The Kh-31P uses one of three alternative seekers designated L-111, L-112, L-113. There are reported to allow attacks against the Nike Hercules, HAWK, Patriot, and Aegis. The follow-on K-31PM uses the new multiband L-130, developed by the Avtomatika CKBA.
What we don’t know is how any of these seekers are integrated into the INS, and whether this integration allows the sort of capability I described the latest HARM variants as having.
As regards AESA, I know that studies have been conducted on how an array could perform several tasks simultaneously instead of relying on mode interleaving, but to date there is no US requirement and no funding. You would have to throw a significant amount of money at the problem, I understand.
The company in question was only asked whether each pulse from an AESA was generated by all the modules transmitting on a single frequency, or by modules that each transmit on its own frequency. So the reply could well be little more than a simple yes or no. No-one at the company is likely to sit down and write a detailed technical report in response to such a basic question, although it would be useful if they could cite an existing published document that we could all see.
But a custom-written detailed reply is most unlikely. When I first set up business, a number of early commissions were to visit a facility, talk to a designer, go away and write an account of what I’d been told, then swap the finished manuscript for a cheque. The first time this happened, I asked why they did not do such a basic job in-house. The reply was something like:
“You must be joking. First we would need a cost code for the work, and approval of the spending. Then we would need one or more meetings to draw up a specification for the required document, and devise a formal review and approval process for the finished product.”
I doubt whether much has changed since then.
Thank you for clarification. I remember reading an article by G. Steur speaking about CARAA “Plan d’Etudes Amont” and that is what was stated (physically separate modules in groups so as to generate different signals simultaneously). That suggest a strong involvement from DGA. I would also be a logical developments as interleaving is one of the weak points of present RBE2 AESA.
But i guess we will have to wait F4 standard (around 2023) before implementation…
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