Airborne missile "fortress"

[KonTim]

I was wondering if there is any capability of manufacturing an airborne missile "fortress",explaining,a large aircraft f.e of Be-200 size armed by sensors(radar,IRST,data-links) making her capable of carrying and firing in massive way large,medium and short range Air-to-Air missile against air targets.

This would be a real airborne "battleship",a new version of the old "Flying Fortress",this time be focused to air-to-air combat.

 

[kato]

Against what kind of target - since you won't run into dozens of targets in any single sortie really?
There's no one putting more than 6 AAM on an aircraft for exactly that reason, except in a mix of "real" and "self-defense" missiles. Or building a FCS capable of engaging more than 6 air targets simultaneously.

 

[SkolZkiy]

RuAf put more then 6 AA missiles - because the RuAF doctrine is to launch 2-3-4 missiles at once with different types of aiming to increase to 100% chance of hitting the target

 

[windscorpion]

Seems a bit of a white elephant to me and a bit too inflexible. Also missiles are expensive so you would be putting a lot of eggs in 1 basket and would be 1 aerial accident away from giving the bean counters a heart attack.

I think the USN once planned a subsonic missile carrier but never went through with it.

Ah yes the F6D Missileer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missileer

I know its not exactly the same thing as you mean but close enough.

 

[kato]

RuAf put more then 6 AA missiles

Su-27 line : typical load 6 R-27 + 4 R-73
anything above the six is self-defense, as said.

MiG-29 comes - depending on version - either with the same max AA loadout, or max six pylons anyway. Su-30 see Su-27, with up to 6 R-27/R-77 and 6 R-73.
Radar systems on all MiG-29 and Su-27 derived aircraft as far as i know so far are capped at 6 engagements simultaneously.

I'd presume that the FCS used by Russian aircraft is commonly capped at six upload interfaces for radar-guided missiles; would make sense.

Missileer carried 6 AIM-54. F-14 as its nominal successor project carried 6 as well; although often it'd instead carry (4 AIM-54 for anti-bomber mission) + (2 AIM-7 against fighters) + ( 2 AIM-9 for self-defense).

 

[macman]

Quite a lot of the major bombers have been converted these days to carry large numbers of cruise missiles of various types.

The Russians have variants of the Backfires, Bears & TU-160's that can launch large numbers.
TU-160's can launch 12x Kh-55's or 24× Kh-15's.
TU-22M3's (Backfire) can launch 3x Kh-22's or 8× Kh-15's.
TU-95's (Bear) can carry the Kh-20, Kh-22, Kh-26, and Kh-55's.


The US has counterparts in even larger numbers from what I recall.
The B-1's can carry 24× AGM-158 JASSM
P-3 Orion's & the B-52's can carry large amounts as well...

 

[Feanor]

He's talking about an ATA missile truck.

 

[KonTim]

Where is the difficulty from technical view of putting a powerful radar and IRST to a Be-200 size aircraft capable of multiple engaging targets capacity and let's say 20-30 missiles to inside opening bays?

Is the idea impossible to technical view or just useless to operational aspect or even costly one?

 

[der_Master]

It is simply a bad idea. First of all it is not needed. Foe example the US has not fought in an air battle as large as the one you are suggesting since probably WW2. Furthermore what is the point, you could simply sent 3-5 air superiority fighters to get the job done (I am thinking F-22 Raptors or F-15 Eagles). These jets would be safer (they can manoeuvre, have countermeasures, pilots can eject), can chase down and catch the enemy jets if they attempt to retreat, and the sum of the fighter jets can carry the same amount of firepower. There is just no point in having a slow unmanoeuvreable, unsafe, fighter jet that carries 20-30 air to air missiles. It does not make sense and goes against every rule of air to air combat.

 

[Salty Dog]

I believe the move will be towards UCAVs fitted for an AAW role and controlled by air superiority fighters or AEW&C aircraft. Imagine a F-22 controlling (4) UCAVs each armed with 4 AMRAAMs. That would give better flexibility and be a real force multiplier.

