-27E model missiles outrange older model AMRAAM too so a mix of old R-77s and R-27E missiles is a useful combination, but I rather suspect the Egyptian AF could easily be keeping rather quiet about the missiles it is buying and the ones it is displaying... it is not in their interests to show their whole hand at this stage...

Of course if they have bought jamming pods what exactly is the EFFECTIVE range of AMRAAM... I am guessing that in the presence of a modern fighter with effective EW equipment it might not be max kinematic range...

PAF fired a dozen AIM 120s and almost all the missiles missed their target by a mile and then some. Despite the fact that EW system on Su 30MKI is not state of the art.

The only AIM 120 that hit an Indian Mig 21 was fired from WVR after the Mig 21 strayed into Pakistani territory.

The vast majority of BVR missile kills come from rather shorter range attacks against unaware and or poorly equipped targets... if you know you are under attack you can do things to make it very unlikely the missile will hit you... if you don't know until the missile goes active then you might not have time to accelerate and turn and make the missile miss.... or interfere with its guidance with decoys and jamming.

Woops! lol, maybe that is what I'm doing? What's the difference? You use the photo's jgp link and paste it onto the link bar.

Yeah, that would be the problem.

Hot linking means that when the page loads here it accesses the site with the image and uploads it and displays it here. In other words the site with the image gets accessed but their pages and advertising don't get any traffic, so their servers store the image and upload it for us, but they don't get any benefit from all that traffic.

What you should be doing is downloading the image to your computer and then using the other photo option that says host a photo. This then allows you to find the photo on your hard drive and upload it to a storage site designed for hosting images. It means the images are more reliable and nobody gets annoyed at all this traffic but no revenue or credit.

If you click the other link with the photo with a small floppy disk in its bottom corner of you click select files and find the image or group of images on your device and select them you can then click on the upload button to upload them to the hosting site and it will show three links you can use. The middle link copied and pasted into your post will make it appear in your post.

If there is a lot of images you can perhaps post one and then include a link to where you got it from so people who are interested can see the rest and the person who owns the images can get traffic on their site too.

I hope you weren't insinuating that I, and Egyptian, was claiming the Egyptians in charge of the EAF are stupid LOL! I'm pretty sure you weren't it's just funny how you worded that and how it can be misconstrued as such.

I was trying to word it clearly so that the option that they are not just idiots but stupid idiots is rather unlikely and rather difficult to believe.

They are buying MiG-29Ms and Su-35s... how can I say they are not smart...

At any rate, as much as that could be a possibility, I usually find this school of thought less likely than plausible.

So you are saying they are idiots....

If you go to a shop and say... look... I used to buy stuff from your competition but they wouldn't let me have the good stuff that I wanted... what stuff do you have and will you let me buy it would be their first question I am sure, and even if Russia wont sell long range AAMs then they could easily buy Chinese ones... they could adapt them to their own Su-35s too... but I don't think that will be needed... the R-37M has been shown under the wing of an Su-35 for a reason... an export reason I suspect...

I always sight Netanyahu's personal friendship and how he gets a seat right next to Putin during the yearly Russian parade lol.

When they shot down that russian intel plane they weren't so friendly... Israeli claims it was an accident were openly refuted with full descriptions of what actually happened revealed to show the lie...

Putin does not hate Israel, but business is business... Egypt is an important customer.

The connection is too front and center to ignore and that's not even counting the Mossad's ability to acquire any information they want and you know what, most other countries have their own intelligence capabilities themselve that I wouldn't doubt Egypt's ability to find out certain things from the other side. That makes this whole "hiding from potential enemy's" almost moot at this point.

Appearance can often be more important than fact... besides if Israel does not want Egypt to get nice stuff then the obvious solution is an order for 5 million long range Russian AAMs... they wont have the excess production capacity to supply export orders for the next ten years...

It's the same thing I tell people about the phantom "kill switch" in all of the Eyptian F-16s lol. I tell them (exactly what you even said somewhere I forget) that if they ever had to do that and the world found out, what would that do to their sales?!?! It would instantaneously destroy them.

It would but they wont be that obvious and open... they are not open about anything normally.

When an Egyptian F-16 gets an Israeli F-35 in his sights over Israeli territory and is pressing the button to fire it wont say... sorry you don't have permission to shoot down Israeli aircraft in this geographic location please return to base this aircraft will shut down in 20 minutes... you had better be on the ground when it does...

