An older-model R-77 missile being launched. Via Air Power Australia
Posted on 12/04/2013 10:10:07 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
Moscow’s new active-array missile could be the most accurate ever
By combining two existing technologies, Russian engineers have devised what could be the world’s deadliest air-to-air missile. And the U.S. military doesn’t have anything like it … or adequate defenses.
Designers at the Detal bureau, part of the state-owned Tactical Missile Munitions Corporation, added an active electronically-scanned array radar—a so-called “AESA”—to the nose of a long-range R-77 missile to produce the K-77M model. Thanks to its new guidance sensors, the K-77M is way more accurate than other missiles.
How accurate? Flying 40 miles or more, the K-77M should be able “to maintain lock on even the most agile maneuvering target,” according to one scientist and defense specialist in the Pacific region whose country’s laws prohibit him from speaking on the record about weaponry. In light of the scientist’s expertise, War is Boring agreed not to publish his name.
With enough funding, the K-77M could enter service as early as 2015, in time to be fitted to the first combat-ready versions of Russia’s new stealth fighter, the powerful T-50. The combination of T-50 and K-77M could match or even best America’s own F-22 stealth fighter, which is fast and hard to detect but lacks an advanced air-to-air missile.
And the T-50 with its new munition is sure to vastly outclass the U.S. F-35, a smaller, less capable stealth fighter meant to comprise the bulk of the American warplane fleet in coming decades.
Smarter missile Traditional air-to-air missiles include a small mechanical radar antenna in the nose. These mechanical radar missiles have a major weakness that occurs in the final seconds before the munition reaches its target.
“The angular motion—and specifically the angle rate of antenna movement as the missile closes on the target—can be so high that the seeker cannot keep up and the target slips out of the antenna beam, causing missile lock to be broken,” the scientist explains.
In other words, if a pilot turns quickly in any direction right before a missile hits his plane, he stands a good chance of slipping outside the field of view of the missile’s radar, causing it to fly harmlessly away. The inability of most munitions to cope with violent maneuvers helps explain why radar-guided air-to-air missiles typically have very low hit rates.
But the K-77M could change all that. Gone is the mechanical array. In its place, Detal’s engineers have added what Russia Today describes as “a large number”—possibly hundreds—of individual digital arrays, each pointing its own radar beam essentially at the speed of light.
“Each cell receives only a part of the signal,” RT reports, “but once digitally processed, the information from all cells is summarized into a ‘full picture,’ enabling the K-77M missile to immediately respond to sharp turns of the target, making interception practically inevitable.”
That’s not hyperbole, according to the scientist. “Because an AESA or phased array is steered electronically, the antenna beam can be adjusted in direction several thousand times per second and is not limited in angle rate, thus allowing an AESA-equipped missile to maintain lock.”
Considering the huge advantage an active-array missile has over older munitions, it’s perhaps surprising that Russia is the only country developing one. Amid budget reductions, the U.S. and Europe have essentially stopped investing in new seekers for air-to-air missiles. Almost all of America’s aerospace capital is being poured into fixing problems with the F-35 as well as developing a new stealth bomber.
But Russia typically exports its missile technology to China—and the K-77M should be no exception. “We should not be surprised to see the AESA seeker sold to China for use in Chinese-built PL-12 [missile] in 2015 or 2016,” the scientist warns.
To survive a dogfight with a foe armed with K-77Ms, an American plane needs to be stealthier or employ better radar jamming, the scientist advises. Considering the F-35's many design compromises, U.S. stealth technology probably reached its pinnacle with the F-22, which ended its production run two years ago.
And as for jamming … the Pentagon for years has struggled to develop new electronic countermeasures, with the Air Force in particular having all but abandoned electronic warfare in favor of spending more money on stealth.
An older-model R-77 missile being launched. Via Air Power Australia
How objective is the article?
ping
The RMS Titanic can’t sink. If you like your plan you can keep it, PERIOD! If man were meant to fly he’d have wings. Of course I’ll call you. Have I ever lied to you? Your kitchen’ll be done in less than a month.
Putin is ready to play in the big leagues.
You spend your money on welfare and buying votes, or you spend your money on defense and creating jobs.
oh we don’t need the F22
it will be 20 years before anyone can touch it
Just throw a couple of these out the window- That`ll throw `em off your tail.
