Joint flight of the long-range patrol aircraft P-8A "Poseidon" and its good old turboprop analogue P-3C "Orion". Being in more than 30 years of temporary break in the peak of military activity, and one and the second cars will continue to patrol the seas and oceans together until almost the middle of the XXI century.
In our extensive analysis on May 31, 2016, all aspects of the current and future strategic concepts of the US Navy "Kill Chain" and "Kill Web" were very carefully considered. All the shortcomings of the former and the merits of the latter, the most network-centrically rich concept, were clarified, and the approximate degree of its threat to the fighter aircraft of the air defense of the Aerospace Forces of the Russian Federation was determined using the example of the actions of the carrier-based aircraft of the American AUG in accordance with the methods of the NIFC-CA sub-concept included in the Kill Web ".
But if all the dangers from the anti-aircraft "NIFC-CA" are "resolved" with the help of modern Russian tactical aviation and ground-based electronic warfare systems with grief in half is still possible, then the anti-submarine and anti-ship sub-concepts "ADOSWC" and "NIFC-CU" stored in reserve will be eliminated much more problematic, as indicated by the latest news, loudly released by the British analytical website Flightglobal.com on August 11, 2016. The website of the renowned aerospace weekly reports on the development and implementation of the specialized Minotaur software into the information interface of the US Navy's P-8A Poseidon long-range anti-submarine aircraft, which are in service with the 5th (VP-5) and 16th (VP -16) patrol squadrons. The initial combat readiness of new software and additional equipment may be announced in 2019, which can be considered a very unpleasant "surprise" for us.
The Minotaur is an advanced auxiliary interface for the exchange of tactical information on underwater and surface situations between several dozen P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft on duty over the seas and oceans. The new software will be downloaded and installed on each workstation of these aircraft operators and will allow displaying a complete (strategic) picture of the situation in the vast sea / ocean theater, collected and generalized from all radio-technical equipment (including sonar buoys and magnetic anomaly sensors) in the air " Poseidonov ". Data exchange will be carried out via a secure communication channel "Link-16", but given the pace of development of modern electronic warfare means, additional "secret" communication channels with pseudo-random restructuring of the operating frequency, including satellite ones, can be used. But this is far from the whole set of qualities realized by the "Minotaur".
The tactics of using the "Poseidon" link in the sea / ocean theater of operations, taking into account the implementation of the "Minotaur" software package
Poseidons will be able to transmit information about the tactical situation to modernized anti-submarine aircraft P-3C "Orion", multipurpose anti-submarine helicopters NH-90NFH of the United NATO Navy and the American MH-60R, unmanned anti-submarine trimarans ACTUV "Sea Hunter", and finally to work terminals shipboard SAC AN / SQQ-89, installed on American "Aegis" -ships, which will make the actions of the fleets of the United States and NATO countries more coordinated and effective. In addition, today the laboratories of the US Navy are working on bringing the acoustic processor and communications of the Orion to the level of the hardware of the Poseidon: in terms of the sensitivity and filtering of signals received from the RSL, the converting devices of the former will eventually reach the P-8A.
It will be very difficult to overcome such lines of the underwater patrol in the North Atlantic not only for the multipurpose nuclear submarines (SSGN) of the project 949A "Antey", but also for the slower torpedo submarines "Shchuka-B". The only type of submarine capable of withstanding such a powerful systematization of the NATO submarine is Ash, but by 2020 their number will be only 6 units, which is completely insufficient to confidently destroy all strategic objects deep in the United States. The entire North Atlantic will be teeming with unmanned Sea Hunters, Arleigh Burkes and Ticonderogs, whose actions will be supported by Poseidons linked into one network, and information read from hundreds of placed sonar buoys will create an almost insurmountable underwater barrier on the way to the States.
In the Asia-Pacific region, it will be much more difficult for the Americans to create such a network, since the area of the region is several times larger, and it is here that reaching the launch lines of the SKR X-101 (more than 5500 km) seems to be an easier task, as, in fact, under the ice of the North The Arctic Ocean, but it has its own peculiarities associated with the different thickness of ice that must be broken by the submarine.
