Kh-58 and Kh-31P

For anti ship role the likely warload would probably be up to 6 Kh-35s or 6 Kh-31s with the inner pylons carrying fuel tanks and the outer pylons carrying ESM pods. The Kh-35s would be best in a surprise attack, while for an alerted target the kh-31s might offer a better chance of breaching the defences.
Either way you would probably rely on numbers of weapons for anything like a modern well armed ship. If the target is a carrier group then flying low and fast and being bold might work… as it did for the argentines in the falklands, But unless the CAP is asleep you will lose a few planes and need to launch a lot of missiles to have any effect. A faster aircraft would have a better chance.

The more interesting “what-if” comes when the potential anti-ship loadout is considered. That’s part of what I was trying to assess.

Logan Hartke

The Su-25TM is an unusual aircraft. It is like a combination of A-10 and the strike variant of the Tornado.
Able to use all sorts of PGMs with day and night and all weather capability and also defend itself in the air to air role (not many CAS aircraft have the equivelent of AMRAAM).
Short range anti shipping, CAS, anti tank attack, short range strike, wild weasel type role, even short range anti cessna patrol aircraft to prevent drug or arms smuggling.
The Iranians could certainly use it against the Kurds and any guerilla group coming over the afghan border too.

Thanks for all the replies, everyone. I’m mainly just intrigued by a lot of the weapons advertised for the Su-39. I’m largely wondering what kind of weapons a country like Venezuela might purchase for the aircraft if they chose to purchase some. Another good question is about Iran, since I believe that they are, so far, the first and only customers for the Su-25TM (Su-39). To understand what the use of that aircraft means, you have to understand the capability of the weapons it would use.

Logan Hartke

Except for the fact that it’s hanging out in optimal SAM hunting grounds and would present a huge radar blip. I’d be slapping a couple of towed decoys on that configuration before I took it into SAM country that way.

The ESM equipment the Su-39 is equipped with includes analysis and recording equipment. Flying below radar level means you cant see as many radars, or pinpoint their location… you can only spot them if they spot you so to speak. With a range of 110km the kh-31 should allow the Su-39 stand off outside effective range of most US/western land based SAMs.

It would make sense, but wouldn’t they want to strap on some Kh-35s? I know they’re used in a different mission profile, since they are slower, but I’d think they’d be the better anti-ship missile to use, overall. Since they throwing multiple missiles onto the rack, they have the Kopyo-25 on there, and I’ve read that the Kh-35 is supported by the Su-39, I’d think they’d want to slap some on.

They have a laser guided AS-10, AS-17 anti ship or ARM and AS-11 ARM, plus a targetting radar that has air to air and air to ground modes.

Hard to tell what they were thinking when they put this combination together.

If going after a ship a combination of ARM AS-11 together with AS-17s in the anti ship role might compliment each other… with the AS-17 anti ship missile launched first and if the Ship lights up its medium SAM to defend itself you fire off an AS-11 to either get it to shut down or keep it busy.
If you use Kopyo then the ship will likely detect it and be ready for an attack. In such a case would expect a Kh-31 would have a better chance of a kill than a Kh-35, unless the latter is programmed to come from an unusual direction in the terminal phase.

It would make sense, but wouldn’t they want to strap on some Kh-35s? I know they’re used in a different mission profile, since they are slower, but I’d think they’d be the better anti-ship missile to use, overall. Since they throwing multiple missiles onto the rack, they have the Kopyo-25 on there, and I’ve read that the Kh-35 is supported by the Su-39, I’d think they’d want to slap some on.

Logan Hartke

Kopyo-25 radar-pod, to enable targetting of anti-ship missiles. Those Kh-31s might be Kh-31As.

Except for the fact that it’s hanging out in optimal SAM hunting grounds and would present a huge radar blip. I’d be slapping a couple of towed decoys on that configuration before I took it into SAM country that way.

BTW, what’s that on the centerline pylon in the picture? A fuel tank or a baggage compartment (or a combi)?

Logan Hartke

It makes one wonder about the purpose of putting the other weapons on the aircraft for an airshow. The “cool” factor I guess?

