Poor high-AOA qualities are irrelevant for a high-speed, high-altitude interceptor. Expecting it to turn with an F-16 at close range is asinine, it was never designed nor meant for that type of combat. As far as being unforgiving, that’s probably again due to the performance.

R-73s have been seen (on the MiG-31M at least), one on each pylon. Same with R-77s. Plus there’s the ability to carry external fuel tanks, and yes, I’m pretty sure tanks can be carried on the inboards as well. Seem to recall seeing photos.

They need a hell of a lot of warheads to put on their theater missiles, there are PAC-3 batteries and other anti-missile systems all over the place. Those will not be Taepo-dongs, they’ll be Musudans and the other SRBMs.

You can tell that the R-33S was intended to be carried in greater numbers. Look at the rear of the missile, the rear fins hinge much closer in to the body than on the R-33, allowing them to be spaced closer together.

About tests why would korea not test a warhead that weight enough for its icbm taepodong.

Because it makes no sense to develop a warhead for a missile that has about a 50% chance of getting off the launch pad. Then there’s the issue of accuracy…a 2-4 kiloton warhead mated to a horribly inaccurate missile system isn’t going to do anything impressive.

The best uses for these weapons aren’t fitted to missiles…

You are saying SARH (semi active radar homing), but I believe you mean ARH (active radar homing).

Nope, SARH. The missile seeker is just acting as a receiver, it doesn’t transmit anything. PAC-3 Patriots do use ARH, and they are not TVM guided as a result.

As for SHTIL on Steregushy. SHTIL is operational and available. If that was the plan, the lead unit would be equipped so. The reason it has the KASHTAN gun/missile combo is because the new missile system (9M96 or other) is not ready yet. That is the general belief (and it could be all wrong of course).

The VLS Shtil is not operational, as far as I know.

I thought Steregushy was going to get the VLS Shtil system?

Here’s missile guidance 101 in brief for TVM and SAGG.

TVM: radar tracks target. Missile seeker operates in a sort of SARH mode and receives reflected energy from the target. The data received is then datalinked to the guidance station on the ground, which formulates the guidance commands and sends them back to the missile. Were it true SARH guidance, the missile would be generating its own guidance commands to home in on the target. The advantage here is that you get pretty good accuracy without a really complicated missile, and you get better accuracy by using the greater computing power of the ground station to sort things out and generate guidance commands.

SAGG: Engagement radar tracks target. Missile and engagement radar both receive radar reflections back and calculate an idea of the target’s position. The missile sends its idea to the radar on the ground. The radar then compares the data and figures out where the target really is, sending guidance commands back up to the missile. This is better than TVM as you are comparing two sets of data. The missile’s computed data is “aiding” the “ground” based radar set, hence the term Seeker Aided Ground Guidance.

That’s a little bit of an oversimplification, but it should get the general idea across.

The R-37 is still being developed and should still be fielded on the MiG-31BM according to news from Russia. It’ll probably be in a slightly “downgraded” form, as it is not known if the upgraded Zaslon radars will have the full range performance of the MiG-31M’s Zaslon-M. If they don’t, then a redesigned, lighter (and potentially more agile maybe) R-37M variant may be what we see fielded eventually.

The R-33S does not appear to have entered service (at least not in any sort of quantity) as it was never seen on any in-service aircraft, but it may have been produced in small numbers during the economic bleakness (for the MoD at any rate) of the early to mid 1990s and merely kept in storage. No sense wasting airframe hours to captive carry the new toys if they aren’t needed, and any flight profile changes could’ve been fed into extant R-33 training rounds to electronically simulate both the R-33 and R-33S, so no need for a new variant there. But, yes, if they went into combat carrying the basic R-33 missile there is a strong likelihood that they would have been defeated electronically. The need for continued strategic defense may have been a reason why the R-33S remained largely secret for a long time as well.

The R-33S was necessary, along with Zaslon upgrades, thanks to the Tolkachev spy ring which basically handed a lot of the MiG-31’s weapon system characteristics to the West. Same basic thing in a sense as the MiG-25PD: Belenko decides to go sightseeing at Hakodate, and now the USSR needs to deal with the fact that the once-feared FOXBAT-A has now been picked apart by the West. Ergo, the upgraded MiG-25PD.