A little more than a month and a half remains before the inauguration of a very extraordinary and geopolitically flexible personality, Republican Donald Trump, as president of the United States. And despite all the jubilation of our political scientists, Internet observers, bloggers and other "commentators" regarding Trump's pro-Russian views, a not so rosy trend has already formed, indicating the rather aggressive military-political views of the environment formed today by the future US leader. First, it is Trump's favorite for the post of US Secretary of Defense, James Mattis. The retired general of the United States Marine Corps became famous for his very, very harsh statements against the Russian Federation, as well as its Eurasian allies. Mattis accused our country of unleashing military aggression in Crimea and Donbass, elevating it to threat No.1 for the West in the European theater of operations. Having served in the USMC for 34 years, D. Mattis managed to take part in many military operations of the Iraqi campaign, including the Iraqi Freedom (OIF): it was under his command that the US ILC 1st Division took part in the 2003 offensive against the Iraqi Army. Mattis is a typical McCain anti-Russian camp, nicknamed "Mad Dog" among the infantrymen.
And Trump himself is far from the “peaceful leader” he is trying to impersonate. Let's go over two indicative facts of recent times. While our sane Russian people and leadership were carrying flowers to the Cuban embassy, expressing their condolences on the departure of the leader of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro, Trump with numerous American madmen celebrated this day at the level of the US national holiday. The future head of the White House spoke of Fidel Castro as the toughest dictator, responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, and solemnly unsubscribed on his Twitter page: "Fidel Castro is dead!" This caused bewilderment even on the part of the Latin American department of the Russian Foreign Ministry. It is worth considering!
Trump also spoke very negatively about Russia's strategically important Asian ally, the People's Republic of China. He sharply criticized trade and economic relations between the United States and China, accusing the latter of squeezing a large share of jobs from American companies. Considering this rhetoric of Trump, as well as the presence at the helm of the Pentagon of the conservative American warrior James Mattis, we can see a picture in which the military-strategic pressure on the Middle Kingdom in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region will double, plus various kinds of economic "sticks in the wheels of Beijing" will be added. In the military-strategic plan, such "non-sickly tools" as battalions of anti-missile systems "THAAD", covered by "Patriot PAC-3" in South Korea, additional "pumping" of the South China and East China Seas with submarine and surface components of the Navy can be used USA, etc.
Even more unpleasant “surprises” are being prepared for Beijing on the economic agenda, some of which have already been successfully implemented: the penalty duties on metallurgical products (cold-rolled and hot-rolled sheet steel), increased in the first quarter of 2016, may be prolonged.large duties may also be imposed on the electronic products of hundreds of prominent Chinese corporations, as well as automotive products. At the same time, such a player as Australia, which also introduced duties on Chinese steel, can be involved in the creation of anti-dumping tariffs. Naturally, more preference will be given to the US henchmen - Japanese, Taiwanese and South Korean companies. What should the Chinese do? Even more ambitiously to reorient the trade and economic vector to the Russian, Pakistani, Iranian, or Near East markets, as well as to try by all means to maintain control over sea routes and hydrocarbon deposits around the Spratly and Diaoyu archipelagos, which will eventually affect the issues of territorial disputes with Vietnam and Japan, which will support the US Navy and Air Force? Here, Beijing certainly cannot be hit on the face in the mud.
We all remember very well the video filmed by the operators of the American long-range anti-submarine aircraft P-8A "Poseidon", where a strategic patrol car carefreely conducts close optical and electronic reconnaissance for the construction of Chinese military infrastructure on some artificial islands of the Spratly archipelago. Reconnaissance is carried out practically close, from a distance of 30-40 km from the objects of observation. It is quite clear that in a few kilometers from the Poseidon periodically, for the purpose of escorting, there should be no less than a link covering the F / A-18E / F "Super Hornet", which rose from the deck of aircraft carriers of the "Nimitz" class, or even more formidable machines - super-maneuverable air superiority fighters of the 5th generation F-22A, periodically deployed to Taiwanese air bases. What can the PLA oppose?
