Contradicts to many people believes, aircraft IRST are not only for Air-to-Air but also for Air-to-Ground combat (American even use them to find oil!). Those system on Soviet/Russian 4th gen fighter like many Fulcrum or Flanker variants have ability to guide laser-guided munitions like Kh-25ML or Kh-29L by emitting radiation from itself without the need of any TGP or built-in laser-designator. It still worth to note that this is no where near the dedicated devices due to the fact all these IRST are mounted on top of the jet which limiting their covering zone and and “look-down” capability.
Here is a picture of Su-30MK2 firing Kh-29L without TGP
You’re going to need a hell of a strong source for this claim, because that’s just not how laser guided munitions work.
IRST is entirerly passive, it doesn’t emit anything for the munition to track. The only concievable way this could work would be the IRST telling it what direction from the aircraft the target is before launch and then having the missile act as a dumb rocket trying to hit that exact spot, thus being completely unable to hit any moving target.
The optoelectronic sighting system includes an optical location station and a helmet-mounted targeting system. The optical location station of the Su-30MK2 aircraft, which is a combination of an overview-tracking heat direction finder and a laser range finder, is used to detect and track an aerial target in its front and rear hemispheres by its thermal radiation, measure the range of a laser beam to an aerial and ground target, and can also be used for laser illumination of a ground target when the use of air-to-surface guided missiles with a semi-active laser homing head.
Export modifications are equipped with different equipment…(Especially Russian ones)…
Also, my mistake, taking into account the translation, I should have written in more detail …
OLS and OEPS are different from each other (therefore, we need to look at which modification of the Su-30)…
2.Although my text is correct (The optoelectronic sighting system)…
3.For example, the Su-30MKK/Su-30MK2 is equipped with OEPS…
So it would be like firing the laser guided missiles on the Su-25 and Su-17/22? if so they would be very bad, especially at high battle ratings where russian fighters get IRST. It would be better to just take unguided rockets or the TV guided ones
