SOCSomething like that’d probably work.
SOCSOCDoesn’t have to be THAT big. You only need to get it high enough so that the GAZELLE’s absurd motor blows it right out of the atmosphere. The GAZELLE transloader vehicle could then be altered a bit to carry and erect a slightly longer tube for the bigger missile. Then reprofile the thing a bit to make use of newer motor technology to make it narrower, and you can mount two of them side-by-side.
SOCNo. If Blackbird’s stayed away from where they were operating, then Yefim Gordon’s claims that FOXBATs got missile lock on them and Paul F. Crickmore’s interviews with FOXHOUND pilots saying they actually saw them would all be bogus.
SOCThe range at Mach 3 really is the key. The FOXBAT doesn’t have the fuel or the engines to hit Mach 3 and stay there for almost 3,000 miles. Neither does FOXHOUND.
That does of course relate directly to the aircraft designs and the roles they were intended for. FOXBAT wasn’t intended for long-range Mach 3 cruise.
FOXBAT doesn’t get enough credit for one thing, though: bombing from altitude. Some sources claim that they got pretty damn accurate over the course of the jet’s career as the avionics were tweaked. I bet it was something like this…
Pyotr: Boris, check this out. A fuel tank fell off at 3,000 km/hr. It took them three days to find it.
Boris: Hey that’s pretty good. We should get the old man to let us try bombs instead of flares for the camera. Radar operators would hate us.
Pyotr: Interesting, interesting. We’d convert kinetic energy into range.
Boris: Yeah, but we’d need something to calculate the right release point. Where’s Mikhail?
Pyotr: Over working out an issue with the camera shutter. MIKHAIL! GET OVER HERE!
Mikhail: What do you two chekists want? I have a quota to keep.
Boris: Calm down, we have an idea to raise hell with the Imperialists.
Mikhail: Go back to work and stop wasting your time. Unauthorized alterations to the design are forbidden.
Pyotr: It’s just an idea, you Mongol. Hear us out, it’s quite good.
Boris: Did you hear about the fuel tank incident?
Mikhail: Yes, they shot three engineers after they decided the cause was a faulty attachment point. I hear it was the pilot who dropped it on accident, but his uncle is in the Politburo.
Pyotr: You’ve done avionics work, do you think a computer could’ve predicted the impact point of the fuel tank?
Mikhail: Of course, that’s simple math around here. You should see what Korolev is trying to do these days.
Boris: OK, so what if the computer was mated to the flare racks, and we switched the flares with bombs?
Mikhail: (silence)
Pyotr: Mikhail?
Mikhail: We need to go see the old man.
😀
SOCThat’s why I mentioned a decent booster genius 😀
Fire the booster, gain altitude, fire the sustainer in the second stage, get on out, fire the MaRV.
SOCAny idea how that would compare to something like KEI?
No idea. All that’s pretty much been released are the design goals of exoatmospheric warhead intercept and ASAT capability. I think part of the fallout from the Samoderzhets research project was a commitment to mobile systems, so we can assume it’ll be mobile. That shouldn’t be a stretch, the GAZELLE ABM was derived from the mobile S-225 system anyway; give it a bit of a booster and away you go. All you need is a guidance radar, you can datalink in to the BMEW network for EW.
If they base the missile on the GAZELLE it may be able to be a pretty good ASAT, now that I think about it. That thing had absurd velocity; with a strong enough booster and a MaRV third stage it might be able to smack targets outside the standard LEO range. That lets you start thinking about threatening the GPS network, and now you’ve got a whole new type of deterrent.
SOCThat’s a good question. Is the bigger motor designed to improve speed, range, or both?
And yeah, the article mentions that it still spins.
SOCYeah U.S. forgot to mention that Iraq’s SAM’s where outdatted but the Patriot STILL did bad against their pethetic Blastic missiles… 9 Iraqi missiles which were not destroyed by the Patriot…they landed “harmlessly” in the desert or the Persian Gulf
It’s called “trajectory analysis”. These were ballistic point-and-shoot weapons that did not maneuver in flight. If you know it’s going to land on a sand dune, there’s no reason to engage when you may need to fire at another target that might hit, say, Kuwait City.
We conclude that the body of video we have reviewed contains data on at least 22 to 23 out of roughly 47 Desert Storm engagements. Of even greater significance, the video appears to include 17 to 18 out of roughly 30 engagements in Saudi Arabia. This indicates that there is a very substantial base of video information from which an assessment of Patriot’s performance can be made.
We have found no convincing evidence in the video that any Scud warhead was destroyed by a Patriot.
Really? Big deal. The DESERT STORM engagements were done using missiles that were not the PAC-3 dedicated anti-missile variant. The fact that they managed to convince the system to actually hit any part of a ballistic target is pretty good.