The main anti-aircraft component of the Chinese Navy continues to be 6 destroyers URO Type 052C "Lanzhou" and 5 EM URO Type 052D "Kunming". These warships are equipped with an advanced combat information and control system (BIUS) based on the French "Thomson-CSF" TAVITAC-2000 with additional algorithms for intercepting low-altitude small anti-ship missiles approaching the ship against the background of the water surface. The "raw" software of this BIUS, intended for French frigates of the "Lafayette" type, had to be seriously updated for the future integration of a full-fledged long-range air defense missile defense system HHQ-9, as well as multifunctional 4-sided control radars "Type 346" and "Type 438 ".
The HHQ-9 complex has a range of 200 km, which allows you to control vast areas of airspace over the Spratly archipelago and the Paracel Islands. But it is also impossible to keep several Type 052C / D destroyers in this region on an ongoing basis, because according to the Chinese defense concept of the Three Chains, most of the surface ships of the PRC Navy are also distributed between no less dangerous operational lines located near Taiwan. "Guam Saipan", the northern coast of the Philippines, as well as in the more distant parts of the Pacific Ocean. For this, in the conditions of the quantitative domination of the American Navy, and a dozen of the best Chinese destroyers may not be enough. And therefore, we have a huge number of open operational areas on the borders of China's air borders, where carrier-based aircraft of the American fleet have the ability to access for the purpose of conducting reconnaissance operations, and in some cases, more serious strike missions.
Without a doubt, the Chinese fighter aircraft, represented by the multipurpose highly maneuverable aircraft J-10A / B, J-11B, Su-30MKK / MK2, as well as the latest Su-35S, has the ability to forcefully influence the American patrol aircraft, which does not know measures to violate the airspace, assigned to the PRC over the Spratly archipelago, but the Arley Burke destroyers deployed to the same region easily create closed airspace for Chinese fighters, preventing them from approaching the American Poseidons by 350 km. Long-range anti-aircraft guided missiles RIM-174 ERAM have a maximum range of 370 km. In the event of a combat situation, even promising long-range missile systems PL-21D (range up to 150-160 km) will not solve the problems of the Chinese. To keep the enemy under control, the Chinese air force today requires a qualitatively new product, the range of which reaches 350 kilometers or more to cover the range of the RIM-174 missile defense system. Obviously, a solution has already been found, and may receive initial operational readiness by 2020.
At the end of November, an amateur photo collection was published on the Chinese Internet resource Weibo.com, which captured from different angles a promising Chinese tactical fighter of the "4 ++" generation J-16 with a new ultra-long-range guided air combat missile with an unknown index. It is obvious that the stage of flight tests of the new prototype has begun. The Chinese specialists decided to use the J-16 as a test carrier platform, since the machine is equipped with the most advanced serial Chinese radar with an active phased antenna array, represented by 2000 PPMs with a maximum total power of 6 kW, which is comparable to our Irbis-E. This station is fully consistent with the calculated performance characteristics of a promising missile, ensuring the capture of large air targets at a distance of over 320 km: launching at ultra-long distances will not require radio correction and target designation from the side of quiet AWACS aircraft, like the KJ-2000, but will be possible exclusively due to the radar of the J itself -16. In this example, we can see the long-awaited achievement of the 21st century level technology by the Chinese defense industry, when any unit turns into a self-sufficient combat unit, and in parallel with the network-centric linkage, it is capable of autonomous actions due to its own weapons, as well as airborne radio-technical and optical-electronic means.
If the main technical characteristics are already known from the onboard radar of the J-16 fighter, then information about the new ultra-long-range air combat missile is completely absent, so its parameters can only be judged on the basis of the photos posted on Weibo.com. At the time of creating the photo, the J-16 either touched or detached from the runway, and therefore the rear right brake wheel of the main landing gear of the fighter, whose diameter was 1.03 m, was used as a reference for measuring the structural element. From this, using a ruler and a calculator, we deduce the length of the rocket, which is 5.75 m, as well as the diameter of the body, equal to 290-310 mm. Western Internet resources have already rushed to compare the new Chinese missile with the Russian project AAM-L ("Product 172"), better known as the super-long-range guided missile KS-172 / S-1, but only in terms of its purpose, this project has much in common with our brainchild of OKB "Novator". Structurally, the Chinese URVV is fundamentally different from the KS-172.