No... what it will more likely do is disable all onboard telemetry systems and voice recorders and communications, disable the ejection seat and dive into the ground in full AB... wow those F-35s are knocking down those Egyptian F-16s like dominos... we should get some.

Or... more subtly you appear to get a lock with your missile but as it approaches the target it veers off to one side and misses, while your jammers are on and self defence systems are active but his missiles seem to be attracted to your plane and hit every time... or there is a flashing light and an engine problem that forces you to disengage and return to base... or any combination of all of these things... modern fighters are software driven and when certain criteria are met you can have the aircraft do all sorts of things... change the fuel burn to make the exhaust smokey, shudder in flight like something is broken or has fallen off by rapid oscillation of the horizontal tail surface... it would not be hard... even just making the plane emit a signal that Patriot missiles can home in on from enormous distances...

So I'm not sure about this hiding business and just so that they don't freak Israel out which I believe they already know anyway so it seems moot. Something isn't right about them using the RVV-SD.

We know very little about what missiles they have purchased... I would expect a rather wide range of missiles were purchased even just for in situ testing.

The funny thing is that some systems work well in the country they are made but when taken to other countries the different conditions can reveal problems.

For instance the thermal sights on the Spyder system are not so good in hot moist climates... or perhaps dust or extreme high temperatures during the day and low temps at night can be a problem for some systems too.

I don't believe Algeria has bought anything close to the Su-57. How is that even possible when it just went into production for the VVS?!?!?! It might be a discussion for a tender agreement for once the jets for the RuAF are delivered, then they'll discuss signing a contract for whomever. But to do it now seems very unlikely.

They always intended to export the Su-57 but of course not the same Su-57 the Russian military are using.

Exports are very lucrative because they can generate a much larger profit from sales which can fund further development and research and increased production numbers is always good for any aircraft type.

For all we know delivery might start in 2 years time or even 5 years time... pretty cool though...

I wonder if this sale might stimulate the Indians to take another look at the aircraft... or indeed the Chinese...

Hence why it also doesn't seem right because then why have the R-73 with the monocle head system then?!

The R-73 is a very potent high off boresight AAM, but the monocle sighting system can be used for any weapon... it links the weapons seeker to the line of sight of the pilot so the pilot can look at the target and the sensor in the missile is pointed in the same direction the pilot is looking... within the limits of the weapon of course. This makes locking up the target much faster because a normal missile like Sidewinder looks forward about 20 degrees either side of bore sight (10 degrees left and 10 degrees right... a bigger field of view and it would keep locking on to other targets like the sun). So you would have to turn the plane so the target is in that 20 degree forward cone and then the missile will scan that volume of space for targets to lock... with a group of targets you wont know which one you are locking. With a helmet mounted sight you know which target it is looking at and it locks almost straight away with a suitable target.

The pilot can also use the HMS to direct his radar towards a target without having to scan for it or to use the laser range finder to range a target perhaps for the IRST also without scanning with the radar and therefore alerting the target.

The point is that you can use the R-73 and it is a very potent missile... especially at crossing targets or very close targets because the thrust vector motor on the R-73 would allow it to turn and chase a target heading towards you but say 2km away to one side... when locked the R-73 will turn hard and follow the target as it draws level and flys past you.

For a target 10km away that is in front an R-77 will accelerate to higher flight speed than the R-73 and will get to the target much quicker... it has a warhead four times bigger and is a powerful missile that would still be burning rocket fuel at 10km so will have a lot of energy to turn and hit the target.

You often read about western aircraft shooting AMRAAM at targets at 15 - 20km range where they probably could have used a sidewinder too.

The thing is that a BVR missile has more energy at such ranges and hits harder... and if it misses you will be much closer to the target and then can launch the R-73...

Actually... looking at the first, the second, and the third image of R-77 missiles in post number 277 above, I am now thinking rather than the circles, that it is those vertical slots... two side by side in front of those opaque areas on the missile that are probably the laser fusing system... I suspect the circles might be something else.... perhaps side thrust solid rocket motors for terminal manouvering to get the warhead as close as possible to the target before detonation...

A laser proximity fuse needs two windows to work... a transmission window and a receiver window... the parallel slots would suffice for the job, while the circles would not because no two circles cover the same angle... which is why I suspect they are part of a last split second rocket manouvering system to shunt the warhead a few metres closer to the target before warhead detonation....