I meant IR guided like IR guided artillery shells, so there'd be a separate detector/illuminator.
Chinese air to air missiles
- Thread starter tphuang
- Start date
plawolf
Lieutenant General
I would have thought that a bespoke pod designed to maximise the internal space utilisation of the side bays while still being able to clear the bay door would have obviously needed a tailored design. But I think you are vastly overestimating just how much work, money and time it will take to design such a bespoke missile pod, especially one that is intended for internal carriage for the overwhelming majority of times and flight envelopes, since you are hardly going to be trying to shoot down cruise missiles and/or suicide drones at Mach 2 and max flight ceiling.
All of the points you made are fairly basic engineering problems that even the most green and junior CAC engineer should be able to handle in a very short timeframe and at pretty minimal costs. Even a very modest number of rockets per pod of 4-6 would basically double the J20’s kill potential when it comes to intercepting cruise missiles and drones, and that’s nothing to sniff at.
The biggest design challenge I foresee with adapting such a pod is actually the existing launch rail and associated mechanisms’ load capacity.
PL10s are not light missiles, but a missile pod will likely be significantly heavier and also draggier. If that exceeds the designed load capacity of the existing launch rail, then that will probably be the most likely source of critical failure for the whole idea.
The only scenario where massed cruise missile and/or suicide drones will even be an issue is if China was in a direct hot war against the US.
Sure in theory a legacy aircraft in anti-drone beast mode with all the missile pods it can carry will be more efficient, but in practice there are three critically important aspects that you do not seem to be considering.
Firstly, it’s the engagement scenario. It’s not like the USAF and USN is going to be operating on Russia’s level of just doing single trick attacks. So the PLAAF cannot expect to have purely anti-fighter days and anti-missile days. Indeed, it’s almost implausible to think the US will not be deliberately launch combination attacks of fighters and missile and drone spams at the same time to try to overwhelm Chinese defences.
So you need to expect to be dealing with massive missile and drone swarms being actively coordinated with enemy 5th gen tac air support. How survivable is your 4/4.5 gen covered with anti-drone/cruise missile rocket pods in that threat environment?
A J20 with main bay full of PL15s and side bays with rocket pods can go toe to toe with enemy F35s and then take a good bite out of the cruise missiles and drones with rocket pods on the way back to base for a reload and refuel without any significant performance penalty in either mission. Sure you theoretically loose out on bullying F35s with PL10s in WVR when they are down to guns only, but you really shouldn’t be in WVR in a J20 to start with. If you really want to retain that flexibility, you can very easily do mix load formations where 1-2 J20s in a 4 ship formation retain PL10s while the rest carry rocket pods.
Yes, a J20 will theoretically be more exposed flying slow and with rocket pods out while engaging the drones and cruise missiles, but they will be basically flying in formation with the massive wave of cruise missiles and drones, so it’s a real question if enemy radar will even be able to tell them apart. And they will have other J20s with PL15s watching their 6 during the engagement, and with the modest number of rockets, the engagements should be fairly quick, so the risks should be minimal. Certainly it will be far less risky then trying to get a bomb truck 4th gen to get into similar position to start engaging the incoming munitions waves. And remember, the fighter will need to be flying low and slow as it’s engaging with rocket pods, and there is zero chance a 4th or 4.5 gen can hope to escape detection while its engaging like a 5th gen can. So the risk to the legacy fighter doing the same engagement is going to be exponentially greater.
The second major difference is reaction time.
Yes, drones and cruise missiles are slow, but it’s not like you can afford to take your time when engaging them since they are going to be coming in massive waves. With enemy jamming, active engagements and very likely signature reduction measures on enemy munitions and low altitude flight to blend into surface clutter and hide below the radar horizon, realistically you are going to have a brief intercept window with fighters before you start getting into complications with FoF and de-conflict with naval and land based surface to air missile systems.
Realistically speaking, you are just not going to be able to get a legacy beast mode anti munitions fighter into an engagement unless you include them as standard in your CAP order of battle. Not only that, but you will need to push those birds pretty far out for them to realistically be able to engage the incoming munitions before they are forced to break off to allow surface based SAMs to engage. And that makes those fighters vulnerable to enemy fighter attack. Indeed, such anti munitions fighters will be high priority targets for F35s tasked with helping those munitions waves to penetrate Chinese air defences, and loosing even a small number of such anti munitions bomb trucks can deal a big blow to your intercept plans. In a high threat, high expected loss rate near peer conflict, such needless concentration of risk is really not the way you want to go.