 

[kato]

More likely other functions would be laid off to UAV/UCAV as well. All active sensors for example.
Imagine, in the end, a B-2 like stealth control aircraft with between half a dozen and a full dozen UAVs and UCAVs, and no emissions from the controller other than an occasional control burst in a tight beam - e.g. in EM or laser - to the UCAV network. Not too farfetched i think.

 

[F-15 Eagle]

RuAf put more then 6 AA missiles - because the RuAF doctrine is to launch 2-3-4 missiles at once with different types of aiming to increase to 100% chance of hitting the target

To me thats saying something about their missiles since correct me if I am wrong but the U.S. doctrine is to fire one AMRAAM and get an almost 1 shot 1 kill. So 4 AMRAAMs is equally effective as 12 Russian AAMs.

I believe the move will be towards UCAVs fitted for an AAW role and controlled by air superiority fighters or AEW&C aircraft. Imagine a F-22 controlling (4) UCAVs each armed with 4 AMRAAMs. That would give better flexibility and be a real force multiplier.

That would be awesome like an unmanned F-35 or maybe MQ-9s with AMRAAMs that would be an impressive show of force.

 

[Feanor]

More likely other functions would be laid off to UAV/UCAV as well. All active sensors for example.
Imagine, in the end, a B-2 like stealth control aircraft with between half a dozen and a full dozen UAVs and UCAVs, and no emissions from the controller other than an occasional control burst in a tight beam - e.g. in EM or laser - to the UCAV network. Not too farfetched i think.

What would you make of the idea of an airborne UCAV carrier? Something B-2 sized, with tight emissions control, heavy ECM, and 3-6 VLO UCAVs in an internal bay?

 

[Salty Dog]

What would you make of the idea of an airborne UCAV carrier? Something B-2 sized, with tight emissions control, heavy ECM, and 3-6 VLO UCAVs in an internal bay?

The big problem I see with the "mothership" concept is the airborne launch and recovery of UCAVs. Even if the UCAVs would be expendable, that would be a costly system. It would be more practical for an airborne platform to carry missiles.

 

[kato]

Indeed. The controller should do only that - control the UAVs. And it's only role would be to give the UCAV group a forward-deployed man-in-the-loop. Could also just be a fallback if ASAT weapons are deployed. Think a stealthed AWACS with emitting sensors offloaded to multiple somewhat more expendable, but also more maneuverable and evading UAVs in the surrounding area. Could be implemented separately from offensive UCAVs.

Even if the UCAVs would be expendable, deploying them from a mothership would compromise the mothership somewhat btw. Opened bay multiplying the radar signature and all that.

 

[der_Master]

What about the mothership being more of an SR-71 blackbird type. Meaning its fast very fast and quickly enters the hostile location and gets out quickly. With air to air refuelling it could wait outside the combat zone for a long time. Satellites could find information and people working in a forward base (or even the pentagon) could then relay the information back to the mothership and have it quickly drop of the UCAVs and get out.

 

[kato]

Might make sense for air-to-ground, but not for high-mobility air-to-air combat. I think LM proposed that with the F-22 and Minion UCAVs basically?

A satellite and its 4- to 12-hour latency on results isn't all that good for finding positions of enemy aircraft either :lol

 

[der_Master]

oh ya thats right, i forgot it was air to air. So ya no way that would work. But more importantly is it really 4-12 hour delay between satilete detecting information and people veiwing the information. If so that is really bad, I always assumed it was almost instant, like 15-30min wait.

 

[kato]

Sat images need to be transferred to the ground (huge amount of data!), processed etc.

I've seen the number "10 hours" stated for the German SAR-Lupe radar sat surveillance system. Before any analysis can start.

And that's of course presuming you have a ground receiver within the transmission arc of the sat at all times (USA, France, afaik also Russia etc do, but let's say for India, China or other nations this could become an additional difficulty), otherwise you could tack a couple hours onto that.

 

[Feanor]

I was actually thinking air to ground, with my idea.