Not so much cool factor but to give an indication of flexibility and multirole performance. A bit of what could be… and with a load of 4 x Kh-31s and inner fuel tanks, two air to air missiles for self defence and the outer missile pylon position taken with the ESM pods (the later as shown per your picture above) flying a medium altitude and near top throttle, the kh-31 would operate as advertised most likely. In fact replace two of the Kh-31s with the 5 shot 122mm rocket pods with decoy/jamming rockets and you’d have quite a capable little SEAD aircraft.

From what I can recall the Kh-31 and Kh-58 are matched to different SAM radar sets.

Nope, they both have three seaker head choices for attacking different frequency bands targets.

I forget the name of the Kh-58 seakers, but those of the Kh-31P are L-111, L-112 and L-113 all them manufactured by TsKBA Avtomatika.

Current in advanced R&D Kh-31PMK replaces the three seakers by a single wideband receiver seaker.

Kh-31P was developed specially for the Patriot threat, that needing a very fast and all-the-way fast missile…

Kh-58 was developed for taking out EWR, GCI radars and FC radars of HAWK/I-HAWK and later Patriot…it have longer range but more “parabollic” trajectory, it could fly pretty far from launching platform MiG-25BM cued by Yaguar RHWS…in so respect is an ofensive ARM (contrary to Kh-25MP and MPU, self-defense weapons), it’s a replacement of Kh-28 series.

Kh-31 while being developed for countering the Patriot also allowed to use a modular “universal” approach for a light and advanced medium range AShM for Su-24M of the Naval Aviation, and in the future, for such aircrafts like MiG-29M, Su-27M, etc…

It could be said that currently the Kh-31PMK could replace by rol the Kh-58 wholly.

Thanks much, Garry.

I already regarded the Kh-25M variants, including the Kh-25MP, as winners from the Frogfoot platform. I guess due to the performance of the Frogfoot, they really are “best fit” weapons for the aircraft, short of the new Vikhrs for the Su-39.

It makes one wonder about the purpose of putting the other weapons on the aircraft for an airshow. The “cool” factor I guess?

Logan Hartke

A number of things I was reading were saying that the Kh-58 had a speed of something like Mach 3.6 while the Kh-31 had a speed of Mach 3.5. Is that incorrect, or do you know more about their flight profiles?

Have read of a peak speed of mach 4 for the Kh-58 but largely because of its 120km range its average speed is actually 550m/s, while for the Kh-31 the peak speed is 1,000m/s but its average speed is 750m/s over 110km.
Both use a solid rocket booster and both have sustainer motors, but the Kh-58 has a low thrust fuel that burns relatively slowly and just helps to reduce drag to maintain a higher average speed, while the Kh-31 uses its solid rocket engine to accelerate it to a relatively high speed and more importantly to gain altitude where its ramjet engine is more efficient and can provide thrust and accelerate the missile to its top speed and maintain that speed for some distance.

The Cobra and Apache are for different services (US Army and USMC), mostly. The Apache was replacing the Cobra in US Army service since its inception (which it finally has) so the two, while having nearly identical roles, weren’t meant to coexist forever. Anyway, though, let’s stay on subject.

But that is exactly the point. The US had the USAF, and the USMC and the USN operating fixed wing aircraft… the Soviets had 5 airforces operating fixed wing aircraft. The aircraft cleared for the Kh-58 were the Su-17M3/4, Su-24, and the Mig-31BM and upgraded members of the Su-27 family. Now of those the most widespread in service aircraft were the Su-17s and Su-24s.
The Kh-31 was available for the upgraded aircraft like the Su-24M, Su-34, Su-30MK, Mig-29SMT Su-39 etc. So was not really available to that many in service platforms. The biggest problem with using it from the Su-39 was not so much speed as alitude AND speed. The Su-39 is designed as a low and slow aircraft. The solid rocket booster in the Kh-31 can only accelerate the missile so much. If it is low and slow then it needs to burn some ramjet time to accelerate further and to climb which greatly reduces range in the same way that launching it from high altitude and high speed, from a Mig-31BM can increase range to 200km.

Of course with its greatly reduced range it makes little sense to carry the Kh-31 on an Su-25, as the Kh-25MP which is also carried on the various Su-17/-22 and Mig-27 aircraft can do a similar job for half the weight.

How much of an advatage would that lower radar signature be?

The higher average speed would be more of an advantage to the Kh-31 than lower launch signature, particularly because those air intakes probably increase its RCS compared to the Kh-58 anyway.