Design Bureau “Novator” started developing “Product 172” back in 1991, using the developments obtained in the course of designing the medium-range anti-aircraft missile 9M83 of the S-300V air defense missile defense system. The two-stage KS-172 is a more compact rocket than the 9M83: the former weighs 750 kg versus 3500 kg for the latter. The mass of the KS-172 warhead is 3 times less than that of its anti-aircraft version. Naturally, the rocket has 2 times smaller dimensions (the diameter of the main stage "Product 172" is about 400 mm versus 915 mm in 9M83). The aerodynamic design of the "bearing cone" was replaced by the "bearing body". Meanwhile, the thrust-to-weight ratio of the aircraft version of the rocket was not only preserved, but also significantly increased, which, with a significantly lower aerodynamic resistance, as well as launching from rarefied layers of the stratosphere, made it possible to achieve a 5, 5 times greater range than the 9M83 missile defense system. It is known that a reduced version of the sustainer solid propellant propellant of the 9M83 anti-aircraft guided missile was used as the engine of the sustainer stage. In addition, the KS-172 is a bicaliber rocket with an enlarged launch booster stage.
A promising Chinese missile for ultra-long-range air combat is also made according to the "carrier body" scheme, but it is single-stage and has a single body diameter (about 310 mm). The missile is a constructive analogue of the HQ-9, 5V55P and 48N6E missiles, where more than 60-75% of the internal volume falls on a solid-propellant rocket engine, and 35-40% on a directional warhead, an autopilot, an active / semi-active radar seeker, a receiving module radio command information from the fire control system of the carrier or third-party radar equipment, as well as contact and radioactive fuses. It has been suggested that the new missile received an ARGSN with a high-energy active phased array, which allows detecting stealthy tactical aircraft of the 5th generation at a range of up to 15-25 km, and fighters of the F / A-18E / F type - 30-40 km.
The high aerodynamic qualities of the new Chinese rocket are ensured by the large elongation of the small-diameter hull, which contributes to a lower deceleration coefficient, and as a result, maintains better maneuverability at ranges of more than 200-250 km. The expected maximum speed of the product can reach 6-7M at altitudes from 20 to 40 km, and the estimated range is 400 or even more kilometers. When intercepting long-range targets, the flight will take place along a semi-ballistic trajectory with inertial guidance and radio correction. The noise immunity and accuracy of the new ARGSN with AFAR will also surpass similar indicators for conventional ARGSN with slotted antenna arrays such as 9B-1348 or 9B-1103M "Washer", which will expand the list of intercepted objects.
The main targets for the promising air-to-air missile of the Chinese Air Force will be anti-submarine aircraft, AWACS aircraft, electronic and electronic reconnaissance aircraft, as well as air tankers of the US Air Force, Japan, Vietnam, India and South Korea, which represent the main component of network-centric interaction and air support for Asia-Pacific theater of operations. All of the above machines have a large effective scattering surface, and therefore can be detected and attacked by Chinese J-16 or Su-35S from the maximum possible distances for a new missile (about 400 km), even without the support of ground and aviation AWACS systems. Fighters with less powerful radars (Su-30MK2 / MKK or J-11) will probably also be adapted for the use of a new missile, but target designation in this case will not occur due to the active mode of the radar, but according to the radiation warning station, or on target designation of the radar for interference, organized by the enemy's electronic warfare system ("HOJ" mode).
