BrahMos From On High

[Mauryan]

Yes you're right the faster the F-22 flies the more observable it becomes. The SR-71 Blackbird at Mach 3 is on record as the most radar observable plane ever.

All the best I can do here is ,suggest you to take metallurgy course.

And US technology is not an yard stick to compare others.

You know what I should give up my job move to India and become a comedian. I seem to have a knack for making Indians laugh their a$$ off.

It is because of the way you answer and your theories like using stingers to take down brahmos.

Though it is all hypothetical because i cant see a situation where India would be attacking a US carrier group but to continue the scenario no one seems to have asked can a flanker get to within 300k from a carrier in the first place?

It doesnt matter how good the missile is if it never gets launched.

Not exactly remember which year it was.But during cope-India exercise sea-harriers came within 50km of the kittyhawk while evading other fighters(without letting them having a lock-on) and without being painted on the battle groups radar.Though its an exercise,but I thought its worth mentioning.

 

[Vassnti]

U.S. defense officials said four F/A-18A fighter jets from the Nimitz were in the air.

The Russians and the U.S. carrier did not exchange verbal communications.

I would have loved to see the non-verbal communications exchanged

Peace time i could possibly buzz a carrier in a beechcraft, just put on my best idiot smile and pretend to be a lost dentist on his way to Martha's Vineyard. Might be a slightly different story if those 4 F-18's had been weapons free.

Not knocking the Flanker like a lot of russian planes i like it but if the AWAC pick you up when they should its going to be fun getting to 300K from the carrier to launch.

 

[deckingraj]

Usually it happens the other way round. Jobs move to India and not the people. May be you can start a new trend As far as being a comedian, you are doing a pretty good job sitting where you are. In the cyberworld physcial location doesnt matter .

I didn't want to discuss Raptor. Since you brought the issue of how supersonic missiles/aircrafts are easy targets for Heat seeking SAMs, I just wanted to highlight how things are not as simple as you make them out to be.
The people who Design and Develop these thingies are lot more smarter and knowledgeable than you or me. Lets not insult their intelligence.

P.S.: FYI, Stand-up comedy is becoming very popular and lucrative vocation in India these days.

Guys i agree that people who designed them are smarter and would have taken those issues in considerations however does any of us know what make Brahmos a supersonic but still a missile with low RCS??? i like this question if DBC..

If it helps assume I am a prospective client for Brahmos convince me that one or two missiles is enough to sink an American aircraft carrier / destroyer or frigate.

So can anyone with more knowledge sell this missile to him???

 

[dbc]

Guys i agree that people who designed them are smarter and would have taken those issues in considerations however does any of us know what make Brahmos a supersonic but still a missile with low RCS??? i like this question if DBC..



So can anyone with more knowledge sell this missile to him???

So can anyone with more knowledge sell this missile to her not him

 

[ptldM3]

Peace time i could possibly buzz a carrier in a beechcraft, just put on my best idiot smile and pretend to be a lost dentist on his way to Martha's Vineyard. Might be a slightly different story if those 4 F-18's had been weapons free.

Correct, in war time it would be extreemly difficult if not impossible to do a fly over.

 

[Mauryan]

Guys i agree that people who designed them are smarter and would have taken those issues in considerations however does any of us know what make Brahmos a supersonic but still a missile with low RCS??? i like this question if DBC..

So can anyone with more knowledge sell this missile to him???

Since the begining of this topic I was saying its due to the usage of advanced composites and the heat distribution at high speeds.
If you ask me the exact details of the materials? You will never ever find one,even though you are buying the system.

titanium composites are one of the hardest and strongest used.You got the clue.Thats all I can do.

A F-35 customer walks in and says, hey man I am gonna buy this bird for the said price-can ya tell me the composition of its stealth materials? Will you tell him?

