Russian defense industrial complex s possibilities for development of advanced BMD weapon systems

Transcription

1 134 Russian defense industrial complex s possibilities for development of advanced BMD weapon systems

2 135 Igor KOROTCHENKO Editor-in-Chief of the National Defense magazine The main task handled by the Air Defense Forces and army air defense units is to defend the administrative and political centers, national economic and military facilities, as well as troops in places of permanent deployment and on the march. The first- and second-generation air defense missile systems (ADMS) and surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems could effectively counter aircraft and had limited capabilities to engage high-speed and small unmanned air attack weapons. The S-300-series mobile multichannel ADMS is a representative of the third-generation air defense missile systems. The S-300P mobile, multichannel, medium-range ADMS capable of engaging modern and future air threats was developed for the National Air Defense Forces. The requirements for ensuring long twenty-four-hour alert by crews at the workplace were met with the development of control vans with the necessary dimensions mounted on a wheeled chassis. For the army air defense forces, the main requirement was to ensure the high cross-country capacity of the ADMS and mount the system components on tracked chassis, which necessitated the use of designs providing special configuration of electronic equipment. By the early 1990s, Almaz-Antey had completed the development of the S-300PMU1 ADMS, an upgraded S-300P-series system. It is capable of countering massive strikes of both current and future air threats, including stealthy ones, throughout their entire operational envelope and in a heavy active/passive jamming environment. The main assets of this system are also used in the naval air defense system for Navy s ships. The system was delivered to a number of foreign countries. In recent years, the most advanced version of this ADMS, the S-300PMU2 Favorit, has been developed and is in production. All the combat assets of the system are mounted on all-terrain self-propelled wheeled chassis, have builtin self-contained power supply, communications and life support systems. To ensure long-term continuous operation of the system components, the possibility of supply from the external power sources has been provided. The Favorit can easily be integrated into various AD systems. The area protected by the Favorit AD system against various air threats depends on the relevant characteristics of S-300PMU2 s engagement envelopes, the number of ADMS included in the Favorit AD system and their mutual disposition on the ground. Launch of upgraded 53T6 antimissile

3 136 S-400 Triumf ADMS The emergence of new classes of air and space attack weapons (ASAW) in the late 1980s and growth in their capabilities and numbers taken into service, led to the need to develop a new generation of improved versatile and unified air defense missile weaponry the 40R6E Triumf mobile long- and medium-range ADMS The Triumf ADMS includes: 30K6E control facilities consisting of the 55K6E command and control center (C2C), 91N6E target acquisition radar (TAR); up to six SAM systems, each consisting of: a 92N6E multimode engagement radar (MER), up to 12 launchers of the 5P85SE2, 5P85TE2 type, each capable of accommodating four 48N6E3, 48N6E2 SAMs; S-400 system based on modern engineering solutions intended to effectively cope with tasks faced by aerospace defense of our country at the beginning of the 21st century. The new qualitative features of the 40R6E Triumf ADMS are as follows: handling nonstrategic missile defense tasks, including the engagement of intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBM); a high level of immunity against all types of jamming, decoy discrimination; base-modular system architecture; information interface with the main types of current and emerging targeting sources; integration into existing and future command & control systems for Air Force AD, army AD and the Navy AD groupings. The 40R6 Triumfator system was adopted by the RF Armed Forces according to the RF Government Decree of 28 April The first production ADMS was put on alert on August 6, ammunition load (48N6E3, 48N6E2 SAMs); a set of technical support facilities, missile maintenance and storage facilities. All the combat assets are mounted on self-propelled all-terrain wheeled chassis, have built-in selfcontained power supply, positioning and survey, communications and life support systems. To ensure long-term continuous operation of the system, the possibility of supply from external power sources has been provided. Provision has been made for use of ADMS assets in special shelters with MER, C2C, TAR equipment containers removed from their self-propelled chassis. The main kind of communications between the system s assets is radio communications; wire and standard telephone communications channels are also provided. The area protected by the S-400E Triumf ADMS against various air attacks depends on the relevant characteristics of the SAM system s engagement envelope, the number of SAM systems in the ADMS and their mutual disposition on the ground.

