Solid fuel
The evidence being the jet plume ? Or specifically the combustion shock rings in the plume ? Or is it the colour or the relative streamlining of the plume ?
Nope.
No, I thought those lines under the wings are air ducts for ducted ram jet .... which is air breathing and burns liquid fuel.
But apparently not?
Last edited:
No, those are long chord wings with a bit of tapering on the two ends. You can see here the root chord extends quite a long way but the main trapezoidal wings are relatively shorter. This is done to increase lift without having to deal with oversized wings/control surfaces. The Mk2 will apparently feature even shorter wings and perhaps some long chords too.
No. AESA seekers will be used in Astra Mk2 and Akash Mk2.
Uncooled. There is no need for cooling yet.
Nope. Ku-band Pulse doppler radar with a single antenna array. Because its a single antenna and its range is not very high, cooling is unnecessary right now.
Earlier versions had the Agat 9B1103M. Replaced supposedly by an Indian Ku-band seeker
Don't think AESA on Air to air missiles is important.
The missile only needs a narrow Field of view , so that it only has to make small adjustments in the final stages of its flight.
Because very sharp turns consume too much energy .
If the missile has the ability to steer radar beam at say 160* , turning to that angle for hitting the plane will drain so much kinetic energy that the resulting slowdown will make the missile ineffective anyway.
Plus AESA needs lot more computational power than traditional radar.
What you save in a solid state radar antenna, is consumed in a power hungry computer requiring cooling.
Last edited:
There is more to AESA radars than just beam stearing. AESA radars provide unparalleled frequency hopping capability that no Pulse doppler array can attain. Thus to effectively jam an AESA radar, jammers need to be multi-directional and multi-frequency, which is easier said than done. The missile might not be able to turn back but will be able to maintain lock on for far longer. This will force pilots to use up expendable countermeasures.
True.
Power consumption will increase no doubt but it is more manageable than commonly believed. For example use of MEMS based INS instead of a FOG based INS will reduce power consumption. Use of distributed computing instead of bundled/stacked computing will reduce power consumption and also reduce heat generated. The cooling system is more difficult to manage, as the missile gets longer ranged the FCC along with mid-course correction and other auxiliaries will be "ON" for longer. The seeker will come in to play at the terminal stage. All of this will need cooling.
You are considering it as just a simple radar seeker, it will see some voltage fluctuations, if it's an aircraft it will zoom in and kill it. That's all great for a MS seeker, but an AESA seeker is completely different.
An AESA seeker doesn't just look at voltage fluctuations, but it actually builds a picture. And the picture is very detailed. Each T/R module produces its own picture, since it receives only a part of a signal and all the pictures from all the modules are then combined to create a full picture. There are two advantages to this. One is the image built allows the seeker to choose where it wants to hit. An MS seeker simply zooms into the aircraft, whereas the AESA seeker allows pinpoint targeting. As the missile gets closer, the aircraft's agility can exceed the MS seeker's ability to stay on target. The angle can change very quickly, the seeker won't be able to keep up and the lock will break. But an AESA is electronically scanned, and no amount of agility will allow lock to break with agility alone. So the accuracy of the image is extremely high. The other is chaff will not work, nor will a less sophisticated ECM suite. You can actually say that there's nothing in PAF's inventory today that can prevent a missile from breaking lock through ECM.
In simple terms, you can't avoid it, nor can you jam it. And then you can add all other advantages AESA radars have to the seeker as well, since it's basically a small radar.
It's a Pakistani mentality to feel good when enemy gets better weapons.
Because the war will be more interesting
Because the war will be more interesting
It's a Pakistani mentality to feel good when enemy gets better weapons.
Because the war will be more interesting
That's a good attitude to have.... for us.
The NGARM has a very interesting launch mechanism. The launcher uses two cranked arms to immerse the missile on to the free stream flow of air and away from the boundary flow layer, then the engine of the missile fires. Very cool stuff this. This mechanism can be utilised in AMCA for launching missiles out of the weapon bay, especially if there is any provisions for side bays.
Instead of that why not just eject the missile by dropping it. Let gravity take over before a delay mechanism kicks in & fires the motor. What happens if the cranks get stuck or don't respond in critical missions like 26th Feb?
Rack launch and/or rail launch works better for air to air missiles because they need the lift and will most likely continue flight in almost the same altitude as before.
For air to ground missiles, especially missiles that aren't very heavy(unlike the Brahmos ALCM) and require an steep dive capability this kind of launch is considered safer and offers superior performance. Unlike the Brahmos, lighter missiles when launched at ground targets are likely to be blown off by incoming free stream air which is significantly faster flowing than the boundary layer flow. Sometimes the missiles entering steep dive mode are pushed back towards the launching aircraft itself, this is seen if the launch aircraft is traveling at speeds near or over Mach 2.
By that matric everything will fail just because it is complex. Come on mate, this is why we test things so many times. Even then there are no absolute guarantees.