Also from purely a time perspective, even if you do get a beast mode legacy fighter into the perfect position at maximum realistically engagement range, just how long is it going to take to pluck cruise missiles one at a time to use up all those rockets? The whole beast mode idea is as unrealistic in this scenario as all others before it.
J20s with rocket pods have the dual benefit of being tip of the spear anyways, so they are already on station at the very front lines and don’t need to race to get to the income waves. Indeed, most of the time J20s will only be engaging munitions with rocket pods after they have already exhausted their primary weapons against enemy high value air assets, and will be doing so as part of their RTB routine.
With the low likelihood of needing PL10s and thus the primary BVR engagement method that the J20 will overwhelmingly be using, what weight penalties carrying the rocket pods will impose on the J20’s performance is basically nil. So this is as close as you are realistically likely to get to a purely ‘free’ capacity boost without any meaningful penalties and costs. You are not degrading the primary ability of the J20 to counter enemy tac air, and J20s will be using said pods when there are no enemy fighter threats or when they are Winchester on primary weapons and need to RTB anyways. The only actual costs involved will be the cost of the pods (negligible) and rockets (which will be a minute fraction of a PL12/15 or SAM).
Additionally, the ability for J20s to supercruise even with said rocket pods will be a massive force multiplier that legacy aircraft simply cannot match, and I think the benefits and implications of that are obvious and well documented enough to not need to go into details here again.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Continued.
This brings us neatly onto point 3, which is logistics.
The whole point of spamming munitions waves is to try and force you to waste and exhaust your high end missile inventories and/or overwhelm local defences through depletion of all immediately available munitions. And opfor is going to be as sneaky and uncompetitive as they possibly can about it.
The whole point of the rocket pods is to counter that by making the defence against said attack far cheaper than the attacking cost in terms of money, materials and opportunity costs while also balancing risk and reward.
In many ways, the calculation mirrors using stealth for offence. Having a high-end highly survivable delivery platform allows you to get away with using low cost munitions. Indeed, one of the main advantages of stealth bombers is the ability to use cheap unpowered guided bombers instead of powered cruise missiles while keeping risks acceptable. Conversely, trying to use cheap munitions with legacy platforms opens up a massive can of worms in terms of all the support and enabling platforms and assets you also need to keep risks and costs within acceptable limits. But in defence, you have the added time dimension that always works against you.
In all likelihood, you will never have the kind of total uncontested air dominance you would want to be able to vector in legacy fighters with beast mode anti munitions load outs to shoot down incoming attacks for minimum theoretically possible costs. What is far more likely is that you will face an impossible number of incoming munitions focused on very narrow and tight corridors with enemy fighter support all designed to make it as close to impossible as it can get for you to intercept all those incomings, and the best you can do is to take as big of a bite out of that incoming wave as you can with what assets you have that can get within range in time, and hope that those that gets through are few enough that land based missiles and point defences are enough to handle.
In that scenario and threat environment, giving energy airborne J20 8-12 more missiles to shoot down as many incoming munitions as possible is infinitely preferable to sending up a handful of beast mode legacy fighters than come back with most of their rockets unused for a lack of time and/or have half of them shot down by F35s.
What more, this really isn’t a this or that discussion. It’s perfect feasible, preferable even, for the PLAAF to have both J20s and legacy fighters and maybe even MALE drones all armed with such rockets to all help spread the load.
If anything, the only thing this whole discussion has convinced me of is the total inferiority of the whole beast mode legacy fighter suggestion as a viable offering. What is far more useful is to arm JL10s and similar jet trainers with a pair of pods and MALE drones with TY90s as additional munitions defence layers.
4 and 4.5 gen fighters are far better used to support friendly 5th gens and for ground attack missions.
This brings us neatly onto point 3, which is logistics.
The whole point of spamming munitions waves is to try and force you to waste and exhaust your high end missile inventories and/or overwhelm local defences through depletion of all immediately available munitions. And opfor is going to be as sneaky and uncompetitive as they possibly can about it.