Most radars aren’t mobile enough to get scooting away fast enough to avoid the Mach 3.6 Kh-58’s massive 150kg warhead,

Like the latest model HARMs it was designed to target the location the radar was detected in rather than the radar itself. This got it a big warhead and means it can still be effective if the radar shuts down and a precise location is not known. Near many radars are control vans and the missiles themselves which are all vulnerable to bomb splinters.

so unless the enemy could shoot it down, isn’t it still mission accomplished whether the enemy shuts its radar down or not.

Depends upon whether you see an ARM as an enemy air defence suppresion system or a weapon to take out the enemies air defence system. Succeeding in the first is much easier than in the second and I think the only missile that has real action experience that can do a better job than Kh-58s is ALARM. Now that HARM has upgrades it might have jumped up into the same league too.

Or is the Kh-58 too dumb to go to the last known location when it loses the radar signal?

The aircraft the Kh-58 is launched from has lots of dedicated EW equipment like what the west would call wild weasel aircraft. It isn’t just strapped onto any old light strike platform… like the Kh-25MP for the SEAD role.

If that’s the case and the Kh-31 is mostly just a smarter missile, then that’s one thing, but that’s what I’m trying to figure out.

Not sure myself. It might be cheaper. It is certainly newer.

At various MAKS shows, however, the Su-25TM (Su-39) has been displayed with Kh-31 variants on its hardpoints. Are there limitations to its use on that aircraft?

Its performance from that aircraft is probably not much better in range and speed to that of the kh-25MP. If the Su-25TM were to climb to its ceiling and accelerate to max speed of about 900km/h it might reach max range but I doubt they envisiage having to do that on a regular basis.

Also, can the Kh-58 be used in an anti-AWACS fashion like the Kh-31?

Such capability has been mentioned before for the Kh-31 but I would expect that just the standard model would be pretty ineffective in that role without modification. Perhaps a heat sensor as backup in case the transmitter shuts down, or perhaps an ARH option in the air to air role with Passive Radar Homing until the target stops transmission…

It’s my understanding that if the Kh-31 was to be used on the Su-25TM (a notoriously underpowered and draggy airframe) the required minimum launch speed for ramjet ignition would restrict the aircrafts payload to useless levels. The booster seems to be sized with a very close margin.

First of all the Su-25 airframe is not that draggy… as it is a subsonic aircraft adding bits that stick out is not actually that much of a penalty in terms of flight speed.
Regarding the booster it was limited in size to fit within the burning chamber of the ramjet engine so it was very restricted in size. The easiest option in my opinion would be to simply bolt on the rear a small solid fuel rocket booster along the lines of the one fitted to the Kh-35 to allow use from helos. It would add about 50-100kgs but should restore performance to the same levels achieved by the weapon on other platforms. Could be used on faster platforms too as firing from very low level is useful for the launch platform but not so good for flight range of the missile.

From what I can recall the Kh-31 and Kh-58 are matched to different SAM radar sets.

From an operational point of view it might be that they are for different types of targets… ie tactical radars and SAM radars, through to higher level radars etc.

Russian literature (for what it’s worth) claims that the Su-39 is capable of utilizing both weapons. Also, the Russians and Chinese claim that in service variants of the Kh-31 are capable of the “anti-AWACS” role.

But without mentioning whether it is standard variants or special variants able to be used in the Anti AWACs role. That pic was nice… a pic with Kh-58, Kh-31P and Kh-25MP would have been even better… 🙂

Well, it wouldn’t be the first time the Russians displayed a missile on an aircraft that did not (yet) have the capability to use it in practise (the airlaunched Sunburn/Kh-41 comes to mind!). It’s my understanding that if the Kh-31 was to be used on the Su-25TM (a notoriously underpowered and draggy airframe) the required minimum launch speed for ramjet ignition would restrict the aircrafts payload to useless levels. The booster seems to be sized with a very close margin.

I’m not even sure the basic Kh-31 can, I think that capability was planned for a specialised version of the missile.

This Su-39 at MAKS 2005 was configured to take on just about any SAM site it came across since it was armed with a Kh-31 and what looked like a Kh-58 inboard of it.