Cruise, anti-radar, operational-tactical ballistic missiles, guided aerial bombs, as well as other types of high-precision weapons with low EPR will become secondary targets. In this case, both supersonic and hypersonic objects will be affected. The presence of a seeker with AFAR will also allow countering more complex air targets, for example, AIM-120C / D AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, medium and long-range anti-aircraft guided missiles (ERINT, MIM-104C), as well as guided and unguided rockets of modern MLRS. The missile, which has high interception rates for stealth aircraft, is similar in efficiency and functionality to the 48N6DM or 9M82M missile defense systems, while its mass is 3 and 10 times less than that of its anti-aircraft counterparts. The mass of the new Chinese long-range guided air combat missile will be about 600-700 kg, which will allow one J-16 or Su-35S to take on board 4-6 units.
Recently, very large stakes have been made on imparting striking qualities to interceptor missiles, turning missiles or even airborne missiles into high-speed long-range aeroballistic tactical missiles or PRLR. Thanks to the GOS with AFAR and an advanced INS, and Chinese missiles in practice can be used in long-range pinpoint strikes, the application of which can occur at speeds up to 5M. This product is very complex for interception by ground and ship-based anti-missile defense systems, leaving a minimum of time for the operators of the Aegis system or the Patriot PAC-3 ground air defense system.
The adoption of promising ultra-long-range missiles into service with carrier-based fighters of the Navy, as well as the tactical aviation of the Chinese Air Force, unambiguously brings the defense industry of the Celestial Empire to a real geostrategic "leap" to a new level, where there is no place for total American superiority. Beijing will be able to defend its regional interests in the South China and East China seas much tougher. So, for example, the American fleet will lose the previously retained parity in terms of control of the air situation over Spratly, since the AIM-120D missiles in service with the Super Hornets are inferior in range to the new Chinese airborne missile system by about 2.5-3 times, and the ship's SM- 6 barely "matched" to its parameters. Equipping the carrier-based J-15S with this missile will make the AUG of the Chinese fleet 2 times more protected than the existing AUG of the US Navy.
Imagine: all this action will take place in the vital "artery" of the States - the Asia-Pacific region. Here, neither the sale of the F-35A to Australia, nor the "Lockheedian" assistance in fine-tuning the avionics of the Japanese ATD-X will not particularly affect the situation: an advanced hypersonic missile will change the rules of the game. How can the Americans answer? Perhaps a small-sized modular self-defense missile defense SACM-T ("CUDA"), designed to intercept enemy air combat missiles, but here, too, everything is not so simple. After all, it is known that modern radars with AFAR such as AN / APG-77 (F-22A) and AN / APG-81 have the ability to deliver powerful directional electronic interference X, Ku, and possibly Ka-bands. The multi-element ARGSN with the AFAR of the Chinese ultra-long-range missile will also not be an exception, and it is likely that already today the Chinese programmers have formed an algorithm to counter probable US Air Force interceptor missiles of the SACM-T type, equipped with millimeter active radar seeker.
Of the additional indisputable advantages of the promising Chinese ultra-long-range intercept missile, it is possible to note the possibility of placing the YH-X stealthy strategic missile-carrying bombers under development in the internal weapon compartments. The onboard electronic equipment of this 160-ton supersonic vehicle is built around a powerful airborne radar with AFAR, capable, in addition to working on ground and sea targets, to provide guidance of advanced airborne missile systems at enemy air targets for self-defense.
The main technical drawback can be considered the impossibility of placing 5, 75-meter missiles in the internal arms of the tactical fighters of the 5th generation J-20 and J-31. These compartments have a length of 4, 2 m, and are designed to accommodate such long-range air-to-air missiles, such as the PL-12D or PL-21. The deployment of new ultra-long-range Chinese missiles on these fighters provides for the use of only external suspension points, which will definitely increase the radar signature of the "stealth" fighters from "Shenyang" and "Chengdu".
But in view of the numerous advantages of a promising product, this drawback can be considered simply insignificant, because only the Air Force and Navy of China will receive in the near future the most long-range air combat missile in the world, capable of turning a conventional 4 ++ generation aviation complex into an instrument for building an air line of deterring the enemy according to the "A2 / AD" concept with a length of more than 350 km. Today, absolutely nothing is known about the presence of such air attack weapons in the US Navy and Air Force, and only the Russian long-range interceptor MiG-31BM with R-37 missiles has approximate combat qualities.
