Terminal IR guidance is a must have for anyone taking on vlo, i believe irst on planes will evolve enough next few years to make bvr attack on f22 feasible.
problem is a dry mac 1.7 f22 will outrun the bvr, except perhaps a speed demon meteor
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you interpret me right.
a russian pilot said irst will triple in range, from 50 to 150 km within 7 years.
this ofcourse is speculation until we are actually there, but i don't see it unfeasible
Russan's say alot of things. They said the PAK-FA would be flying last year remember, oh and that the rusiian navy would be at soviet levels in 20 years, not to mention the S-400's ability to detect VLO platforms at 200 km's and therefore an implied ability to do something about it. I'd take that claim with a pinch (or bucket) of salt. But lets assume for the sake of argument that the max detection range of IRST's is 150km, there are a few generic limitations to IR based systems.
1. IRST's cant do a volume search, they need to be cued by annother system such as radar or ESM/RWR, which are both effected by VLO techniqes. Therefore even if an IRST can actually detect a platform at 150km's, its not going to be able to search like a radar. The principle is alot like looking through a telescope, you have to amplify the IR radiation from a small area of the sky. Therefore if you want to search the whole volume infront of you you can only look at a tiny portion of it at once. As an example, if you live near a flight path, next time you hear an aircraft outide grab a telescope or pair of binoculars, put some earplugs in and look for the plane (i actually tried this once when i was a kid). I'll save you the trouble, theres no chance in hell you will ever find the target looking only at such a tiny piece of sky at once. The same limitations apply to IRST's. In order to search effectively you have to viev a larger area at once (zoom out), but this also means that your detection range is drasticlly reduced, cind of a catch 22.
2. IRST's are wether dependant, they can not see through cloud. Therfore the capability of your primary sensor is totally dependant on the state of the atmosphere. Thats not a very good thing when your evemy has no such limitations.
3. IRST's can not track in the true sence of the word because on their own they can not give range data. This defficiency is rectified on current models by a laser range finder which is also wether dependant. These range finders also are detectable and will advertise your position to the target.
Therefore even if IRST's improve 3 fold in 7 years as is claimed, in reality this will change little tactically when faceing a VLO platform. The legacy platform will still need annother source to cue their IRST's onto the target, and that "other source" will be reliant on detecting EM emmitions or useing HF radar. Both of which are very problematic considering LPI radars and networking for the former, and the expence & complexity of HF radars which can be countered by the intoduction of HF absorbing RAM anyway. The enemy will be utilizeing an active fased array radar that will provide very acurate track data while searching out to 200km+, IRST will never ever be comperable to contemporary radars and in the BVR game that means your toast.
As for IR guided BVR missile shots, is it possible to engage a VLO platform like this? Maybe, again if you can detect and track the VLO platform (which as i have allready stated is very problematic) and if the VLO platform hasn't killed you first then i guess you can shoot an IR guided missile. However IR guidence is inferior to ARH for BVR missiles, because the former doesn't give range data. So does it allow the user to
effectively engage VLO platforms? IMHO No. Too much depends on the wether and the unanswered question of what exactly detected the VLO platform in the first place which cued the IRST, and then you have to get an IR guided missile fired. All this has to happen BEFORE you get killed by the VLO platform your trying to find. Basiclly it does not provide anything near parity.