 

[Vassnti]

Not exactly remember which year it was.But during cope-India exercise sea-harriers came within 50km of the kittyhawk while evading other fighters(without letting them having a lock-on) and without being painted on the battle groups radar.Though its an exercise,but I thought its worth mentioning.

Was that Cope or Malabar?
The harriers managed well against the De Gaulle in Cope when the exercise was changed to WVR but it would be a huge cudos to a harrier pilot that could get with in 50k of a US carrier group BVR scenario.

 

[Mauryan]

Was that Cope or Malabar?
The harriers managed well against the De Gaulle in Cope when the exercise was changed to WVR but it would be a huge cudos to a harrier pilot that could get with in 50k of a US carrier group BVR scenario.

You know? there were so many exercises these days and remembering exactly is a bit hard.Me a techie but not media savy But I got these points that need to be considered eh

Also at that time Harriers werent upgraded.Now Harriers got LUSH upgrades.
There is a saying that IN pilots are tough than their counterparts in IAF. IN pilot selection process is much harder than IAF`s.

 

[deckingraj]

So can anyone with more knowledge sell this missile to her not him

Sorry for the mistake....Anyways i was googling a bit and reached discussion on same topic in some other defence forum... I am not sharing the link(for obvious reasons) however here is what i feel an interesting observation to share...

The missile's seeker is not an extremely high power emitter and the missile body also enjoys low RCS. The active radar seeker activates only during the terminal sea-skimming stage and you have about 0.85 minutes to react. Insufficient reaction time proved to be fatal for the Sheffeild, even against the AM-39.

The CIWS/SAM will be hard pressed to hit a Mach 2.8 sea skimmer (undertaking high G terminal maneuvers) and more so, defend from incoming debris of the 3000 kg missile, if actually destroyed at CIWS range. Survival from the 300 kg warhead and high KE impact is highly unlikely and it's pretty well established that multiple hits from subsonic AsHMs would be required to sink a fairly large warship. What would the poor guy do against multiple Brahmos, coming in at varying flight profiles?

One more thing is that while developing the missile, no one discounts any possible countermeasure to it. Thus the specific areas are addressed as much as possible be it ECM (ECCM), detection (low RCS/speed/reaction time) or interception (terminal maneuvers/speed) and target survivability (large warhead/KE). It would be pretty pointless to assume that newer missiles have the same standard of seekers and signal processing as older ones.

Again these are view so of people who seems to be informed...Can't vouch for their authenticity but still though it would make sense to share them here....

 

[deckingraj]

Since the begining of this topic I was saying its due to the usage of advanced composites and the heat distribution at high speeds.
If you ask me the exact details of the materials? You will never ever find one,even though you are buying the system.

titanium composites are one of the hardest and strongest used.You got the clue.Thats all I can do.

A F-35 customer walks in and says, hey man I am gonna buy this bird for the said price-can ya tell me the composition of its stealth materials? Will you tell him?

Fair enough...So you are saying that the titanium composites(advanced) do the trick for Brahmos...right??? Would it be possible for you to share some statistics for us to compare??? I am not sure if such information are out in public domain but would it possible to compare heat signature of a subsonic missile with supersonic missile like Brahmos??? Such kind of comparison would prove to be a litmus test for our claim that Brahmos is owners pride and neighbours envy ...

Regards!

 

[gambit]

I bet gambit wrote that knowing 95% of members wouldn't understand the jargon and technical terms, hoping to impress people into agreeing with him.

I usually try to use common language but quite often testical...errr...I mean...technical words and terms must be used. So far I have never turned anyone away if they asked me to clarify further.

Anyway what I could discern with my *non technical background* is that the triangular shape causes the radar wave(?) to bounce between the two planes and then return to the radar. This helps with the signal dispersion or whatever.

