Ah yes, in this case the shape of the seeker doesn’t really have an impact expect on the area were the seeker ends
Maybe against a SAM battery you are going to take unacceptable losses when by the same point you could just dump a load of smaller diameter glide bombs.
At which point they would probably be shot down but then that battery is vulnerable to a follow up attack as it rushes to rearm the spent launchers.
I don’t think it’s particularly efficient and puts the airframe at risk when using a system like Brimstone.
It’s supposed to fill our SEAD role. So either it has a passive detection method. Or probably more likely, RWR like Next Gen DASS can provide GPS coordinates, that cues up a SPEAR 3 with the ATR profile of the target type and location and off it goes.
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It depends on the radar system/location. If you can fly below the radar or terrain mask, get within range to fire off a volley of Brimstones and run away, you wont be in any risk of the SAM
Sounds fun, hopefully we get it one day in game ))
I hope with the ARM mechanics they’ll add they make it so you can target RWR pings
its not really an advanced system, iirc the F-4G could do similar
or could at least add coordinates of SAM radars to nav computer
I would really like to know how and how much the heating of the seeker-head and its optics impact the quality as the (likely) magnesium fluoride glas itself would start to radiate IR waves. The 1000 °C is also pretty close to the melting point of 1263 °C of such a glas. I would assume the optics + glas get cooled by the gas (pressurized argon) which was used to cool the IR-CCD before it gets vented.
From my understanding doctrinally the Brimstone isn’t really a SEAD weapon. I was taking it as an example because it’s a typical LOAL system that can be carried in very large numbers on a single airframe.
For SEAD and saturation of SAM sites I would more think of those American GBUs that can be carried by the dozens on the F15, or the recently proposed gliders from MBDA with dual seeker and carried on 6x pylons (so 18-24 on things like the rafale/eurofighter), although those don’t actually exist yet
The question is ultimately what is “safer”, high and fast but maybe from further away to drop Glide GBUs or very low but closer to fire Brimstones
The advantage of Spear-3s, they are both in one
Way too many variables to decide realisitcally which is better generally, so it really comes down to situation vs situation.
Yes. And the current conflicts with « near pear » nations in the east has shown that it’s not usually multirole jets that destroy air defenses but a saturation of drones, cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles. Those jets have largely been relegated to SHORAD duty or dumbing glidebomb on villages at the frontlines on both sides.
Tho they don’t use the neck plus ultra of air to ground munitions but cheap, expandable weapon kits
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I don’t think it’s fair to compare Russian SEAD/DEAD with USA and NATO.
As many have said US is more than prepared to destroy any SAM network in the world.
Nothing could stand up to it.
and we also have a recent example of air power being able to either suppress or destroy a relatively modern air defense network
Ukraine has been using AASM, so it’s not too far off. Tho I count it more in the category of « cheap expandable kits », tho it has a larger range than the Russian counterparts, since they seem to mostly use the GPS variant
The US have also relied on massive saturation strike with ground, sea and air launched cruise missiles to deal with SAM networks.
I also don’t think they’ve dealt with a network as complex as what we can find in Russia and Ukraine, with a mix of quasi static long range systems but also a large number of very mobile mid-short range systems, tho if they had to do this I expect they’d get most of the more dangerous long range systems over the course a a large saturation attack and then use F35s and laser guided munitions to deal with shorter range systems from outside their effective range.
It’s not that different from what Russia does, they just do it more chiurgically. Ukraine has also been far more resilient in keeping their air defense systems up (with the aid of NATO) against Russia compared to say, Iraq in 1993
While I agree and we cannot use the Gulf as the metric we can just look at the sheer volume and capability the USA can deploy.
F-22 for supressing air assets
F-35 for Jamming and Decoys
B-21 for long range stand off strikes
Then when it all calms down you still have F-16/F-15s
Russian network would crumble as would Chinas they wouldn’t know what to do and yes some US airframes would be shot down. The goals would be achieved.
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ASRAAM was originally planned to use a sapphire seeker dome, with magnesium fluoride also being developed as a backup in case the sapphire version didn’t work out. I don’t know which one they ended up using in the end.
Interesting in that regard is the transmittance of these two materials:
Magnesium Fluoride: 0,120 μm to 8,0 μm
Sapphire: 0,150 µm to 5,5 μm
The CCD of the ASRAAM uses “Indium antimonide” as its material which detects IR radiation in the band of 0,5 µm to 5,4 µm covering nearly the complete transmittance band of Sapphire. I don’t know if that’s good because usually the more you approach the borders of the transmittance range, the transparency lessens so I assume it would be preferable to have more “buffer” in that regard.
Well the E-scan in game could easily be underperforming quite heavily
Woah, i didnt expect Meteor to be that fast while cruising. This and 300km+ range? This is monstrous
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MALD + AARGM-ER + F-35 is a nasty combo