It is also interesting which Version of the R77 was taken. Cause the new ones outclass the Meteor.

Most unlikely.

According to Russian sources, even the planned Izdeliye 180 upgrade of the R-77 expected to enter service around 2014 is only intended to match the performance of the AIM-120C-7. Vympel is on record as saying that it has abandoned its work on a ramjet-powered variant.

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What can i say? Fine example of profesional journalism…

Ms Alexandrova is not a defense or aviation journalist, so I don’t think we can read too much technical import into her words.

For the non-specialist journalist, the important skill is to be able to gather information on a subject about which you may have hitherto known nothing, compose a reasonably accurate account (using correct spelling and grammar) of what you have been told by your source(s), and get the end result to the copy desk not just in time to meet the deadline but also to fit in with the copy desk’s workflow.

To paraphrase a line from the 1960s musical ‘Hair’ – “Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried [to do] it.”

I am halfway through an excellent book on the subject …

What was the name of the book?

http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-17.html

I’d already found that website. What I needed for a specific research project were the following data for the operational missile:

Empty weight without warhead
Propellant load
Warhead weight
Weight of lubricants, compressed gases, etc

I have approximate figures for the R&D configuration used for early development flight tests, but not for the combat model.

Click on the ‘Contact the Department of Research & Information Services’ on the Hendon website, and you are rewarded with:

“We aim to reply to enquiries within 20 working days. If you have an impending deadline, please menton this in your message.” [The misspelling is theirs.]

How many of us are expected by our employers to get through a large amount of work in the course of 20 working days (= a month), not just to “aim to reply”?

If I don’t reply to an email in a day or so, I can expect to be hearing from my manager.

Found this: http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3a710a5216-59db-44d3-86ef-9aa5cfecfd90It seems that the desired range is 100 Nmiles.

Bill Sweetman’s tentative identification of this as a test vehicle for the Office of Naval Research High Speed Anti-Radiation Demonstration (HSAD) programme seems realistic, though I don’t think he is right when the says that “HSAD combines the seeker head and guidance electronics of the AGM-88 HARM with a wingless airframe and a ramjet propulsion system”.

Science and Applied Technologies (now part of ATK) was given a contract in 2002 to supply a forebody section to be mated with a new integral nozzleless rocket, variable flow ducted rocket ramjet propulsion and steering control subsystem in support of the HSAD project. This was based on AARGM rather than the standard HARM. The tail end of the round was by Atlantic Research.

Click here:

http://www.af.mil/news/story_media.asp?id=123082272

Then select an image from the left, and underneath the preview on the right hit “Download Full Image”.

As an aside this is probably related to the AARGM program.

SOC, you have the advantage over me of not having consumed a glass of 10 year old tawny port, then half a bottle of wine (dinner party prior to my wife’s departure to the USA to visit relatives…)

I’ll try to get onto this in the morning – that missile configuration looks terribly familiar. It’s not the current AARGM, which re-uses the HARM motor.

Nice pics, Rajan.

However, a quick check of the DRDO website shows that the link to the Aug04 publication from which they were taken seems to have been deactivated!

Do you have the text and captions that accompanied these pics?

If you have, and they are too big to post here, drop me a message and I’ll send you my email address.