intrestig …. and some one put something abt that satellites from both sides, which was most usually said that both sides used to ‘read newspapers’ what the civilians on both sides used to read on the streets , from up, above …..

here is the article ….

Russians home in on AWACS-killer missile

by Reuben F. Johnson

Moscow’s AGAT Research Institute is in the final stages of developing a next-generation active radar homing seeker that will be the basis of a new class of Russian designed air-to-air weaponry. “This new super seeker is an improvement over previous generation models in several respects,” said AGAT general designer Josif Akopyan. “First of all, this model will have two to two-and-one-half times the range of present-day active radar homing seekers, making any missile it is fitted to the longest range missile of its type in the world. Secondly, even though it has a much longer range and thus will operate for a longer period of time, the battery requirements will not increase,” he told AIN.

With a range of up to 90 km, it could have the unprecedented capability to take out airborne warning and control system aircraft.

The need for much more battery power-and the significant extra size and weight that this dictates-has been a major inhibitor to developing this type of a seeker in the past, but Akopyan states that this problem has been solved through the development of what he calls new principles in the processing of radio location signals. Akopyan expects to unveil this new design sometime next year either at the Paris Air Show in June or at the Moscow Air Show in August.

Like this new seeker, many of the rapid new developments that AGAT has been turning out in the past few years owe part of their success to the significant advances in military electronics technology at the end of the last century. This has permitted the integration of a robust 50 million operations per second signal processor and a reprogrammable on-board computer into the small space of an air-to-air missile radome.

But beyond the availability of smaller and more powerful microelectronic components, AGAT’s design team has also been able to take advantage of the open architecture modularity in their designs. From a common configuration base, AGAT has developed several seekers that are progressively smaller, lighter and more capable. In parallel with the design of the 9B-1348 seeker for the Vympel R-77 (AA-12 Adder) air-to-air missile, AGAT originally developed a second model- the 9B-1103M-that could be retrofitted to the older Vympel R-27 (AA-10 Alamo) and turn it from a semiactive to an active homing weapon system.

Following this design, AGAT removed the components from the 9B-1103M that were specific to the interaction with the flight control system of the R-27 and developed an upgraded, generic seeker that was lighter and could be integrated to any missile. To demonstrate the adaptability of the design, AGAT produced this seeker in a second variant-a surface-to-air model similar to the original but with a larger diameter antenna that gives it a greater effective lock-on range.

The next-generation seeker now in development will be a larger diameter and weight than those of the R-77 or R-27 class, and it would be fitted to a larger missile airframe. An air-to-air missile that would be an optimal match for the Raytheon AIM-154 Phoenix or the Vympel R-37 missile was developed for the modernization of the Mikoyan MiG-31 interceptor. However, Akopyan and his design team did not develop this seeker with any application in mind. “This was developed on our own initiative,” he said, “and we are hoping to attract interested collaborative partners that would be looking to field a missile with this range/payload capability.”