ROCAF record

Pointed and radar FOV are not the same thing. I can come at you at a transversal direction of 30 degrees, some radars can do 60 degrees, and still be able to guide a SARH missle. In a SARH terminal stage, you are not really guiding the missile---you are illuminating it like a flashlight. The missile is guiding on its own, attracted to that illumination. Even if you have to break off hard, the missile can still home because some other guy is still lighting the same target.

While it is an advantage to "forget" the target once the seeker is activated---so maybe you can evade the target's missile coming at you---usually it's not, because you still like to keep the target in your radar to make sure you can see that the missile gets him. Let's say, if you already "forgot" the target, but what if the missile didn't actually hit him? You would have already surrendered your primary advantage and he may jump on you in turn. You would have made the fatal mistake thinking he is dead when he's not. People need to --validate-- their 'kill'. In this case, ARH missiles are still used in a way not much different from a SARH missile.

By the way, how would you know if the ARH missile you fired had gone terminal or not? Remember, before the ARH seeker goes terminal, your radar still has guide the missile in its midphase flight until the target is within range of the seeker's acquisition envelope. The trouble is---when do you actually know this? Do you risk breaking off early and losing the connection of your radar supplying data to the missile? Or do you stay on course, making sure of this, and making sure of validating your kill?

The option and advantage of ARH missiles over SARH are there, yes, but it does not diminish the threat value SARH missiles have.

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All of this sounds convincing, were it not for the fact the deadliness of SARHMs is unproven and is actually the opposite. The early variants have a success rate of 10% while even the more recent variants only have a success rate of 37%. The fact is, at the range where the fighter no longer has to guide the missile a fighter with an ARHM would be able to get out of the other fighter's range or close in. It's just far more advantigious.

Being able to close in is not where the advantage of ARH comes in. In fact, in order to close in, you need to approach the target, and that means, keeping the target on your radar's FOV and head to the target's direction. In that sense, there is no tactical difference between ARH and SARH here. The real advantage of SARH is the option of violently maneuvering to escape the other guy's missile, and hope that your own can autonomously destroy the opposing plane. That can mean life and death at times. The other advantage is to be able to engage multiple targets simultaneously. In real life however, there is only one ever recorded back to back kills done this way.

The low rate SARH missiles had at the beginning comes from poor tactics. People fired their missiles at maximum range, and thus the missiles are easy to evade as they ran out of juice. You started to get this 37% because people learned to fire them at much closer ranges, to give the missile more kinetic reserve. They also learn to ripple fire the missiles, two missiles against one target to greatly increase the probability of kill. A plane that tries to evade one missile might not have enough energy to evade a second coming seconds after it. Note that if you have 100% kill probability with ripple fire, your actual missile kill probability rate is actually 50%, because one missile is always wasted in that encounter. That 37% rate also involves ripple firing.

Note that what I say equally applies to the R-27s as much as with Sparrows.

As for dogfights, assuming pilots being equal - i still wouldn't feel safe in a f-16 or idf versus a j7. Sure, i may win bit more often, but i'd be far from safe. If there's two j7s on one f16 in a dogfight, it might end quite deadly for the taiwanese. Even one-on-one i would think every third or fourth matchup might end bad for rocaf. And one more thing, mirage 2000 is not a good dogfighter. It was designed on the 70s priniciple of interceptors, not unlike tornado f series. All other things being equal and no hms, i'd prefer actually to be in a j7 than a mirage in very close range dogfight.

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I'm not ready to say I would prefer a J-7E/G over a Mirage 2000-5. Maybe a Mirage III, but not over a -2000. The Mirage 2000 has very low wing loading compared to the J-7 and has a much better instantaneous turn rate. However, it bleeds speed quickly over successive turns or in a sustained turn rate. Nonetheless, because it has FBW, it has that advantage (read the JF-17 thread carefully for the explanation) over the J-7E/G.

crobato said:

Being able to close in is not where the advantage of ARH comes in. In fact, in order to close in, you need to approach the target, and that means, keeping the target on your radar's FOV and head to the target's direction. In that sense, there is no tactical difference between ARH and SARH here. The real advantage of SARH is the option of violently maneuvering to escape the other guy's missile, and hope that your own can autonomously destroy the opposing plane. That can mean life and death at times. The other advantage is to be able to engage multiple targets simultaneously. In real life however, there is only one ever recorded back to back kills done this way.

The low rate SARH missiles had at the beginning comes from poor tactics. People fired their missiles at maximum range, and thus the missiles are easy to evade as they ran out of juice. You started to get this 37% because people learned to fire them at much closer ranges, to give the missile more kinetic reserve. They also learn to ripple fire the missiles, two missiles against one target to greatly increase the probability of kill. A plane that tries to evade one missile might not have enough energy to evade a second coming seconds after it. Note that if you have 100% kill probability with ripple fire, your actual missile kill probability rate is actually 50%, because one missile is always wasted in that encounter. That 37% rate also involves ripple firing.

Note that what I say equally applies to the R-27s as much as with Sparrows.

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hmm, I'm having a hard time understanding why you are trying to make it sound like SARH can be as effective as ARH missile. I mean there is a clear reason why all the air forces are moving to using ARH missiles. Besides, the latest ARH missiles probably have much greater NEZ than SARH. The Americans have said that they believe 90% of all future kills will take place in BVR. And part of that is due to the effectiveness of AMRAAM.

Being able to close in is not where the advantage of ARH comes in. In fact, in order to close in, you need to approach the target, and that means, keeping the target on your radar's FOV and head to the target's direction. In that sense, there is no tactical difference between ARH and SARH here. The real advantage of SARH is the option of violently maneuvering to escape the other guy's missile, and hope that your own can autonomously destroy the opposing plane. That can mean life and death at times. The other advantage is to be able to engage multiple targets simultaneously. In real life however, there is only one ever recorded back to back kills done this way.

