A huge amount of controversy and reflections concerning the development and future application in practice of the American concept of a "Rapid Global Strike" can be found on the Russian expanses of the global network and on Russian-language foreign military-analytical resources. It is no secret that the numerous tactical aspects of the implementation of the BSU against the main military-industrial facilities of Russia and the People's Republic of China are already being regularly honed to perfection by means of special computerized simulator terminals linked into a single tactical network, as well as directly at the training software loaded into the LMS of tactical fighters, strategic missile bombers, multipurpose and strategic nuclear submarines, as well as URO surface combat ships (EM class "Arleigh Burke" and RRC "Ticonderoga").
In inveterate jingoistic circles, it is customary to argue that a large number of S-400 Triumph anti-aircraft missile regiments (ZRP) recently adopted by the Russian Aerospace Forces, as well as S-300V4 batteries entering the Air Defense Forces of the Ground Forces, will reduce the likelihood of breakthrough”of our aerospace almost to zero. The emphasis is also on the S-300PS / PM1 and S-300V, already in service with the VKS and SV, which have retained decent anti-missile capabilities in the 21st century. This is partly true, because on key air routes and in areas of the main zones of prohibition and restriction of access and the A2 / AD maneuver (Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg, Moscow and Minsk), the density of deployed anti-aircraft missile regiments and brigades reaches maximum values (separation of divisions on the ground is minimal).
For example, the S-300PS / PM1 and S-400 anti-aircraft missile regiments of the 2nd Air Defense Division, responsible for covering the aerospace sector of the A2 / AD zone of the Leningrad Region, are deployed in closely located settlements of Gostilitsy (500th air defense missile regiment, 4 complexes S-300PM1), Zelenogorsk (1488th ZRP, several ZRDN S-400), Vaganovo (1489th ZRP, 2 divisions S-300PS) and Ulyanovka (1490th ZRP, 4 ZRDN S-300PS). All these villages, townships and cities are located at a distance of no more than 50 - 75 km from each other, which fits perfectly into the range characteristics of low-altitude targets intercepted with the help of "Three hundred" and "Four hundred" (30 - 38 km depending on the height of the target): everything is done taking into account the radio horizon and the technical capabilities of the 30N6E / 92N6E illumination radars. In a simpler language: the data of the air defense missile systems cover all low-altitude areas over the Gulf of Finland, Leningrad and the region, not allowing cruise missiles such as JASSM-ER or Tomahawk or NSM to penetrate unhindered. At the same time, some areas are simultaneously overlapped not by one or two, but by three anti-aircraft missile regiments at once. Almost every S-300/400 air defense missile system has additional self-propelled short-range air defense systems (Tor-M2U, Pantsir-S1) to protect the 2-5-kilometer “dead zone” from elements of the enemy's high-precision weapons that have managed to break through.
At the same time, the western air direction is simply a huge spatial sector and “A2 / AD” is not being built on the Kaliningrad and Leningrad zones alone. Consequently, there are other, much less protected areas of our sky in areas where there are no vital military facilities, as well as energy and industrial centers of the state. Here, the saturation with air defense means is practically reduced to a minimum, and therefore there is a large number of low-altitude sections of the airspace that cannot be seen by ground-based radar systems. Thus, a noticeably weakened lower EP sector is observed over the southern part of the Leningrad region and the northern part of the Pskov region (in the area of the settlements of Klinki and Belaya Gorka). The 1544th air defense missile regiment, which is also part of the 2nd Air Defense Division of the 6th Army of the Aerospace Forces, located in the village of Vladimir camp (Pskov region), is largely responsible for this direction. Despite the Buk-M1 and S-300V anti-aircraft missile battalions at the regiment's disposal, the radio horizon of 25-30 km does not make it possible to “view” and “serve” the low-altitude area over the northern part of the region, the range to which reaches 45 or more kilometers. The S-300 anti-aircraft missile regiments located in Gostilitsy and Ulyanovka, which are located 100-143 km away, are also unable to do this.
While there is a significant air gap in the above section, only 100 kilometers to the west is the territory of the nearest bridgehead of the united NATO armed forces in the Baltic States - Estonia, the airspace of which can be used to launch subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic elements of the WTO, leaving for our ZRDN minimum time to transfer to the area of the estimated trajectory of enemy air forces. Obviously, using the RC-135W / V "Rivet Joint" electronic reconnaissance aircraft equipped with a complex of direction finding and analysis of the frequency parameters of 55000 AEELS radar sources (in the case of a worst-case scenario of a conflict in the European theater of operations), the NATO command and control forces can clearly "probe" the optimal locations successful massive "breakthrough" of the western air lines of Russia, and it will not be easy to bring such a blow to zero, to put it mildly. Considering that the AGM-158B stealth long-range tactical missiles are capable of reaching the Volga region and Nizhny Novgorod, the consequences of such an MRAU can be extremely painful. It will be good if in the depths of the European part of Russia there are enough air defense and electronic warfare systems for the phased interception of all these missiles, as well as disabling their GPS navigation modules and TERCOM correlation subsystems (the principle of operation of the latter is vulnerable to electronic warfare, since it involves the use of a radio altimeter) … the number or concentration along the flight path of Tomahawks and JASSM-ER will be insufficient? The operational-strategic situation can prepare a lot of unpleasant surprises.
