Do you think the aircraft itself emits no heat whatsoever? From the engines running at over 2000dg F to external accessories such as pitot tubes being heated to over 800dg F, even the airflow heating up the skin of the aircraft to ~200dg F… A missile will see it. Regardless of fancy shapes or insulation of internal structures, there is something to see.
The LAV does it purely by sight. Much like the actual 92K launcher, it has the capability of retaining a visual on an aircraft and that is what is communicated to the missile.
The AGM-114L isn’t used for short range air defense…?
Disruptive paints / coatings still don’t effect IIR seekers, nor does it effect UV output.
But the temperatures they get up to might not be lockable (either the areas of high heat are too small or they are out of view for a ground-launched missile).
But it could be getting information from elsewhere: external radar → LAV-AD → FIM-92K
The M-SHORAD used them, at least until July (where they stopped due to wear concerns).
I was mentioning specifically optical countermeasures there.
The temperature of the aircraft in flight would not change because it uses LO geometry.
The temperature of the aircraft in flight also wouldn’t change because of RAM that’s less than 10cm thick.
It can and will still be locked by a missile.
Can you substantiate such?
The M-SHORAD never used Hellfires against aerial targets, it’s purely there for more armored components of a battlefield or anything softer that can use a bit of overkill.
Ever wondered what these are?
Optical countermeasures cannot fool a missile, though? Even IIR has fallbacks and bases its optical tracking purely off of thermal recognition of an aircraft.
It all depends on the quality of the seeker’s image, the difference in temperature between the surroundings, and how little the temperature of the aircraft changes in flight. I’m not saying that in the optimal scenario for the MANPAD/close-range missile it won’t ever hit, but in non-optimal conditions I doubt the design of the aircraft would do little against the missile.
There’s a lot of stuff on this bug report, where from what I can tell the LAV-AD can at the very least can get information about the location of a target from external sensors (like a radar) through a radio suite.
It’s not used only against ground targets.
It can by confusing the seeker as to how large and/or near the aircraft is.
It would depend on a lot of things, but regardless the missile will be no less effective against a 5th gen air superiority aircraft than a 4th gen strike aircraft.
It doesn’t? Documents such as this state that it can communicate with outboard systems for battlefield surveillance, not for weapons solutions. Weapons solutions are given purely by the EOTS system on the vehicle, and offer LOAL capability with any DL capable missile.
Can you show me the M-SHORAD using its AGM-114s against any group of drone or aircraft?
By… Doing what exactly? A paint scheme will do absolutely nothing to affect infrared seekers. This isn’t the 1920s, there are not tiny gnomes inside of missiles that are liable to getting confused because a plane has a fancy paint job.
That’s why I said “at the very least [the LAV-AD] can get information about the location of a target from external sensors,” since at the very least it can be told where a target is generally (and therefore an aircraft unseen by external radars would have a much lower chance of them targeting it).
The fact that the soldiers in Germany were told that they were prohibited from using the Hellfires against aircraft, that the vehicle itself is meant for air defense (article), the stopgap measure is more stingers (surface-to-air missiles), and that the replacement for them will be the new surface-to-air missile whenever it gets finalized, should show that they were using it for air defense, lol.
In which none of this has any sway on the effectiveness of a MANPADS platform. Yes, battlefield awareness is important… But no, being told the direction of an enemy aircraft so you can lock it yourself does nothing for your argument.
So… The AGM-114 isn’t used as an air defense weapon… I think I got it…?
Where is the relevance in bringing it up then, let alone using this specific point as “backing”?
Nowhere in the article is it stated it was used as air defense weaponry prior. Hell, read the article entirely and you’d see exactly what I’ve said before.
So contrast based seekers?
Can you name me a single MANPADS that uses an optical contrast seeker, and why that has relevance over the IIR technology that has been mentioned 9 times prior to this?
The Type 91 missile uses an optical imaging seeker, where the paint scheme of the aircraft would be very much relevant to help it obscure itself. But even then that would be the only such MANPADS I could think of, with even the later Type 91 Kai having shifted to an IIR seeker.
As long as the non-MANPADS SAM counts, the Type 81 (C) variant uses two different seeker types, one of which being another optical imaging seeker like the Type 91 missile, though at this point it also uses datalink from ground based radar.
Both also have backup IR contrast seeker functionality.
