Chapter 1049 New Tactics Pilot Force
Chang Haonan's reaction immediately aroused some confusion.
After all, A-to-B guidance is not a new concept.
In fact, using airborne radar to relay and guide anti-ship missiles launched by warships or submarines has become one of the very mature tactics of the Red Navy in the late 1970s.
Although that was indeed the peak period of the other country, in terms of communication technology alone, there is no reason that China in the early 21st century should be inferior to the Soviet Union more than 20 years ago.
So it took Chang Haonan about twenty minutes to finally explain why this "A shot and B guide" was very difficult to implement.
The main reason is that the nature of the goals is too different.
Surface ships are generally 200-300 meters long, have a maximum speed of only 30 knots, and can only move on a two-dimensional plane.
The wingspan and length of aircraft are generally about 20 meters, they can reach speeds of 600 knots or faster, and they can also move around in three-dimensional space.
The latter's requirements for target refresh rate and communication delay are far more than 20 times that of the former.
In the same way, the two processes of searching and locking have very different requirements for the target refresh rate.
Therefore, the bandwidth occupied by providing guidance for an air-to-air missile is likely to be two orders of magnitude larger than that of guiding an anti-ship missile or sharing target information with friendly aircraft.
With the communication technology of the early 21st century, it is far from having the luxury to allocate precious data link bandwidth to such usage needs.
In addition, in terms of hardware, each missile first needs to be equipped with an airborne two-way data link of the same level as the aircraft.
The resulting cost issues can be imagined.
Even if you take the money factor out of the equation, the entire antenna and processing system at the beginning of the 21st century is quite large in size.
For airplanes, of course, you can just find a place and stuff it in wherever you want.
But on air-to-air missiles where every inch of space is extremely valuable, it is actually not easy to leave a large enough space.
Taking a step back, the C-band radar of the early warning aircraft was not designed for fire control. Its accuracy is limited and it is not enough to guide the air-to-air bombs to a close enough position.
Not to mention the L-band on the other side.
In short, if you only test it once or twice under ideal conditions, it may not be impossible to succeed.
But if you want to use it in real combat...
All I can say is that the future is promising.
This result can only be said to be not unexpected.
After all, less than an hour ago, China achieved data link communication between an early warning aircraft and a combat aircraft for the first time.
Even centerless data sharing between two combat aircraft has not yet been tested.
It’s indeed a bit too early to want to do other fancy things right now.
However, logic is logic.
A little pity is inevitable.
Looking at the scene in front of him, Chang Haonan suddenly had an idea.
After about half a minute of brainstorming, he roughly determined the feasibility of this new idea:
"Although under current conditions, it is still somewhat difficult to use early warning aircraft to guide air-to-air missiles, we may be able to change our thinking."
Originally, everyone else had already looked at the computer screen again.
As a result, his words drew everyone's attention back.
"How to say?"
a senior staff officer asked curiously.
"If you use fighter jet radar to guide surface-to-air missiles... it will be much easier."
Chang Haonan expressed his thoughts:
"Because surface-to-air missiles, especially long-range surface-to-air missiles, are large enough, they can be relatively easily stuffed with some additional hardware equipment. You can even design a communication system specifically to be responsible for the communication between the aircraft and the missile without relying on a universal data link. Information transmission, and the missile-borne guidance radar is also large enough to complete autonomous locking at a distance from the target, so there is not such a high demand for guidance accuracy and transmission delay..."
"Of course, this is only from a technical perspective. The specific engineering implementation will not be that simple, and the most important thing is... the cost may be difficult to reduce."
When he said this, his original intention was just to comfort the Air Force leaders who had just been hit. He did not really want to come up with any specific product.
Because there is another issue that he did not mention.
It's the range.
The longest range of surface-to-air missiles at the beginning of the 21st century was only about 150km, and ground-to-air missiles were generally deployed far away from the contact line. After calculation, it was actually not much different from fighter jets launching their own missiles.
When surface-to-air bombs with a range of 300km are available in the future, it will not be too late to consider this matter again.
However, Chang Haonan still clearly underestimated the desire of today's PLA commanders and fighters to pursue new technologies and new tactics.
And the level of trust in him.
"Sounds like... quite useful?"
After a period of silence, the first comment was on Chang Haonan.
Unexpectedly, someone else responded:
"really……"
"In this way, at least when facing a large number of low-altitude targets, the ground-guided troops can respond in advance, instead of just watching and functioning at the end..."
"..."
Hearing this, Chang Haonan suddenly had some enlightenment——
Due to the rapid development of China's various technologies in recent years, my understanding of this era has been much slower than when I was first reborn.
After all, it’s only 2002.
The new three strikes and three defenses are still the key issues that the PLA needs to consider.
Especially the anti-cruise missiles.
Compared with previous years, the pressure has not only not decreased, but has increased.
Because after the huge mistakes in the Allied Operation, the US military also made up for it and quickly upgraded its military GPS terminals to the third generation in the following years.
At least in the short term, the effect of electromagnetic interference will be discounted.
In this context, the technology that allows surface-to-air missiles to overcome the curvature of the earth and attack low-altitude targets hundreds of kilometers away is obviously very attractive.
After all, although the number of air-to-air missile equipment in China has increased rapidly in recent years, it is also reserved according to the standards of normal air combat.
If it is used to intercept a large number of cruise missiles, it really seems a bit stretched...
"Comrade Haonan, do you have a research and development plan for this type of technology now?"
Qiao Chenqing obviously felt that what Chang Haonan said might have been quietly promoted.
It should be said that this situation has indeed happened many times.
But it didn't happen this time.
The latter shook his head quickly:
"Just now it was just my idea, there is no research plan yet..."
"What if..."
This time, Chang Haonan could guess what the other party meant without him having to finish:
"If there is a real need, we can develop it based on the existing data link technology and do a few test launches to see the situation. This is not difficult. Let the comrades from Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation cooperate with the Electronics Technology Group, and it should be completed."
"But if we want to test it, it will involve aviation, ground-to-air missiles, radar and other units. I'm afraid the Air Force will need to coordinate it..."
Now almost half of the Air Force leadership is standing next to Chang Haonan.
Coordination is certainly not a problem.
But Qiao Chenqing obviously has some other ideas.
After thinking for a while, he turned to the staff officer beside him:
"Can we go a step further and use the current Dingxin training base as the backbone, and then incorporate other arms except aviation to build a pilot unit for new technologies and new tactics for the long-term future?"