Donatello
RETIRED TTA
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Good point. Pakistani cruise missiles are subsonic, whereas even 2nd gen. jet fighters are capable of supersonic speeds. Once the AWACS detect the cruise missiles, can the fighters like MiG21 give chase to the cruise missile and shoot it down?
One more thing. We keep hearing about Babur crusie missile being able to fly under the detection horizon of land based RADARs. But is is really undetectable? The Indo-pak border is heavily populated region (except for few places in Rajastan and Gujarath) . Now a missile cruise missile, though flying at subsonic speeds, flying at extremely low altitude will make a lot of noise which can be heard by people on ground. If the population is educated to detected these missiles and report to the authorities in real time, is it not possible to detect the missiles flight path and vector in a interceptor and shoot down the missile? It will take babur 30-45 minutes to travel its full flight path, which is plenty of time to intercept it.
Umm, Babur sure is subsonic, but then that gives it ease to maneuver. You are right that any modern AWACs can track it, for the fact that land based radars have a bigger blind spot as you go towards ground, AWACs are pretty much opposite, looking down and perpendicular to the horizon means they can not only track bigger Ballistic missiles but also Cruise missiles.
The problem is that cruise missiles like Babur are cheap unmanned aircraft and there may be more than one being launched at one time. A mig 21 may not be able to intercept it for the fact that it first needs to the track the missile, lock on and then destroy it. The toal surface area of Babur is way less than a traditional aircraft which the MIG 21/29 can track on, meaning the Babur might be having a RCA close to that of a Stealth aircraft, not to mention the straight edges which further reduce its cross section. It's like who will have a smaller RCA? JF-17 or SU 30? Radar tracking is highly dependent on the RCA of the object which in case of any cruise missile is very small.
Also, Pakistan/India border is not populated, like right next to border, where the TEL can go and launch the missile. No one is saying that Babur would be Launched from one corner of Lahore and has to navigate through it. It doesn't work like that. There is a reason why you have mobile launchers.
Can Babur be shot down? Yes
Can Babur be shot down in time before it reaches its target? well, very difficult to say.