There are only two ways to "resolve" such an unpleasant situation:
Meanwhile, the capabilities of the MiG-31B / BM to destroy low-flying enemy cruise missiles of various classes (including ultra-stealthy ones) have long been a proven merit of Foxhound during numerous field tests close to the real combat situation in the air sector of the theater of operations. The groundwork in this area of modernization of the 2, 8-fly interceptor is practically exhausted. A more interesting, non-sounded moment is the ability of the BM modification to destroy high-speed ballistic objects (missiles, as well as their military equipment) at various parts of the flight path. The presence of such abilities even in the first modernized modification of the Foxhound with the product 05 index (MiG-31M Foxhound-B / Improved Foxhound) is reported by the western information and analytical reference resource toad-design.com, dedicated to jet aircraft of the MiG family ". So, in the publication "Zaslon Radar" it is indicated that the "Zaslon-M" radar installed under an enlarged radio-transparent fairing with a diameter of 1, 4 m in combination with air combat missiles R-37 made it possible to intercept medium-range ballistic missiles MGM-31C "Pershing-2 ", With a range of 1800 km.
Note that this ability is indicated for the first improved version of the "Barrier" ("Barrier-M"), controlled by an outdated onboard computer "Argon-15A" with a frequency of about 500 thousand op / s and 4 and 64 Kbytes of RAM / ROM, respectively. …This was quite enough for accurate and verified target designation of the Pershing-2 warhead, slowing down to 3, 5 -4, 5M on the descending branch of the trajectory (at an altitude of 25-30 km). The newest MiG-31BM is equipped with a no less advanced Zaslon-AM radar. Although it loses 2 times to Zaslon-M in terms of the number of targets tracked, its energy capabilities exceed the indicators of the first version by 60% (for a target with an RCS of 1 m2 - 246 and 154 km, respectively). The "Zaslon-AM" is controlled by a more modern and hundreds of times more efficient on-board computer "Baget-55" with a frequency of about 300 MHz (about 160 million so-called "butterflies").
This is enough to "capture" and destroy even higher-speed hypersonic targets with a flight speed of 1770 m / s (6M): this list will also include the advanced Lockheed reconnaissance and strike aircraft SR-72 with its hypersonic combat "equipment", and aircraft built on the basis of the prototype 5, 5-stroke cruise missile X-51 "Waverider", and, of course, all existing and future versions of the operational-tactical ballistic missile MGM-164B ATACMS Block IIA. The fighting qualities of the MiG-31BM interceptor are still at the highest level. Enemy's short- and medium-range ballistic missiles can be deployed at any time in the most difficult sector of the theater of operations, where all the target channels of the Bukov, Triumphs and Anteyevs will be jammed to capacity by enemy cruise and anti-radar missiles, as well as aerodynamic targets; it is here that the long-range and high-altitude interceptors MiG-31BM will have to play their main role.
Everything that was described above is directly related only to low-maneuverable hypersonic cruise and ballistic missiles, which are not difficult to intercept for the R-33S and R-37 missiles, and do not forget that new models of hypersonic weapons, including compact warheads OTBR / MRBM (also planned for use in the "Rapid Global Strike"), will have a fully-fledged gas-dynamic control system at the terminal section of the trajectory, as well as built-in electronic warfare systems, built on a promising even more miniature element base. To combat such targets, without any thought about expediency, it will be necessary to develop an interceptor missile of a completely different "kind" than the R-37. The new anti-missile missile should receive a more durable body that can withstand "jerk" maneuvers with an overload of 60 - 80 units, an annular module of several "belts" of impulse gas-dynamic engines for lateral control during the implementation of kinetic destruction of an enemy maneuvering ballistic missile, as well as an active radar seeker based on AFAR for better anti-jamming missile defense system used by the enemy's high-precision weapons.
It is possible that it was these moments that the general director of NIIP Y. Bely meant when he focused on the continuing modernization potential of the MiG-31BM in a January interview for TASS. It is noteworthy that an advanced interceptor missile could be unified with such machines as the MiG-35, Su-35S and Su-57 (T-50), which also have radars and optoelectronic sighting devices capable of tracking hypersonic objects and providing coordinates to means their defeat. The insidious aerospace theater of military operations of the new century, stuffed with "smart" weapons, makes a slight hint that the perfection of ground-based missile defense systems alone is hardly enough.
