Air to air missile counter isn’t a realistic tactic, the only missile I know IRL capable of doing this is IRIS-T which is only limited to close range. Fox3 shooting down Fox3 is a thing never heard of and it will have serious issues with 5th gen which carries way fewer missile than some late 4th gen like Su30SM and F15C. Imaging a SU30 countering all the missiles of F22 and can still have 6 missiles left, or F15 do the same to SU57, it is insane and totally ignorance of reality at all.
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I don’t disagree with the rest of the post, but assuming you have a radar powerful enough, i do believe intercepting an incoming missile isn’t something impossible to achieve
Aster-30 (basically Mica seeker on similar sized missile once booster is off) intercepted a Mica launched by a Rafale during an exercise
source : French Air Defense FREMM hits supersonic target with Aster 30 missile - Naval News
However it is to note that this was done using a ship’s radar, which are usually more powerful than airborne ones.
One thing that could be done in game is maybe to render enemy missiles less likely to be picked up by the aircraft radar until close so the tactic becomes more dangerous
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Or in simple terms: RCS modelling.
Something like an AIM-54/Fakour-90 should obviously be more visible as they’re huge, but smaller ARH/SARH missiles shouldn’t be, at least not from far/the moment it’s launched as the aircraft’s signature should be the biggest thing there for a while.
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it isn’t about raw radar output, it’s about the computer that controls the radar. it needs to be fine tuned for detecting and intercepting missiles;
surface radars are generally designed to be able to detect miniature munitions like bombs and missiles, whereas air radars are usually restricted to aircraft, large caliber munitions and supersized munitions like ICBMs
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Well I know AAM-4 Can intercept some other type of missiles tho technically not fox 3 Russia and china do have supersonic ASMs
modern FOX3s can intercept larger caliber missiles
Yes but who knows if modern airborne AESA are in fact fine tuned to do it or not ?
Well i don’t think any of us can be sure of that. I also don’t really see the point of an airborne radar tracking an ICBM, this is more a task for early warning and ground based radars.
Besides, ICBMs tend to use a trajectory that screams “i’m coming for you”, so unlike a cruise missile you don’t need to be 10000m in the air to see them approach from a distance.
I guess if anybody has the RCS of the usual ~160-180mm diameter of an AAM, we could make a reasonable assumption ?
Yeah Fakour and phoenix have dimensions more comparable to antiship missiles : 370-380mm diameter respectively, while Harpoon is 340mm and exocet 380mm.
i’m willing to wager some are able with a specific mode, but it’s not likely
whether there is a point or not, sometimes it’s cheaper, faster, and safer to get an aircraft to go splash an ICBM especially if you already have deployed aircraft whereas a surface launched munition may not get there in time.
As far as i’m aware, no aircraft carries ICBM interceptors ?
yeah sorry i forgot modern aircraft carry no air to air missiles whatsoever and only rely on their gun for everything
I hate to break it to you, but you aren’t intercepting a 2-3km/s MIRV with an AAM. You need specialized anti ballistic defense for that (well realistically, even with anti-ballistic defense, if multiples MIRV are raining down on you it’s pretty much done for)
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ICBMs don’t spawn at high altitude and max speed either, can very much shoot it down before it becomes a SAM’s problem
xD would have to be quite the close range shootdown. A-A don’t have that much fuel nor energy required to climb above the ICBM’s flight path to intercept and most won’t have the manoeuvrability to do so, so high up
Even before it leaves the atmosphere it’s already moving pretty fast
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Thanks, corrected
For the rest :
ICBMs usually take off from submarines, so unless you know where that is, no you aren’t. Alternatively, they take off from ground silos, usually protected with their own air defense. In both cases that would be thousands of km away, so you can’t deploy aircrafts that far fast enough
Then they go in LEO, with their apogee reaching as high as 1000-2000km (higher than the ISS), which no AAM can reach or maneuver in
as for the re-entry phase, there’s 2 complications :
- raw speed - around 4-6 km/s at the beginning of the rentry, down to 2-3 km/s when they arrive on target - meaning your AAM will struggle or even not be able to calculate an intercept solution, assuming your plane and your pilot is in a nominal position to fire
- Conductive plasma created by the reentry on the MIRV. MIRVs are already not that big, but when they reenter a plasma forms around, as any object falling from space. Issue is, that plasma is conductive and can mess up with radar signal, rendering it somewhat “accidentally” stealth
All those reasons are why most designed ICBM interceptors are meant to be exo-atmospheric (no possible maneuvering, no plasma, and enough reaction time still)
Those are called SLBMs ;) ICBMs on the ground exist and often have more range than SLBMs.
fair enough, though i guess they behave the same at the end of the day, and you could consider SLBMs as a subcategory of ICBMs
Besides, i think we are not too far of from the day where most will reach almost 20 000 km. After that there won’t be any point in increasing the range further
ICBM can’t be intercepted for another reason, it is too fast. Back to the Fox3 counter Fox3 issue, it is possibly due to game not modelling RCS well and Fox3 is not fine tuned to kill other Fox3 IRL, as you have mentioned. If this situation is not fixed, it will look ugly as time progresses.
Literally makes the f16cm pobit useless at top tier sim… the issue described is already taking place, 6 missiles on the falcon vs 14 on the su30 means the su30 can comfortably deal with 2 f16cms before needing to rtb
That already is the case, if you try to actualle hard lock a missile with just hmd, it will often fail.
As for ARHs, I don’t really care about whether or not they can be intercepted by other ARHs, but as long as a radar can lock them, it should be possible to launch (S)ARHs at them.
Outside of the F-14, I never really do BVR, so I can’t tell how much of a problem this really is.
And obviously, as long as the incoming missile is hot enough it should be possible to lock them with IR missiles to potentially intercept or deflect them.