Russian literature (for what it’s worth) claims that the Su-39 is capable of utilizing both weapons. Also, the Russians and Chinese claim that in service variants of the Kh-31 are capable of the “anti-AWACS” role.

Logan Hartke

Trident allready explain you in short why there is so much weapons developed.No offence but your post just show how much knowledge you have about Soviet missile history.

None taken. I had heard of the “A vs B, hey let’s build BOTH” though. Honestly I wish I did know more about the developement of a lot of Russian systems. Very interesting stuff.

From what I can recall the Kh-31 and Kh-58 are matched to different SAM radar sets.

Thanks, Trident, this is exactly the type of information that I was looking for. At various MAKS shows, however, the Su-25TM (Su-39) has been displayed with Kh-31 variants on its hardpoints. Are there limitations to its use on that aircraft?

Well, it wouldn’t be the first time the Russians displayed a missile on an aircraft that did not (yet) have the capability to use it in practise (the airlaunched Sunburn/Kh-41 comes to mind!). It’s my understanding that if the Kh-31 was to be used on the Su-25TM (a notoriously underpowered and draggy airframe) the required minimum launch speed for ramjet ignition would restrict the aircrafts payload to useless levels. The booster seems to be sized with a very close margin.

Also, can the Kh-58 be used in an anti-AWACS fashion like the Kh-31?

I’m not even sure the basic Kh-31 can, I think that capability was planned for a specialised version of the missile.

The ramjet on the Kh-31 allows it to sustain that speed, while the rocket powered Kh-58 only reaches it as a short peak. In terms of total time of flight to a distant target, the Kh-31 is likely to be noticably faster. The disadvantage is that the Kh-31, despite its integral booster, is apparently ill-suited to slow launch platforms (such as the Su-25TM, ironically).

I think the Kh-31 is somewhat more modern in this respect, but the electronics are infact still based on those of the Kh-58, AFAIK. If that was the only improvement I’m sure an upgraded variant of the latter would have been developed instead.

It is a bit strange though, it’s not like the Kh-58 wasn’t a decent ARM or inacceptably slow.

Thanks, Trident, this is exactly the type of information that I was looking for. At various MAKS shows, however, the Su-25TM (Su-39) has been displayed with Kh-31 variants on its hardpoints. Are there limitations to its use on that aircraft?

Also, can the Kh-58 be used in an anti-AWACS fashion like the Kh-31?

Thanks again,

Logan Hartke

You’re talking about the people who needed the SS-17 AND SS-19 (in additon to the SS-18, 24, and 25), the SS-N-20 AND SS-N-23, S-300PMU AND S-300V, Shipwreck AND Sandbox AND Kitchen instead of one missile for all three roles. Business as usual for them.

Trident allready explain you in short why there is so much weapons developed.No offence but your post just show how much knowledge you have about Soviet missile history.

What role does the SS-17 fullfill that the SS-19 doesn’t?

None. The decision to deploy both was politically motivated and not planned in advance. In the other cases you mention, one missile was usually a more conventional back-up to another, riskier design (SS-18/-24, SS-N-20/-23 – i.e. liquid vs. solid fuel) and ended up in production alongside for some reason. The S300V and S300P have a significant overlap in capabilities but are ultimately intended to perform different roles, while also being designed for different services (army airdefence force and PVO, respectively). As for the anti-ship missiles, Kitchen is airlaunched and has a very different flight profile.

A number of things I was reading were saying that the Kh-58 had a speed of something like Mach 3.6 while the Kh-31 had a speed of Mach 3.5. Is that incorrect, or do you know more about their flight profiles?

The ramjet on the Kh-31 allows it to sustain that speed, while the rocket powered Kh-58 only reaches it as a short peak. In terms of total time of flight to a distant target, the Kh-31 is likely to be noticably faster. The disadvantage is that the Kh-31, despite its integral booster, is apparently ill-suited to slow launch platforms (such as the Su-25TM, ironically).

If that’s the case and the Kh-31 is mostly just a smarter missile, then that’s one thing, but that’s what I’m trying to figure out.

I think the Kh-31 is somewhat more modern in this respect, but the electronics are infact still based on those of the Kh-58, AFAIK. If that was the only improvement I’m sure an upgraded variant of the latter would have been developed instead.

It is a bit strange though, it’s not like the Kh-58 wasn’t a decent ARM or inacceptably slow.