Dillinger
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No, AKG doesn't have a ballistic trajectory. This is a ballistic trajectory:
A cruise missile generally follow this trajectory:
The missile has to make a compromise between four. Its weight, its range, its speed and altitude. If you want it light and long, you have to keep it slow and high. If you go for terrain hugging mode, you are bleeding energy fast. If you make it fast, than again its bleeding energy. Even BrahMos has high altitude for cruise phase:
BRAHMOS Supersonic Cruise Missile - BrahMos.com
The altitude is kept high for as long as possible.
Second, manoeuvring is an issue, cause the how much lateral acceleration can a interceptor have is not the only limiting factor. There is a delay of sensing, electronics, computation of new trajectory, and also, every maneuver reduces the already limited range of the interceptor. For a mach 4 interceptor vs mach .8 missile, 150 m would be covered in almost 0.1 seconds. Any change the incoming missile make would leave very little time for interceptor to adjust.
About the 80 g acceleration. Circular acceleration is v^2/r. It means for same radius circle, a mach 4 missile would have to have 25 times higher acceleration (g) than a mach 0.8 missile. That is, if a mach .8 missile makes a 10 g turn, the interceptor would have to have many times higher acceleration to keep up.
CM vs BM is debatable. What CM achieves with terrain hugging, BM does with sheer speed. The difficulty lies with CM is its detection, which as you mentioned, is solved by AEW&C. BM, you know its coming, and you just watch it hit you. If you think speed doesn't pose a problem, why would anti-ballistic systems would be such a difficult task? Ballistic missiles have a very simple and predictable path. Once you know the initial trajectory, you can predict entire flight path. Problem lies with their speed.
The selling point of BrahMos is its speed. And there is not much know about AKG, so all we can make are hypothesis.
Yaara the trajectory you have posted for the CM is exactly the one which the AKG does not follow, it cruises at a very high altitude throughout its flight path- that's the point. The cruise profile depicted is what all CMs do in order to achieve their stated range since a sea skimming route for the complete flight path would play hell with the amount of fuel you'd need to cram into the CM. A cruise profile is only useful when its below the radar horizon which is not the case with the AKG. That's why I stated that its propulsion and design are quite similar to a BM- so is its climb up and dive down path- the only difference is that as I stated it pans out to a level flight at a high altitude. That's my point. From the description of the AKG, its seems like a pocket size DTBM for anti-shipping role. Furthermore- the point of the interceptor- target illumination of the inbound is rather easy and high speed inbound (re-entering SRBMs) have been repeatedly intercepted by mach 4.5 interception vehicles (AAD interceptor). Once the AKG goes terminal- the window for maneuvering is out as it dives in.
Secondly a CM which is sea skimming and has an intermediary target approach phase and terminal phase speed of mach 2.5-3 is far more dangerous than a quasi-BM coming in at mach 5. In fact consider that the former can only be detected 30 or so Km out (through the more usual means) while the latter's path can be tracked and plotted over a rather large distance (200 km plus by contemporary shipborne radars- which do you think will provide a shorter reaction time). Yaara, ship-borne target illumination FCRs are capable of keeping track of a high speed inbound even as it maneuvers- interceptor speed is an issue when you're trying to provide theater level defense and in a tail chase interception. Once its in its terminal dive- and the previous threads on the topic have confirmed that its flight path remains pretty high, there is no hi-lo-hi mix here.
So the AKG misses out on the surprise element- leaving its high altitude flight path and extreme terminal speed to be the problems to tackle. At the altitude its stated to cruise its beyond most normal SAM systems unless we navalize the PAD interceptor or its follow on vehicle. One you take that dive you open to kinetic interception.
In fact take note of the above link provided Agnostic- the flight path is mentioned clearly and is different from any CM- a CM will terminate its target by ideally ending its terminal phase 5-10 meters above the waves before slamming into the target. That's the whole point of a supersonic sea skimming CM. The majority of the flight path of a CM is a low alt cruise up till target interception, the opposite (high alt cruise) holds true for the AKG. The AKG ends up at a severe disadvantage here. The only thing left to ascertain is that does it maneuver in its terminal dive phase- that's all that remains to be seen to ascertain the relative difficulty associated with intercepting it. If its not particularly maneuverable than even a relatively primitive AAD will intercept it at 15000 meters hyper-sonic or not.