4 137 The export version S-400E Triumf ADMS offers the following advantages over the S-300PMU-1, -2-series ADMS: a wider scope of targets, including ballistic missiles; increased kill zones for pinpoint and stealthy targets, due to higher energy potential of the 91N6E TAR and 92N6E MER; far improved noise immunity through the introduction of new anti-jam facilities; considerably reduced volume and power consumption of the system equipment through the use of more advanced electronic equipment and circuit components, new equipment for self-contained power supply, new transport vehicles. Future fifth-generation UASD system The turn of the century saw the new trends in ASAW development: assimilation of missile technologies by «third» countries, the emergence of BMs with a range of over 2,000 km in service with a number of countries; development of long-endurance and long-range unmanned reconnaissance and weapon delivery vehicles; development of hypersonic aircraft and cruise missiles; build-up in jammer capabilities. In addition, the Russian Armed Forces were going through reforms during this period, which also included reductions in service manpower. New-generation multifunctional radar system In today s political and economic conditions, neutralizing the new threats has necessitated reduction in the development, manufacturing and operation costs when developing modern air defense weaponry, particularly: 1. Reduction in the range of AD/BMD information facilities and weapons, including interceptor missiles and launchers, together with an increase in their combat capabilities to detect and engage new types and classes of ASAW. 2. Increase in energy potential of radars together with maintaining their mobility or redeployability. 3. Providing high capacity and noise immunity of the communications and data transfer systems combined with the implementation of their network architecture. 4. Increase in service life and mean time between failures for AD/BMD assets in conditions when full-scale production of electric and electronic components is unavailable. 5. Reduction in operating personnel. Analysis of the available technology groundwork has shown that the development of new-generation AD/ BMD missile weaponry, with regard to overcoming the above problems, should be based on the modular design of open-architecture information and weapon systems using unified equipment components (such an approach is used in international cooperation projects of arms developers and manufacturers). In addition, comprehensive standardization of new weapon systems, as well as the use of unified hardware/software all-in-one devices for upgrading in-service weapons and military equip-

5 138 ment reduce spending of budget allocations and increase the competitiveness of the advanced AD/BMD systems in the external market. In 2007, design work started on a future fifthgeneration unified aerospace defense (UASD) system. Its development should provide effective protection of the national installations against strikes of future ASAW, together with a reduced range of new air defense missile weaponry, a higher level of interservice commonality of weapons, reduced cost of equipping the army and navy with AD systems and their maintenance, as well as reducing the required manpower. The development of the fifth-generation advanced UASD system is based on the following principles: a base-modular architecture of the UASD system is used to reduce the costs of developing advanced air defense missile systems and equipping the troops with them; this helps equip various AD/BMD units belonging to different services with minimum range (basic set) of assets (modules); high efficiency and sustainability of UASD systems in a projected fire and ECM environment due to operative reconfigurability, depending on the current operational and tactical situation, as well as ensuring maneuver of weapons and information facilities; UASD system versatility, i.e. the capability of engaging various types of targets aerodynamic (including those beyond the radio horizon), aeroballistic, and ballistic ones. The targets are not only engaged by weapons, but their effectiveness is also reduced through the use of devices, which are part of the UASD system s unified protection system; interservice and intrasystem commonality, which makes it possible to drastically reduce the model range of air defense missile systems and consists in using the same UASD system assets (modules) in antiaircraft missile troops, army AD and Navy AD systems. The necessary type of chassis for the system assets is selected depending on the physical and geographic features of the area of possible employment, road network development and other factors; implementation of the features typical of employing air defense missile weaponry on the Navy s surface ships (pitching, sea wave effects, increased requirements for explosion and fire safety, a sophisticated missile storage and loading system, etc.), requiring the development of UASD system assets for the Navy in special versions (in this case the level of commonality between the ADMS assets should be at least percent and be achieved through the use of common type elements and devices of hardware/software and SAM systems used in the UASD systems, complete commonality between missiles, communications facilities and other components); mobility giving the units and subunits equipped with the UASD system assets the capability to conduct maneuver operations with no loss of communication and control, deploy into battle formation from the march at unorganized sites and place them in operational readiness without laying communications and power supply cable lines; a network control architecture for the UASD system, which provides information from various sources and data exchange between the users of the system, as well as the timely delivery of target designation data to the necessary weapons and countermeasures in realtime, integration of the UASD system with EW facilities, AD aircraft systems; high operational reliability throughout the entire life of the system. In addition, when developing command & control aids for the UASD system, their software/hardware systems embody the capability to control and provide information support to earlier-generation ADMS and SAM systems; in conditions of phased re-equipment of AD groups with UASD system s ADMS and SAM systems this will maintain the combat capabilities of these groups, as well as help adapt the UASD system assets to the current structure of any AD (BMD) zone (district), without prior organizational and technical preparation. The following new technical solutions and technologies are being implemented during the development of fifth-generation UASD system: active phased arrays in ADMS radars; commonality between the system components (transmitting and receiving modules, signal processing devices, computers, workstations, chassis); automation of the target engagement, health monitoring and troubleshooting processes; built-in ELINT channels; base-correlation methods for finding the positions of jammers; development of a SAM with inertial-active midcourse guidance and precision jet reaction control in the terminal phase of flight, equipped with an active/semiactive seeker (to engage the priority targets at medium and long ranges) or an EO seeker (to intercept ballistic missiles at high altitudes). According to Commander of Aerospace Defense s Operational Strategic Command Lt. Gen. Valery Ivanov, the advanced air defense missile systems, which are being developed by the Almaz Antey Air Defense Concern, will begin to arrive to the Russian Army by All the above ADMS (SAM systems), their further modifications and UASD system s ADMS (SAM systems) will make up the backbone of the weapon subsystem of Russia s ASD system being established.

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