It might very well potent but how does it stack up to the R-77? Does the R-77’s seeker have any advantages than the 120A? I have heard but not researched about how the 120’s seeker is better but I was hoping maybe someone has some insight to that?
It depends highly on the specific R-77 variants, as posted above the ranges vary from 13km to >40km for the seeker types although I think some of those are for R-37 and such. The RVV-AE is the variant we think they may add first which is limited by battery life and has a maximum range for 5m2 target of 16km. This matches well against the AIM-120’s active seeker based on public sources.
The kinematic performances of the R-77 will be better, but to my knowledge it does not loft and if wave drag is modeled you can bleed it’s speed faster. Should be a similar performance to the AIM-120A in-game and coupled with the fact that the aircraft in-game cannot carry as many R-77 as others can the AIM-120… should be a bit more fair than R-27ER vs AIM-7F imo.
R-77 should be particularly trash in WT due to the speeds and altitudes air combat is performed at ingame (usually transonic or subsonic and low alt).
Take it with a grain of salt cuz I cant find much info on it, but the R-77 was stated to have had tested in surface launch as a potential SAM, but ended up getting abandonned due to having an abysmal 12km range. By compairison, the RIM-7M (surface launched designation for an AIM-7M) has a range of about 19-26km depending on sources, more than double the R-77’s range if the 26km sources are to be believed (i see mostly US sources claiming 26km and Russian ones claiming 19km). Both missiles are otherwise very similar in dimensions.
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Where did you hear about a 12km surface launched range?
http://old.missiles.ru/arhiv/19.htm
Loking just at “range” is useless. It’s engagement zone and you should take into account also altitude and course parameter of engagement zone and against what target and with what probability is hit guaranteed. Also range can be limited due to seeker lock range, as most likely this SAM was planned without using radar for giving radio corrections to misisle.
Range is actually useful in this specific circumstance as its being discussed with known launch parameters (ie: launched from the ground at a standstill). The 12km max range from a ground launch indicates the R-77 does in fact have abysmal range when launched from lower speeds, which as I previously postulated, is likely the reason the SAM system was abandoned, and also likely the reason the latest variants have returned to planar fins over grid fins, like all other air to air missiles, seeing as aircrafts are rarely flying above Mach 1, and even more rarely above Mach 2.
For the R-77, which has, as previously stated, extremely similar dimensions to the AIM-7M, to underperform against the RIM-7M in surface launch applications by anywhere between 37-54% is rather abysmal.
We can also tell the seeker lock range is not an issue since first of all, the R-77 seeker is not limited to 12km, and also because there’s no reason to believe that the russians wouldn’t use a supporting radar if they wanted to improve the range if the seeker was the limiting factor.
As an aside, first generation NASAMS (which entered service in 1998 but had been in development since the 1980’s and initially deployed in 1994 likely use the AIM-120A/B’s) are stated to have a 25km range putting them in the same ballpark as RIM-7M and over 2x the range of RVV-AE as well.
NASAM 2, in service since around 2007 and using AIM-120-C5 and later variants is stated to have a 30km range ( 20% increase over first gen NASAMS).
NASAMS 3, in service since 2019, firing AMRAAM-ER, has a 50km range, double that of first gen NASAMS (AIM-120A/B at 25km), and 66% greater range than the NASAMS 2 (C5/6/7 at 30km).
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NASAMS 1 range of 25km was a mistranslation after Norwegian media purported that “the launchers can be located up to 25km from the FDC, expanding the defended footprint.”. [1], [2], [3]
The actual declared range of the NASAMS AIM-120C-7 modification is around 25km, suggesting the earlier models are significantly less.
If the RIM-7M is 26km ground launched and the NASAM claim is >15km (less than 25) then that supports ~50km in flight range for the AIM-120A/B. In fact, the RIM-7M is the heaviest sparrow modification thanks to the weather seals and folding fins.
The likelihood of the R-77 being limited to 12km range is in tail chase scenario or seeker limited. The initial R-77’s maximum head-on lock range was 12km. Russia purported that the R-77 was significantly cheaper than the AMRAAM as a ground-launched SAM and tried to sell it as such. This is why they did not want / need a separate radar system. Not only for reduction in cost, but reduction in maintenance.
