vivek_ahuja wrote:
b) Stay low, at sea level or terrain hugging level, avoid all detection by the enemy AD System, but fly in almost a straight line to the target if it is at longer ranges.
It can conduct high speed maneuvers at low level, but at the cost of range. Note that it will going at ~ Mach 2 vs Mach 2.4+ at high level, but the issue of overcoming drag at sea level makes it use up more fuel. Thats what I meant earlier, but didnt use commas so my text is confusing I guess. With a high flying phase, you might lose ~40 Km with complicated manoeuvers, from the entire range of 290 Km. With a low-low-low profile, you'll end up halving the range with S curve manoeuvers- thats what I meant.
Further, the problem compounds itself for higher mach numbers. If they go ahead with the hypersonic version of this missile, they are not going to be able to do any maneuvers at all if the target is even at moderate ranges. I mean, a flight at Mach 5 or 6 and having a turn in it can bring down the mach number all the way to Mach 3 or something like that, and that means that you are now flying in an off design mach number, and that’s a hell of a loss in performance.
The aim will be to conduct turns even at high mach level. The Meteor for instance has a sustained speed of Mach 4 and can conduct turns, albeit carefully to minimize flow disturbance to the ramjet, and so will the design above. The Akash flies at Mach 2.5 as well.
The Brahmos Version 2 will have a range of ~1000 Km but at twice the Speed (and more if they can achieve it), so it reaches the target without susbtantial delay despite the range increase. What the range increase also means is that you can conduct more fancy manouevers but still maintain a range of ~300 Km plus easily.
Makes me wonder what their objective is trying to make a hypersonic missile. Is the long term strategy to do constant maneuvers to evade an AD System or fly like a bullet to the target? Is there a comparative analysis for these two methods?
The rationale for the follow on Brahmos is well thought out:
The Brahmos is able to conduct S manouevers, but with the loss of range. A longer ranged, faster variant will:
a) Be able to strike targets much farther away without sacrificing time to target . This is important because the target cant evade the missile by rapidly changing its position.
b ) Be able to strike targets without getting the launch platform to just 100-200 Km away despite conducting manoeuvers. Again, fire and forget from extreme range.
c ) The higher speed will shorten the entire time available for the "detection-acquisition- launch" methodology for any AD system. The most critical part of speed.
d) Many existing AD systems and CIWS systems will not be able to handle a faster Missile. The US has just started testing its AD kit against SSSTs (earlier only the kit was validated and put into service, but crew had no confirmation of efficacy). This is to be probably followed by a shorter ranged, cheaper variant of the SSST using the Terrier missile which would provide ~80% of the ability of the SSST Coyote but at a fraction of the cost.
The SSST Coyote has a speed of upto Mach 2.5.
The Brahmos follow on will effectively counter the above or at least, make it that much harder for other nations to counter the same, especially nations like the PRC etc which dont have the tech and funding the US enjoys.
Now coming to dancers vs streakers, the debate has gone on for years, and basically the former use stealth to achieve surprise, but when that surprise is lost are far easier to engage. And the latter use brute force, ie speed and surprise to engage, but when surprise is lost, are still hard to engage.
The aim of the dancer is to skim very low over the surface to minimize detection and acquisition (I am using acquisition as akin to tracking) and then perform complicated manouevers to throw off the AD. Ie enter the kill box from position X and end up coming from a different direction. The subsonic speed, lower drag (at the speed) allows the same. Harpoon, Exocet, fall into this category. The NSM (Swedish iirc) is one of the best, since it is absolutely stealthy- uses a passive IIR seeker. In contrast, all others, including the Brahmos, use RF seekers which can trigger the ESM and warn the opponent.
The Brahmos et al on the other hand are different- they come in from range, at high speed- go up high which has the issue of being detected by an AD system at high alt or when it does its initial search for the target (but which can be countered by launching Salvos with different trajectories to confuse an AD planner), and some km away from the target (depending on your mission planning), they enter into sea skimming mode. Being supersonic throughout, they can make life miserable by shortening the D-A-E cycle. It gets worse if a submarine receives targeting data and launches the Brahmos well within 100 Km. It will be supersonic throughout.
Bar the US, few nations have the ability to detect sea skimmers at extended range. The US depends on its E2Cs for extended coverage around its carriers, but the entire CBG has been markedly vulnerable to subs.
The Russians finally came up with arguably one of the best designs, a combination of the stealthiness of the subsonic missile, but a supersonic end stage- the Sizzler, ie the Club with supersonic dart. We have those as well for our subs iirc.
The Brahmos hypersonic will just set the bar that much higher for others to plan effective AD measures against it. With improvements to its nav-attack system and seekers, more fancy route changes can be implemented as well, as are being planned. So longer ranged, faster and smarter- whats not to like!!
But will take time and $$.
but hey I try to think futuristic and it makes me restless, I am in need of the time machine. Want to see how 200 years after things going to happen.
Otherwise, the highlighted words in the above article should be given due attention in light of recent tests of the Brahmos in which it performed said "S" curve manouvers. Not to mention the work on the multiple seeker variants. 