The whole point of the rocket pods is to counter that by making the defence against said attack far cheaper than the attacking cost in terms of money, materials and opportunity costs while also balancing risk and reward.
In many ways, the calculation mirrors using stealth for offence. Having a high-end highly survivable delivery platform allows you to get away with using low cost munitions. Indeed, one of the main advantages of stealth bombers is the ability to use cheap unpowered guided bombers instead of powered cruise missiles while keeping risks acceptable. Conversely, trying to use cheap munitions with legacy platforms opens up a massive can of worms in terms of all the support and enabling platforms and assets you also need to keep risks and costs within acceptable limits. But in defence, you have the added time dimension that always works against you.
In all likelihood, you will never have the kind of total uncontested air dominance you would want to be able to vector in legacy fighters with beast mode anti munitions load outs to shoot down incoming attacks for minimum theoretically possible costs. What is far more likely is that you will face an impossible number of incoming munitions focused on very narrow and tight corridors with enemy fighter support all designed to make it as close to impossible as it can get for you to intercept all those incomings, and the best you can do is to take as big of a bite out of that incoming wave as you can with what assets you have that can get within range in time, and hope that those that gets through are few enough that land based missiles and point defences are enough to handle.
In that scenario and threat environment, giving energy airborne J20 8-12 more missiles to shoot down as many incoming munitions as possible is infinitely preferable to sending up a handful of beast mode legacy fighters than come back with most of their rockets unused for a lack of time and/or have half of them shot down by F35s.
What more, this really isn’t a this or that discussion. It’s perfect feasible, preferable even, for the PLAAF to have both J20s and legacy fighters and maybe even MALE drones all armed with such rockets to all help spread the load.
If anything, the only thing this whole discussion has convinced me of is the total inferiority of the whole beast mode legacy fighter suggestion as a viable offering. What is far more useful is to arm JL10s and similar jet trainers with a pair of pods and MALE drones with TY90s as additional munitions defence layers.
4 and 4.5 gen fighters are far better used to support friendly 5th gens and for ground attack missions.
The absolute amount of cost of developing a bespoke pod like this will likely be lower than say, developing a new BVRAAM or something.
When I talk about the cost, it is in relation to the usefulness of this proposed system. More on this below
Engagement scenario is a good place to start, because I think it is the crux of the matter.
I fully agree that these sort of suicide drones would likely have attacks carried out alongside other higher end opfor systems supporting them. Tactical air, cruise missiles, EW etc.
They are likely to even be part of the same "salvo".
But that doesn't change what the defenders have to do against suicide drones.
Suicide drones are low energy, low speed, low altitude weapons -- they are essentially cruise missiles but much less capable and much less expensive in every way.
The aerial component of your suicide drone defense system (with extensive ground components being low cost short range SAMs, and extensive fuzed autocannon and CIWS all organized in an air defense picture) would include manned tactical jets loaded with rocket pods that should not be wandering outside of a hundred or so km of the area/base/location they are defending -- in other words, your tactical jets should be operating in permissible airspace.
If the enemy has the ability to contest the survivability of your 4/4.5th gen aircraft operating in such airspace, then you have much bigger problems to worry about than suicide drones and the discussion is essentially moot.
As for "enemy radar telling apart" J-20s from the cruise missiles and drones that your J-20s are targeting... yes that should be a safe if not prudent assumption to make.
No, I strongly disagree with this.
Low capability/easy to intercept targets like suicide drones and low end cruise missiles (subsonic, non-stealthy) should be left for closer end, lower capability air defenses to target -- the aerial component of that low end capability air defense includes non-stealthy 4/4.5th gen tactical jets laden with rocket pods operating at close ranges to the PRC homeland in permissible, friendly airspace. For suicide drones, targeting them from the air at distances of more than 200km from the PRC mainland would frankly be a waste.
Your J-20s and stealthy aircraft and 4.5th gen aircraft conducting high end CAP/DCA should be operating further out and targeting enemy aircraft and possibly higher performance strike weapons (stealthy cruise missiles and possibly future supersonic air breathing weapons).