In fact, the actual development of the R-77 as a surface launched variant continued with the R-77-3PK. This model had a larger motor section and retained the grid fins. It had a stated launch range of 33km and a ceiling of 15km. I cannot expect the range of the missile to nearly triple with a motor only twice as large.
Go figure though, something with significantly less weight than the Sparrow has less range.
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Range wise for the Nasams we have thoses range:
Aim-120A/B/C3/C4: Between 15 to 20km max range.
Aim-120C5: 25km max range
Aim-120C7: 30km max range
Amraam-ER: Between 40 to 50km max range. (ESSM body with an Amraam seeker).
I also found online the 12km stated range for the ground launched R-77. This low range is due to enormous transonic drag between 0.9-1.3 MACH.
The rear fin on the R77 are really not optimised for a sam. The missile design has been optimised for high altitude HIGH SPEED shot.
You can’t just judge the missile on it’s poor Sam performance for it’s performance on an aircraft.
Unfortunatly, in War thunder the drag is not moddelled for different speed but as a single value. So we’ll have to see how they implement it.
Source:
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Initial R-77 seeker range was limited to 12km, the actual maximum launch range would have been further. They thought by cutting out an external guidance radar they could make it cheap enough to compete with NASAMS.
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Could be but tbf, the missile is really unoptimised for Sam use so it having less than 20km range wound’t really suprise me.
The Mica EM which has the same stated maximum range as the R-77 (80km) has 20km max range for ground launched.
Furthermore the R-77 cannot loft so a low altitude shot would even reduce it’s range significatly.
A sam that don’t loft and has a lot of transonic drag is going to have poor range for sure.
The R-77-3PK you talk about aside having a larger motor could maybe loft and so it would add lots of range.
It’s limited to 12km by it’s seeker, but even kinematicaly, 12/15km max range wound’t surprise me.
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It would not surprise me either, but the absolute maximum range of 12km also depends highly on target speed, altitude, heading. None of this was provided for any of these figures so comparing them is as useless as ever.
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The point with discussing its ground based range was that in WT, where aircrafts routinely fire at subsonic or transonic speeds, the R-77 would suffer. Bringing up the SAM system range was to point that fact out using a known launch condition and being able to compare with similar missiles as well.
Hence this statement:
This is a specific concern I raised in the past, pointing out that the R-77 was very likely to overperform heavily when added to WT due to simplistic drag modelling and gaijins habit of modeling bias’ favouring russian tech, and one of the major reasons why I’ve been adamant about the fins and base drag. In WT conditions, its dubious the R-77 should be in any real way kinematically superior to any SARH seen at top tier currently due to its abysmal transonic drag if modelled correctly.
The seeker limit explanation is a complete cop-out there’s no reason to believe Russians wouldnt supplement missing seeker range by using external radar systems if that was actually the limiting factor, particularly since at the time, their other air defense systems were more than capable of exceeding the 12km range. 12km is on the low end for Russian SHORAD systems, with the 2K12 Kub, one of the systems it may have been fitted to, having ranges between 22-25km
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99% ARB battles it’s hight ( for sea level ) supersonic speeds ( 1.2-1.3 m ) at the first encounter
All arguments I conveniently answered for you in my reply that you’ve continued to ignore. Instead you come here perpetuating that these decisions regarding how they model the missiles are done on purpose to favor Russian missiles.
The truth is, it currently would. It is not in the game yet, we are not certain the wave drag will be modeled or not. In the event that it is not modeled it won’t yield any crazy results either. The R-77 is already superior to the early AMRAAMs and this trend would just continue without wave drag being modeled for grid fins.
The ground launched ranges are also of little use … only solving a small portion of the puzzle which is launch speed and altitude being net 0. The missiles top speed, acceleration, as well as the altitude, speed, trajectory of the target are all still unknown.
The seeker limitation is not a cop-out. The purpose of the R-77 being a SAM was because it is cheap. It is significantly cheaper than an AMRAAM, and adding a ground based radar to guide the weapon initially would greatly increase the cost of the complex and make it non-competitive with NASAMS which was the purpose of it at the time. Without an additional radar, the maximum launch range is seeker limited as mentioned in the source I gave you.
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Moon rune translation
What document is this from? Is it available for public distribution?
@BBCRF Please provide evidence that what you posted is declassified in accordance with the forum rules.
yes
Grid wings edited by Belotserkovsky publishing house Mashinostroenie 1985
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