Hmm- so who’s buying the Salyut AL-31Fs?

Heres a VERY interesting article- its written in Russian, by Phazotron, explaining why the Russian Airforce should buy Zhuk series radars rather than modernise their existing radars. In talking about Zhuk-MSF it talks not of 3m resolution like all the other publicity material, but of 0.4m x 0.4 m resolution.

http://www.aviapanorama.narod.ru/journal/2001_2/mi.htm

Certainly air to ground radar modes are useful- noone is disputing that. However, you can do ground attack without them. The point you were making was that Chinese Su-30MKK must have ground mapping modes to use their weapons, and hence must have the N001VEP radar fitted from the first batch.

PiBu (Piotr Butowski) says he has confirmed information that Su-30MKK was NOT fitted with this radar, at least so far. We have not found anything to prove him wrong. Therefore, it seems logical that we assume PiBu is correct, unless we find evidence to the contrary?

Remember how quickly the MKK contract moved. It is quite likely that, if N001VE is currently used, N001VEP might be refitted later on.

Note that Andrei Fomin says MKK uses an “improved N001VE” with ground mapping, without mentioning N001VEP, but he is writing before any actual deliveries had taken place.

PiBu- thanks for the information. I thought that was a possible idea.

Your English is fine. I just wish I knew any Polish at all- then my 3 volumes of Lotnictwo Wojskowe Rosji would be even more interesting 😉

Even if you’re only air to ground option is a 250kg dumb bomb, you will still need ground mapping, which is still what you need to find the target you plan to bomb with.

Well, I guess then the Su-25 and MiG-27K don’t engage ground targets, as they don’t have a radar…

What you do is rely on reconnaissance- plan the mission, fly there using any number of navigational aids, locate the target with your OLS-30 or even visually, lock on the TV guided weapon…

Kh-59/59M control surfaces:

Just to examine the performance figures:

Quoted range for Zhuk-MSE was 140km for a standard 5 sq m RCS target.

Tested range against an Su-27/30 (15 sq m RCS when armed with missiles) was expected to be around 180km head-on. This scales perfectly from the first quoted figure, using the third root of the increase in RCS (184km to be exact). The demonstrated 200km would translate to 150km for a standard 5 sq m RCS target.

The situation in tailchase is similar. 50km range was quoted against a 5 sq m RCS target. 80km was demonstrated against the Su-27 target, where we would expect 65km from RCS increase alone. This suggests tailchase range against a 5 sq m RCS target should actually be closer to 60km.

Crobato, Pibu; the Kh-59, -29T, Kh-31P and KAB-500/1500Kr can indeed all be supported without the use of radar.