aezmvp said:
GAC06 said:
Talon2DSO said:
GAC06 said:
Rossticus said:
Starstreak is nasty
" After launch, the missile accelerates to more than Mach 4, making it the fastest short-range surface-to-air missile. It then launches three laser beam-riding submunitions, increasing the likelihood of a successful hit on the target."
4+ mile range is greater than other MANPADs.
Flares are useless as countermeasures.
Yikes....thats a C130 killer. Does the user have to communicate to anyone electronically prior to launch or are they deployed and autonomous?
What aezmvp said. It's guided by a laser from the launch unit. So flares are pointless, it can't be targeted by anti-radiation missiles (although the Russians may not be very capable there), and there's no warning that it's headed for you at Mach 4. I'm not sure how automated it is and how much training is required for an operator as opposed to shoulder fired IR MANPADs that are fire and forget.
Wiki says the three tungsten explosive penetrators it fires at the endgame have enough kinetic energy to hit a target maneuvering at 9g's at 23,000 feet. On paper it's by far the nastiest anti air missile the Ukrainians have been given by the West
As far as I know as long as the users position has a good LOS this is the nastiest MANPAD in the world. The big downside is that it requires LOS and I'm not sure about it's fire and forget capabilities if any. Keeping a laser on a maneuvering jet in cloud cover would be hard. My guess is that the Russians will get briefed about it and bomb then maneuver and climb into the clouds. Just a guess I am not an expert at any of this. Just a civvy kibitzer with a little knoweldge.
I think you hit the nail on the head for the most part. Definitely not fire and forget as user would be required to continue to illuminate. So that is the down side. The other drawback is that I believe that they system is a little more complicated to set up/use.
But as far as effectiveness, since it doesnt use any traditional active or passive tracking system, I dont think there are any counter measures an enemy pilot could deploy to evade the missile, other than visibly seeing the inbound missile and heavily maneuvering so as to make it hard for the user to illuminate you.