The search avionics of the P-8A "Poseidon" aircraft cannot be classified as a narrowly targeted anti-submarine, but refers to multi-purpose systems capable of conducting optical-electronic reconnaissance on the sea surface and coastal areas. The capabilities of these systems are equated to the E-8C "J-STARS" type airborne target designation systems. So, 7 operators of one P-8A "Poseidon" have at their disposal a multi-purpose airborne radar complex - AN / APS-137D (V) 5 (or AN / APY-10, as it is often called by the developer "Raytheon"). The parabolic antenna array of the complex with additional equipment (rotation drives, power supply system and communication bus with avionics) weighs about 250 kg and is located under the radio-transparent nose cone P-8A. High resolution in the synthetic aperture mode (about 3.5 m) is provided by the centimeter X-range of operation (from 9.3 to 10.1 GHz). AN / APY-10 has a peak power of 50 kW, due to which large surface ships of the "aircraft carrier" type can be detected at ranges of up to 450 km, and the "destroyer" - about 329 km.
The AN / APS-137D (V) 5 radar is special in that it has not only the standard synthetic aperture mode (SAR), but also the so-called inverse synthesis (ISAR) mode, which is achieved due to the circular flight path of the Poseidon around the target area … For a certain period of time, the radar makes several tens of thousands of "scans" of the target from a constantly changing angle, and as a result, an accurate three-dimensional radar "picture" of the target is formed, on which the silhouette with its design features is visible. Often, in the ISAR mode, not only classification is achieved, but also the identification of a surface or ground object (at this moment, the station resolution approaches 1 m, and the average radiation power - to 500 W). The same power is required for the Raytheon product to detect small targets such as the periscope. The scanning frequency depends on the operating modes and ranges from 6 to 300 "scans" per minute. High-performance on-board computers make it possible to simultaneously track 256 sea and ground targets, which makes the AN / APS-137D (V) 5 one of the most advanced radars in its class. Also, as in the AN / APY-3 (E-8C) side-looking radar, the AN / APY-10 introduced a terrain mapping mode.
Airborne radar AN / APY-10
Additional equipment includes a magnetic anomaly detector (MAD) installed in the tail rotor, an optoelectronic surveillance and sighting station in turret version MX-20HD, an optoelectronic jamming system for missiles with IKGSN AN / AAQ-24 (in the tail section of the aircraft), towed radio-emitting decoy target AN / ALE-50, radiation warning system (RWS) APR-39B, electronic countermeasures station AN / ALQ-18 and RER station AN / ALQ-240 (V) 1. The MX-20HD optoelectronic station is a rotating module with 7 TV / IR sensors and a laser rangefinder channel. The television channel has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and powerful optical and digital zoom, thanks to which the Poseidons can conduct optical reconnaissance from several tens of kilometers. The MX-20HD is most actively used for reconnaissance behind the Chinese artificial islands in the South China Sea near the Spratly archipelago, as well as behind the Chinese fleet in the area of the Diaoyu (Senkaku) archipelago in the East China Sea. From a distance of more than 25-35 km, the camera is able to provide P-8A operators with comprehensive information about the actions of a potential enemy on its own infrastructure: the camera distinguishes between any small-sized vehicles, construction equipment, military equipment and even personnel.
The P-8A "Poseidon" is a rather formidable combat vehicle, not only due to its unique ability to control vast expanses of the ocean and coastal areas of the continents, but also due to the possibility of using modern high-precision air-to-ship and air-to-ground missiles, and also various torpedoes and anti-submarine missiles: at the moment, on the suspensions of American Poseidons, you can see the AGM-84D / N "Harpoon" anti-ship missiles, the AGM-84H / K SLAM-ER tactical missiles, the Mk.54 torpedoes and the HAAWC high-altitude release PLUR developed by " Boeing "based on Mk.54 with aerodynamic control module
Long-range patrol aircraft P-8A "Poseidon" can partially replace even such specialized vehicles as the RC-135V / W "Rivet Joint", and the "Minotaur" software generates operational-strategic illumination about the deployment sites of enemy radio-technical and electronic reconnaissance assets, as well as Air defense on stretches of several thousand kilometers. It is logical that later the "Minotaur" will be installed on the Australian and British "Poseidons". This, first of all, will affect the level of complexity of the duty of our multipurpose nuclear submarine cruisers and strategic missile submarines in the waters of the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic, as well as create big problems for the operation of the Chinese nuclear submarine fleet in the IATR.
The construction of more SSGNs pr. 885 "Ash" and "Husky" will partially resolve this unpleasant problem, but we will be able to observe the result at least in 15 years. In the meantime, we will have to be content with the ongoing modernization of long-range anti-submarine Tu-142M3 aircraft, and also hope that they will be equipped with modern communication equipment to create a single network with naval combat information and control systems of the “Requirement-M” and “Sigma” families.
