That's a good system. I just remembered now that MICA can handle the full G's (50) only during the first 7 km of trajectory when it has a lot of fuel inside. After that it loses G capability and it goes all the way down to 30 Gs. Not good.
I just checked the G factor for the 9M96E missile and its actually not bad, 20 to 60 Gs depending on altitude.
60 Gs at sea level
20 Gs at 30,000 meter altitude
That missile its actually quite good. It has an active seeker and mid course data link update.
From Air power Australia website:
Fakel 9M96E and 9M96E2 Surface to Air Missiles
The third and fourth missiles are in effect equivalents to the ERINT/PAC-3 interceptor missile recently introduced to supplement the MIM-104 in Patriot batteries, but designed to also engage low and medium altitude aerial targets. These are the 9M96E and 9M96E2, largely identical with the latter version fitted with a larger powerplant. Fakel claim the 96M6E has a range of 21.6 nautical miles, and the 9M96E2 64.8 nautical miles, with altitude capabilities from 15 ft AGL up to 66 kft and 100 kft respectively.
The 9M96 missiles are “hittiles” designed for direct impact, and use canards and thrusters to achieve extremely high G and angular rate capability throughout the engagement envelope. An inertial package is used with a datalink from the 30N6E2/92N6E radar for midcourse guidance, with a radar homing seeker of an undisclosed type. The small 53 lb (24 kg) blast fragmentation warhead is designed to produce an controlled fragment pattern, using multiple initiators to shape the detonation wave through the explosive. A smart radio fuse is used to control the warhead timing and pattern. It is in effect a steerable shaped charge.
Both missiles use nose mounted canard control surfaces to effect a high turn rate at altitudes where air density permits the generation of high control forces. Fakel designers Bolotov and Mizrokhi cite 60G capability at sea level, and 20G at 30,000 metres, the latter using thruster control. This is required to effect a “hit-to-kill” endgame against ballistic and high speed aerial targets.
While the larger 9M96E2 is an almost direct equivalent in size and performance to the ERINT/PAC-3 round, its control arrangement is fundamentally different, both aerodynamically and in thruster arrangement. The 9M96E/E2 radial thruster package is located at the fuselage CoG, to generate a direct force to turn the missile, rather than producing a pitch/yaw moment to use body lift to turn, as is the case in the ERINT/PAC-3 design. The sleeve mounted tail surfaces are mechanically decoupled from the fuselage in roll, to minimise thruster induced rolling moments.
The smaller size of these weapons permits four to be loaded into the volume of a single 48N6E/5V55K/R launch tube container - a form fit four tube launcher container is used. A single 5P85S/T TEL can thus deploy up to 16 of these missiles, or mixes of 3 x 48N6 / 4 x 9M96E/E2, 2 x 48N6 / 8 x 9M96E/E2 or 1 x 48N6 / 12 x 9M96E/E2. The stated aim of this approach was to permit repeated launches against saturation attacks with precision guided munitions - in effect trading 9M96 rounds for incoming guided weapons. Fakel claim a single shot kill probability of 70% against a Harpoon class missile, and 90% against a manned aircraft.
The addition of the 9M96E/E2 missiles, which amount to a combined ABM and point defence weapon designs, is part of a broader Russian strategy of deploying air defence weapons capable of defeating PGM attacks, including the AGM-88 HARM family, and follow-on defence suppression weapons, the latter types intended to disable the S-400 battery acquisition and engagement radars. The advantage in using the 9M96E/E2 for this purpose is that it avoids the additional technical and operational complexity of directing other “counter-PGM” point defence weapons such as the
Tor M1/M2, Tunguska M and Pantsir S/S1 series.
Some sources have credited the 9M96E/9M96E2 missiles to the S-300PMU1 and S-300PMU2 Favorit, which appears to have been the demonstration platform for prototypes of these missiles. Integration of these missiles on either of these systems will not present any challenges, due to backward compatibility in TELs and the use of a datalink supported active radar terminal seeker. To date there have been no disclosures on domestic production or export sales of the 9M96 series. Russia media reports in 2010 indicated that production may soon commence for use on S-400 systems, using a new four chamber launcher/container design with an identical form factor to the standard 48N6 design.