The only situation where your high end CAP/DCA should be conducting longer range interceptions of suicide drones or cruise missiles, is if you know you've already defeated the enemy's high end tactical air and high end cruise missile threat such that you can free up your own high end CAP/DCA to carry out low-rent tasks like that.
What I do agree with you on, is that the suicide drone threat is one which requires an equally economical and low end counter.
I have bolded the part which I disagree with.
I believe that the PLA in war time very much should be able to secure air superiority in its immediate periphery with which will allow them to operate heavily laden 4/4.5th gen aircraft with rocket pods to carry out anti-suicide drone CAP, in a manner where suicide drones are only targeted down and shot down at relatively close distances to the homeland -- meanwhile friendly high end DCA will push out the aerial CAP perimeter out many hundreds of kms or 1000+km out in a layered fashion against more high end opfor capabilities.
Such a method will be able to counter massed suicide drone threats in a massed fashion (not corridors), even if combined with opposing high end cruise missiles and high end tactical air of their own -- the focus being that higher capability threat classes will be targeted at longer distances, while lower capability threat classes will be targeted at closer distances.
In the above scenario, a single airborne J-20 in a stealthy loadout carrying 8-12 guided rockets is literally carrying a single rocket pod's worth of rockets, whereas a Flanker or J-20 with external carriage could literally carry some 8-12 pods themselves (not including also having higher end BVRAAMs and SRAAMs). It would be a highly niche scenario where you actually need a stealthily configured J-20 to target low end suicide drones themselves, rather than just handing it off to the much better equipped, loitering, anti-suicide drone CAP that's closer to home.
And if the enemy is able to send in their own high end tactical air to contest your own anti-suicide drone CAP close to home, then again as I said the bigger problem becomes one of contesting the high end air war to begin with.
This is reasonable as well, though I would say the carrying capacity of large 4/4.5th gens and loitering capability and organic sensors do offer a more capable per-sortie kill rate than what combat configured trainers would offer.
MALE drones could be useful.
Using a VLO fighter to do CMD or C-UAV would only be efficient if it is done in areas where older aircraft would hardly survive. Near Japan for example... In that case, the magazine depth would better be spared for the JASSMs. I would argue that a AKPWS-like munition is a poor choice for that. Its range is too short. Something like the PL-108 would be better.
But also, I think the impact of low end suicide drones have been overestimated, the US is unlikely to be able to put the same amount of suicide drones to bear like Rus/ukr as they do not border China, the logistics mean that launch points of such UAVs could be retaliated against and be difficult to mass.
Even with waves of hundreds few do actually get through and those that do is more of a mild annoyance than a crippling strike. China has so much industrial depth that it would bankrupt the US to begin even hurting it using something carrying 150kg of explosives.
Suicide UAV should be covered under the same AA umbrella as slow/non-stealth cruise missile defence rather than something that specifically needs to be countered.
To specifically make a AKPWS equivalent for j-20 to counter these threat seems excessive.
Even with waves of hundreds few do actually get through and those that do is more of a mild annoyance than a crippling strike. China has so much industrial depth that it would bankrupt the US to begin even hurting it using something carrying 150kg of explosives.
Suicide UAV should be covered under the same AA umbrella as slow/non-stealth cruise missile defence rather than something that specifically needs to be countered.
To specifically make a AKPWS equivalent for j-20 to counter these threat seems excessive.
Nobody in the Pacific will be using the same kind of drones at the same kind of volumes, because they would all splash down without getting anywhere close to their targets. To cover the way larger distances you need way more range, which means some combination or larger and/or more sophisticated, which means more expensive, which means lower quantities.
You're correct to say the line between that and a regular old subsonic cruise missile gets blurry.
No evidence to that range. Besides, airborne radar can hardly detect any target at 500km away, surface mounted radar is more powerful, but due to earth curvature, at 500km away, no airplane can fly that high.
There isn't any evidence whatsoever on the exact ranges of VLRAAMs, and you can only try to simulate it using a simple formula of size, specific impulse and air resistance. I can assure you many people much more professional than you and me have estimated this >500km value. On the limited lock-on ability of current fighter radars, that's why awacs aircraft exist and why 6-gen aircraft are being developed. Then again no one will be actually launching missiles at max range, you can't hit except if the opposing side is taking a nap in the cockpit.