Not with 'dispersion' but concentration. Radar reflectors are well known for their efficacy in making ANY object appear several times larger on a radar scope. Why do you think the F-117 look the way it is? There are practically no right angles anywhere on the surface of that aircraft. Same for the B-2, F-22 and F-35. All curves with minimal planar surfaces where the risk of creating a right angle is the greatest. If you put two EDGES together to form a right angle where a radar wave could impact that formation, that would disqualify the body immediately.

Now, I do not see how this 'rigged' test puts any hint of doubt over the efficiency of the missile. The Indian Armed Forces wouldn't induct a missile that required a radar enhancing shape to guide it, this is a probably an early test version of the missile before it was inducted.

Also a ship is a far, far, far larger than a triangle on a wall.

Like it or not, it does cast some doubts on whether or not the seeker section of the guidance system is sufficiently sophisticated.

This is how a ship look to a radar receiver...

Each one of those geometric shapes represent what is called a 'scattering point', meaning a distinct body or surface on the greater body. Your nose and ears are distinct bodies on you.

Another way of looking these 'scattering points' is this representation of an aircraft...

And if you think I am making up terms like 'scattering points'...

Radar imaging and multiple scatter-point localization

Radar imaging is investigated from the point of view of multiple scatter-point localization.

Localization is another word for cluster or clustering as background noise is usually uniform with nonpattern voltage spikes. So these 'scattering points', from a ship or an aircraft, are very much voltage spikes that happened to be in a group against a uniform background.

Not too technical, right? And I always provide at least one source that you can extract keywords to verify for yourself.

So what the pattern recognition algorithm does is search for a cluster of voltage spikes against a uniform background that has a lower power level, like the sea or the earth. The seeker would filter out this power level and ignore any spikes that rose above this level but IS NOT part of the cluster. Statisticians called these 'outliers'. Another keyword for you. And radar is essentially a stochastical, or statistical, process...

Coherent multi-static radar: stochastic signal theory and performance evaluation

Coherent multi-static radar: stochastic signal theory and performance evaluation

You can credibly make the charge that I seek to impress people with a lot of technical jargon ONLY IF no sources are provided. Except that people here knows long enough that I always provide at least one source so they can verify for themselves. You can do the same.

That said...The fact that the video showed clearly a 'radar reflector' on the larger body begs the question: Why?...Meaning what is it about the seeker that DESPITE the presence of the larger body, why is there a need to enhance said body with a concentration of radar return?

 

[gambit]

None of us over here are missile scientists .All we can do is speculate and keep making theories.No one over here knows what the brahmos is made up of.Do u think the scientists who designed the missile did not think abt the temperature rise and its effects.Obviously they did,and are most likely to have installed hardware to reduce the temperature.

They are smart enough to know these effects. However, if the desire is to reach the enemy in the shortest possible time, meaning speed is the overriding consideration, the skin temperature effect will be relegated to the background. Hardware to reduce that temperature? More like materials and we have yet to see evidence of anything other than ordinary alloys that does nothing to reduce said effect. Please provide sources that say otherwise.

 

[gambit]

Yes you're right the faster the F-22 flies the more observable it becomes. The SR-71 Blackbird at Mach 3 is on record as the most radar observable plane ever.

Does it mean billions of $$ down the drain??

Nope...Every cent was well invested. The US have never claimed our 'stealth' aircrafts to be 'invisible'. The correct phrasing is 'low radar reflectivity' or 'observable'. In radar detection, NOTHING is invisible but the issue is at what distance will the object become visible on the scope.

So even if the F-22's extremely low radar reflectivity is not as efficient as we wish, that region or environmental condition of exposure is so narrow that given the reach of the F-22's, or F-35's or B-2's weapons, said exposure is realistically meaningless for the defense. In other words, by the time the F-22 is detected, the enemy pilot's odds of survival is very slim.

As slim as the paper the attorney used to write his will...

 

[dbc]

Sorry for the mistake....Anyways i was googling a bit and reached discussion on same topic in some other defence forum... I am not sharing the link(for obvious reasons) however here is what i feel an interesting observation to share...