So what if their pilots can shoot down anything now. Out pilots are now free to suck each other’s *****. Can Russia’s pilots do that? Didn’t think so. Oh, we can spy on our citizens way better than Russia can too so there.
Better, but not a giant killer.
Hyping the wrong thing about an AESA in the missile.
Doesn’t understand the real issues in the missile end-game.
At the big boy level, stealth is tactical and no longer a get out of death free card.
I’s also slowly moving towards lasers and away from physical missiles.
Big deal. The Russians develop a missile that our F-35’s and F-22’s can’t out-manuever. At least we have women pilots....< /sarc >
This will be useful for China in the East Asian seas.
And transgendered.
NONE of that....NONE...will matter when the air raid sirens go off..and not because of weather...
But then....it will be WAAYYY too late to do anything....but surrender....or die.
Gay ones, too. And not the Enola kind....
Here's Tom Fife's article. “It was like an elastic band snapping all the way from 1992,” Fife shakily admitted, upon recall of the exact moment he realized the Communist official had been telling the truth. “It was a very, very scary feeling.”
Fife, a physicist and computer engineer, had been traveling to Russia for a joint venture with a state-owned company when the shocking revelation was revealed to him. After several business meetings, Fife and his partner were invited to the company owner’s home at the end of the journey for a farewell dinner.
The owner’s wife was a Communist Party official and was “climbing two ladders”, as Fife puts it, one ladder being the KGB and the other being the traditional Russian society and business ladder. As the evening wore on, the female Communist official became increasingly agitated over a perceived slight and her emotions spilled over.
“You Americans like to think you’re so perfect!” she snarled. “Well, what if I told you that very, very soon you’re going to have a black president… and he’s going to be a Communist!”
The KGB operative was not finished. As she had now dropped this bombshell on the entire gathering, she felt compelled to continue.
“His name is Barack,” she sneered. “His mother is white and his father is an African black. He has gone to the best schools, he is what you would call ‘Ivy League’.”
Fife recalls being stunned and shocked at the words flowing from the Communist’s mouth as she continued to rattle off an incredibly precise set of details about this Communist operative who was to supposedly become president of the United States.
The Communist official then stated that he was from Hawaii, but would very soon be elected to the Chicago state legislature. This has turned out to be an eerily prescient prediction, as Barack Obama was not elected State Senator until 1996, a full 4 years afterwards, as he took Alice Palmer’s seat.
In 1992, Obama had recently graduated from Harvard Law School and accepted a position as a Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School.
Perhaps the most shocking revelation is how deep the Soviet Communist network has embedded itself into American political and educational culture. A quick review of Obama’s political “career” shows a track that wasinexplicably greased, from his tuition payments at Columbia and Harvard, to a position at UOC Law School, to his eventual electoral “victories” at the Illinois State Senate, United States Senate, and U.S. Presidency.
Barack Obama’s parents ostensibly met in a Russian language class. This could have been where his mother was recruited by Barack Obama Sr, who could have already been working undercover for the KGB.
In order to brainwash the child from an early age, they surrounded him with diehard Communists and fellow KGB agents, such as Frank Marshall Davis, a known Communist Party USA official. The Soviet KGB directly funded the CPUSA. This would fit directly into what the Russian Communist said about ‘Barack’, boasting “He has been raised to be an atheist and a communist.”
“He will be a blessing for world communism,” Fife recalled her saying, after getting over the initial shock of hearing the current president was a KGB agent.
The creepy prediction stayed with the physicist upon his return to the United States, although he paid it no mind until he began to hear of an swiftly rising political star named Barack Obama. When Fife learned that this same Barack was running in the 2008 presidential election, everything snapped into place and he knew he had to tell someone.
Today, Fife admits that it deeply disturbs him and that he has never been able to shake the ominous feeling of foreboding about what comes next, now that the KGB official’s prediction has come true.
“It never leaves you, having someone tell you that they’ve engineered the takeover of your country,” he admits. “It’s really quite scary.”
The DemocratsNational Socialists, and FASCIST Obama are DOING IT ON PURPOSE!!!!
Can an AESA radar track an F22? I don’t think so. It does not matter if they got a nice “new” air missile if the MIG is shot down first by a true 5th generation fighter like the Raptor that has “first look and shoot” capability. It can’t shoot down what the platform and missile can’t see until it is too late. This article is the usual Russian hype that I’ve know all my life.
Plus, it’s not like we never heard of a phased array, you know?
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