HOWEVER.
PATRIOT’s “success” in DESERT STORM is in fact blown way out of proportion. So we do certainly agree there.
the accidental downing of a British Tornado fighter by a Patriot missile on Sunday is a terrible reminder of the system’s limitations.
That part, however, is plain retarded. If the PATRIOT is in auto kill mode and a jet flys in range without transmitting IFF signals as I seem to remember being reported as the reason for the shoot-down, well then hell yes it’s going to get shot at. It’d be a failure on PATRIOT’s part if it DIDN’T shoot at the Tornado.
Not what the thousands od ABM missiles Russia has, keep dreaming.
Russia has five sites that house ABMs capable of intercepting a strategic warhead. There is exactly one S-200 site remaining, and neither the S-300V nor the S-300P/S-400 have the speed to do it. The S-400’s 48N6DM has the best chance if you can call it that, being capable of intercepting targets moving at 4800 meters/second. So that makes eight sites, counting the two S-400 batteries outside Moscow and the single S-200 battery in Kaliningrad (assuming it still can carry a nuclear warhead, which it’d have to have to do it). Kaliningrad gets killed as it can only fire at two targets per intercept. Moscow doesn’t have to get killed by saturation nuking, you can simply land warheads around it out of range of the systems. Hello fallout, goodbye populace. People disregard the massive impact that radiation and fallout would have on a given area. If you put a 10 megaton warhead into downtown New York City, you’ll probably kill everyone from DC to Boston. Neither side is going to survive a nuclear engagement.
When Russia gets the S-500 online, then we can talk about serious ABM defense and the problems a mobile system like that could create.
SOCThey have something like 20 MIDAS tankers, that’s it. The rest of the MIDAS fleet was retained by the Ukraine when the USSR deconstructed. BISON tankers are long gone. And those 20 or so MIDAS tankers? They live and breathe to support BEAR H and BLACKJACK flights. Sure they get out and deal with other types on occasion, but the MIDAS fleet is primarily a bomber-support asset. And well it should be: BACKFIREs can perform their theater anti-ship strike and recon roles fine without tanker support due to their basing, and FLANKERs and FOXHOUNDs don’t need much in the way of tanker support thanks to their long range to begin with.
And with a 20-something tanker fleet, they aren’t massing a large-scale BACKFIRE strike on CONUS anyway. That’d be massively retarded when much more sensible assets like BLACKJACK are available. What are you going to do, close within 100 miles of the coast and toss Kh-15s at targets along the East Coast? Good luck with that, thanks to the massive RCS of the Tu-22M. Langley’s Raptor pilots will turn that into an open competition to see who can bag the most BACKFIREs. At least the BLACKJACK has RCS-reducing features and RAM treatments.
Besides, BACKFIREs have no IFR capability despite completely absurd conspiracy theories to the contrary. The IFR probe installation is like an external hardpoint on the B-1B: a treaty inspectable part of the airframe. If it’s a simple case of screwing in a probe it’s easy to determine.
Use your heads, people. BACKFIRE is a theater asset, and am absurdly dangerous one at that. But there is a reason you don’t see them practicing long-range flights along the US like the BEAR H crews do: it’s a stupid use of the airframe, and they can’t be tanked in flight.
SOCGotta say I’m shocked the TSR.2 hasn’t popped up! If you guys keep drooling over them ancient prop-jobs so much, I’m gonna kick this thread over to Historic Aviation 😀
SOCOne of the Russian sources I used to write the S-300P article gives speeds of 2000 m/sec for the 5V55, 2100 for the 48N6/48N6D, 2400 for the 9M82, and 1700 for the 9M83.
SOCIs Varyag still at Dalian?
SOCSelling the S-300PMU-1 to Greece was the same thing. Selling any of them to China is the same thing to a point as well thanks to all the ISR aircraft operating offshore and recording ELINT signals. It’s all about money, and you can get some bank for an S-400. Besides, Austin and I had a discussion about something similar a page back I think. They can offer a system with less capable radar systems to preserve the ECCM features of the native variant. They may be able to get the Turks on their side if they play up the Greece vs. Turkey angle, and there’s nothing saying Turkey has to automatically hand the system over for exploitation either. Not having NATO look at the system is to their advantage with fellow NATO member Greece sitting right over there, so to speak.
Russia has been pretty open with its latest SAM toys because they know they have the best in the world by a good margin. As such, that gets you lots of rubles. It’s not like they’ll be in a bind anyway, the chances of a USA v Russia match are slim to none and won’t be decided by SAM systems.
SOCWhat in the world are Bat Men? I could speculate, but…
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