Explained: The Impressive Size Of Surface To Air Missiles

#GRExplained #DCSExplained #GR #DCSWorld

[matchesburn]

If Cap likes SAM technology, wait until he discovers America's ABM "Sprint" missile that was part of our Sentinel/Safeguard anti-ballistic missile system (that was an evolution of the Nike system). The missile only had a range of 40 miles, but it was meant as basically missile CIWS for incoming ballistic missiles. It would go from 0-Mach 10 in about 5 seconds, which is 100g of acceleration and during that time the nose cone of the missile heated up to 3, 500 degrees Celsius. It needed ablative heat shielding on it the kind of which was used for re-entry capsules. Oh, and during development they realized that the missile would actually be too slow to intercept an incoming ICBM warhead, so instead of it launching under rocket power from it's silo, they actually had an explosively propelled piston which *_shot out the missile_* which then ignited its engine and flew off.

Don't forget this was made as the absolute last line "everything else has failed, if this doesn't work you're literally dead" option for ABM. It was made to intercept ICBM warheads screaming in at a blistering 6-7 kilometers *_per second_* and hit them with a modified nuclear warhead which disabled the warhead with neutron flux. Time from "launch" to interception was 15 seconds at most... and even then it might not have been fast enough.

...Did i mention this was all done in 1965-1972?
Some videos of the Sprint:
/watch?v=msXtgTVMcuA
/watch?v=rk9mvLFNqMQ

[joelhume]

Also missiles like the SA-4 and SA-5 were designed to shoot down high altitude bombers and recon planes at massive range. Their effectiveness against tactical fighters would probably be dubious.

[SpectrabyteRL]

6:48 The sound of disappointment for being corrected on a thing he thought he knew about.

[johnbrown]

A couple of notes:

Firstly about radar ranges:

An equation for the range of a given radar is:

range is proportional to 4th_root( (radar_power * antenna_gain² * wavelength² * target_rcs) / minimum_detection_value )

(note that the whole thing is wrapped in a 4th root - if you change the contents by a thousand times, the range changes by ten times).

You can increase the range by the following:
* Increasing the radar power. The brute force approach, usually easier to achieve the same result in other ways
* Antenna gain (mainly, how large the antenna is). This is squared, so making the antenna 10x larger is the same as making it 100x more powerful.
* Increasing the wavelength, ie decreasing the frequency. Dropping from X-band (used on aircraft radars and most SAM fire-control/tracking radars) to L-band (as used on early-warning radars, some Russian search radars and even some in-development Russian fire-control/tracking radars) is the same as making the radar ~100x more powerful. It also has the nice side-effect of increasing a stealth aircraft's effective RCS, which is why the aforementioned new radars exist (this is how Zani Doltan's (of the Serbian air-defence forces) S-125 (SA-3) battery shot down a F-117 and severely damaged another). The downsize of a longer wavelength is that without extremely advanced electronics it's too inaccurate to guide a missile, and it requires a MUCH larger antenna.
* Target RCS, or Radar Cross Section. Stealth aircraft (F-117, B-2, F-22, F-35, PAK-FA/Su-57, J-20) have RCS values much lower than conventional aircraft. While their RCS values generally vary from a tenth to a ten-thousandth of a square meter depending on which angle you view them from (front-on is almost always the lowest RCS), and what wavelength (lower frequencies defeat the radar-absorbent coatings and special shaping), they are much more difficult to detect from long range.

See [1] for more information

As for the PATRIOT being much worse than the S-300: one major problem with the Patriot is that each launcher can only shoot stuff in front of it, as it's on an angle [2]. Therefore the site can therefore be rendered defenseless from one side. Four aircraft only have to dodge one or two missiles before the SAM is empty on that angle.

It also doesn't have the option of using high-mounted radars like the S-300 does. While such radars take as much as an hour to move and have more trouble seeing at a distance due to ground clutter (and therefore the S-300 also has truck-mounted radars), they give the S-300 much better performance against aircraft flying low.

[Clintwoodz]

I will never forget that intimate moment when I fiddled with AIM9's rollerons at point cook museum... I also stood next to bloodhound and it was quite massive

[metanumia]

Yes, more military technology videos! I love this stuff, thanks guys!

[Connor]

They had a Bloodhound at the Bristol Aerospace museum I visited. An impressive bit of kit that was nearly as tall as the hanger it was housed in!

[imrekalman]

A reason why the Phoenix, Hawk (and the Maverick and Walleye) look so similar is because they are made by the same company, Raytheon. In the same way the Soviet/Russian Vympel used the same arrangement on various missiles, the R-60 AA missile looks like a Kh-29 air to ground monster photoshopped to look thin.
Very nice video, yet again!

[braeddie]

Cap, you should check out Sam Simulator. Little sim made by a dude, at first, to simulate the SA-2. It's quite interesting being the guy on the other end.

[boe]

40 foot missile? Jesus, that's a hazard for the Viggen, don't point that thing straight up unless you want to kill Viggens with stationary missiles!

[eccmo]

Nike Hercules was developed to kill bomber formation from above with a little nuke. The next step in the nike family was
the nike zeus projekt to kill ballistic missiles

[kaneable]

Great short informative video.Please use a better cursor to help us keep track of what your talking about or use slides per SAM system. Thank you for taking the time put it together.

[T]

i never realized how big those missiles are until our lecturer brought the upper stage engine of the SA-2 with him.

[GrooveFederation]

keep up the good work chaps! great channel! 10/10

[GutkowskiMarek]

SA-5 or S-200 are not for shooting down U-2 or SR-71. The idea behind them is strategic Surface to air missile.
They are for shooting down large targets like air refueling Tankers, AWACS and other electronic intelligence gathering planes.
Targets that a MiG-21 or MiG-23 would have a hard time getting to because there are F- and F-15 protecting the plane.

Didn't finish the video yet, but I needed to clear a misconception about the missile I got to work with in Polish army. :)

[reillybrangan]

The SA-2 is the most widely produced and widely employed medium-long range Radar guided surface to air missile ever used. Its a mystery that its taken so long to get into DCS. In the vast majority of combat theatres (Vietnam, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya) faced by western nations in the last 50 years, the SA-2 has made up almost the entirety of the primary surface to air threat to fighters, no matter the time period or foe.

Also, nuclear tipped anti-ballistic missiles are very much a thing and are actively in service surrounding Moscow right now.

[down]

OK, S-75 (SA-2) is widely known for shooting down Powers' U-2 over USSR, bu that was not the first case it was successfully used against enemy plane. The very first aerial kill on hostile target was achieved by the Chinese on the 7th October 1959. It was RB-57 that took off from Taiwan and flew into PRC air space. This incident was held in secret for years. Downing Powers was a huge propaganda blow for USSR and was the better occasion to brag about new weapon system that can hit such high flying targets. Fun fact: one of Mig-19s trying to intercept U-2 on 1st May 1960 was shot down by accident by one of S-75s.

[idontlikebigbrother]

The data from wikipedia is overestimated. For example, the range of r77 is 80km, and the range of 120c is 105km, which are ridiculously long compare with the range in dcs world. In dcs you cannot even get the half of those wikipedia range.

[sadchihuahua]

My nose is French kissing my computer monitor & yet i still cant see that blue chart... great vid thoe :)

[GLCxGLA]

More learning videos with this formay pls, very usefull and informing
Air to air or air to ground missiles next