Again these are view so of people who seems to be informed...Can't vouch for their authenticity but still though it would make sense to share them here....

Thank you for leading me to that forum, I read the whole thread and I believe jone sy's view coincide with my own conclusion. Although I don't think jone sy mentioned the biggest contribution to the Brahmos RCS is from the exhaust stream and M 2.8 flight.

The problems with running very high speed bodies through dense air are manifest. The main aerodynamic issue we found was with a form of pressure drag that created buffeting on the airframe. Basically what happens is the kinetic heating on the missile body causes the air passing over it (the aerodynamic boundary layer - as opposed to the atmospheric boundary layer between sea-surface and air) to expand rapidly. This expansive air intersects with the airflow over this missile and induces drag.

The denser or, rather, wetter the air you fly though the greater this drag is as the greater potential energy transfer from airframe to air. Furthermore the quicker you try to go through that air the higher the thermal loading on the airframe and the more intense the pressure drag. You can calculate the average effects from this condition but those equations were ones I last studied over 14 years ago and are a bit vague now.

There are solutions to this, of course, heavy metals in the missile fuselage to act as a heat sink being the most obvious but then that adds weight and changes your size, propulsion, performance, range and payload calculus. The most obvious, and the one seemingly adopted by the Moskit design team was to fly slightly higher and slower to reduce the loading.

You say Brahmos has a low RCS design. From a look at the airframe I dont see it personally, at least if you compare it to a real low-RCS design like NSM, but even if it were the case you cannot propose that Brahmos has Low Observability characteristics. Not when you are talking of such a large missile travelling at such a high velocity. Even basic IRST's like Radamec's 2000 series can detect tactical fastjets at 20km plus, Thales's new SIRIUS sensor has, allegedly, the capability to detect TBM's at ranges in the hundreds of kilometres. A mach2.8 missile travelling at altitude will beacon on IRST at 40km even if, and IMO this is very unlikely, the radar doesnt catch it. The basic physics of it is that a vehicle cannot expend the kind of energy that M2.8 requires without radiating some of it out into the environment somewhere in some form.

forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=32051&page=3

 

[gambit]

PAKFA being developed after nearly 2 decades of F-22 will logically and theoritically have more advanced airframe and control systems.
Even if F-22 stealth material is found unworthy with the advancements of radar technology,US cant do much about that.But on the other hand the ones that are in development have more scope to be more advanced than the ones already developed.

Sorry...But EVERYTHING you said is nothing more than an assumption.

Our experience with the MIG-25...

Viktor Belenko - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

...when he successfully defected to the West, flying his Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 "Foxbat" jet fighter to Hakodate, Japan. This was the first time that Western experts were able to get a close look at the aircraft, and it revealed many secrets and surprises.

...Revealed that the MIG-25 was overall inferior to US fighters, which was the F-15 and F-16 at the time of Belenko's defection.

After the sudden, ignoble and spectacular collapse of the Soviet Union, the former Soviet satellites, who were hard up for cash to keep their countries running, called US up and asked if we wanted to go shopping. The merchandises ranges from low level infantry rifles to tanks to SAMs to fighters and even whole nuclear missiles. Yes...You read that right.

Russia

The Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program of the United States assists the states of the former Soviet Union in controlling and protecting their nuclear weapons, weapons-usable materials, and delivery systems.

What do you think 'delivery systems' really means? Anyway...We consistently found out that Soviet technologies were usually around 10 yrs behind US.

What you do not understand is that in aviation, once a paper design is set for development, said design is pretty much fixed. Any alterations to the basic airframe could make the design unflyable. We have no evidences that today's Russia is anymore technologically advanced than when Russian aviation designers were under the Soviets. If anything, the economic dire straits that Russia had to suffered limited any theoretical innovations from progressing beyond the paper stage. Just from visuals alone, it is highly suspicious that the PAK-FA will be anywhere in the same low RCS class as the F-22.