hnair wrote:Rakesh, both US and Soviets were actively pursuing Blimp based AEW programs for their fleet defense roles. The post-WW2 N-class was purposed for AEW as well as ASW. It gives far greater persistence for AEW cover over a fleet. IIRC, the 80s tethered-blimp proposals talked of 80hours to a week on station, before crew changes as the blimp keeps up with the naval task forces. But it won’t be good against a capable adversary in an AWACS type offensive mission. So was never popular among admiral jocks
USN probably has passed on that AEW mission to satellites and the HALE ones like Triton, since the
MZ-3 programwas canned five years ago.
Since Indian Ocean is vast and we don’t yet have lots of naval surveillance SAR microsats, maybe a blimp program might cover the AEW requirement for fleet and island defense? A speculative option could be to churn out SAR microsats and like khan so you get a more survivable distributed system of sensors against China, that can keep tab across multiple theaters, use lots of MALE drones during conflicts and pack the carriers with cheaper AEW helos etc for surge time AEW.
Agreed on cheaper AEW helos as the way forward for Indian Carriers.
IMRH will probably have a 20K ft ceiling. DRDO needs to start working on AEW radar like KA-31 and make that standard across the board. Since Heli based platforms have lower ceilings, It may miss out seeing as much as a platform like E2D at 33K ft, but if it is refueled/hosted at the edge of the battle group off another ship, it can make up the difference by being 100 kms farther away from the carrier and by seeing further.
Radar horizon for IMRH - 321 Kms @20K ft
Radar horizon for E2D - 413 Kms @ 33K ft
Ka-31 has a much lower ceiling at 11.5 k ft giving 243 Kms range.
By pushing it out by 100-150 kms, it can make up the difference. The Delhi/Bangalore class destroyers can refuel and host them during ops. They can always come back to carrier for stowage.
One thing that perhaps Hari Nair sir can explain is the hoover capabilities of IMRH like bird. So the real horizon range will be between 243Kms and 321 Kms. It will take some time to iron out the radar on AEW modes from Heli based platform and best to start when IMRH is on the drawing board.
Land based C295 AEWs should be also looked at seriously. Andaman/Lakhsadweep/Mauritius all allow us to extend and provide cover for our fleets. When we can't have C295, a larger compliment of IMRH based AEW should help.
for ASuW work we should fully utilize 15-20 odd 300 kg multi spectral sats with very high resolution. Cloud cover will be a problem, but all forces can see their area of interest with extremely high revisits leading to a 24/7 like scenario. Enough to task drones / P8I / C295 to areas of interest. Will be a much cheaper option than manned craft. Dunno when this infinity stuff posted above will happen. At least we have a lot more experience with sats of this class today and we can carry 7-10 sats every launch.
Many ways to solve this problem even if we cannot launch a E2D off the carrier.