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Maybe you don't understand what I meant. By close in I mean in a way that is not head-on. Closing in as a way to avoid attack.

The low rate SARH missiles had at the beginning comes from poor tactics.

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No, it was just not a very good variant.

People fired their missiles at maximum range, and thus the missiles are easy to evade as they ran out of juice. You started to get this 37% because people learned to fire them at much closer ranges, to give the missile more kinetic reserve. They also learn to ripple fire the missiles, two missiles against one target to greatly increase the probability of kill.

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This 37% could also be because it was kills recorded against the Iraqi air force, which was fairly weak. They kind of sucked.

hmm, I'm having a hard time understanding why you are trying to make it sound like SARH can be as effective as ARH missile. I mean there is a clear reason why all the air forces are moving to using ARH missiles. Besides, the latest ARH missiles probably have much greater NEZ than SARH. The Americans have said that they believe 90% of all future kills will take place in BVR. And part of that is due to the effectiveness of AMRAAM.

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I am not saying that SARH is as effective as ARH. But I object to the notion that just because you got ARH, SARH has lost its effectiveness. In fact, it hasn't, and modern technology has made them deadlier than ever. While ARH is superior, it does not diminish the threat that SARH still poses. Some of the most effective SAMs in the world are SARH, for example, like the Standards.

Maybe you don't understand what I meant. By close in I mean in a way that is not head-on. Closing in as a way to avoid attack.

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And you keep don't understand what radar field of view means. It is not necessary that that your plane has to be head on or its nose pointed at the target in order to illuminate the target. Understand this, the radar inside the plane can turn around a gimball. You can fly in one direction, but the radar inside the nose is pointed in a different direction at the target and illuminating the target. I don't have to fly head on to you to illuminate you.

And you keep don't understand what radar field of view means. It is not necessary that that your plane has to be head on or its nose pointed at the target in order to illuminate the target. Understand this, the radar inside the plane can turn around a gimball. You can fly in one direction, but the radar inside the nose is pointed in a different direction at the target and illuminating the target. I don't have to fly head on to you to illuminate you.

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The F-16 has a very limited field of fiew. You said it yourself, most have view of 60 degrees. In other word, they can only look 30 degrees in any direction. That's a very limited situation. All the pilot of the fighter has to do is check to see if the missile hits, which doesn't require concentrating on the fighter.

crobato said:

I am not saying that SARH is as effective as ARH. But I object to the notion that just because you got ARH, SARH has lost its effectiveness. In fact, it hasn't, and modern technology has made them deadlier than ever. While ARH is superior, it does not diminish the threat that SARH still poses. Some of the most effective SAMs in the world are SARH, for example, like the Standards.

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That's true, but in the cases of the standards. The radar is so powerful on the ships, that you probably want it to direct the missile the entire way. Whereas in the case of fighter vs fighter, the radar is no where near as powerful. Especially on mechanically scanned radar, the maximum concurrent engagements only happen under optimal situations. If you can somehow "release" the guidance on the missile earlier, that would allow you to fire off another missile against another targets. And there is also scenarios where your missile might be close to the targets and the fighter somehow looses the target, ARH would still be able to go after the target in that case.

When you are using SARH, you don't do multiple target engagement. I have explained that before and it is one of the disadvantages of the type. You can however, fire two missiles at the same target. So the radar is concentrated on a beam towards a single target (not a bad idea, because STT is much more ECM resistant than multiple engagment TWS). At farther distances, the beam from the plane would be weaker of course, but as the range gets closer, the beam from the fighter would have a stronger illuminating cast on the target than from the small emitter battery powered emitter on the missile. The seeker would lock on faster and harder for the target to shake that lock with ECM. That is why SARH missiles are deadly on snap attacks at the shorter BVR ranges something the F-15s used in the Gulf War with deadly effect.

On the ships, you got multiple illuminators to handle different targets, not to mention time sharing, in which case one target is being illuminated when the missile is terminal with the target, while the radar is directing other missiles to their targets. Each missile gets its "turn" in the illumination as each would individually reach their terminal seeker envelopes.

On early airborne SARH missiles, like early versions of the AIM-7 such as AIM-7F, the missile is fired "hot" off the rails. Which means the target is already illuminated with CWI and the missile is already seeking and guiding on the illumination as it is launched. It has its disadvantages at longer range.

On newer airborne SARH missiles, a datallink is added like in the AIM-7M or in the R-27R. While under STT mode, the missile is being guided by the datalink without the target being illuminated by CWI. When the missile is in terminal range of the target, the CWI is activated and lights up the target for the missile. By then the plane has flown much closer to the target, and the CWI reflection would be strong.

ACIG's ROCAF claims probably uses the same sources as TaiwanAirPower.com. As a reference of ROCAF position, TaiwanAirPower.com is accurate in the sense that it shows official claims on the attrition side.

However like any other air combats you always get very different claims from different sides. ROCAF/PLAAF records are no different. There are some ROCAF gun images, but that do not tell the whole stories either. This is a highly controversial topic that still lacks balanced formal academic studies. There aren't any newly release records of PLAAF.

Look at this image:

A typical Taiwan Hardened Aircraft Shelter. I'm not sure this kind of HAS would show up clearly on google earth.

Original expansion of HAS calls for defense of 1000 lb air strike, and takes five years to complete. The plan was suspended in 2000 to adjust the requirement. According to ROCAF Chief of Staff back in 2002, the new planning and procurement process of new 2000 lb HAS require 17~24 months. So if everything proceeds as scheduled, the project should be completed by 2009.