I see the ice forecast above, but for me, along Lake Michigan, it’s been an exceptionally warm winter. It’s really felt like three months or so of November here. (Yes, there was a cold spell or two, but pretty minor.) And somehow I haven’t had to shovel more than 2 inches of snow this season. It’s weird.
I dunno know, I’m not from around there.
The missiles are $450,000 apiece. Cheaper would be nice. Might be a good time to introduce a recoverable training missile Take out the explosive charge and stick a parachute in it.
The military performs what they call Stockpile Reliability Tests all the time.
Some number of these missiles will have to be expended regardless.
As a follow-up. Dateline February 10th:
US Test Launches Unarmed ICBM
That one test probably costs as much as our entire Sidewinder inventory.
Once upon a time, the primary written statement of top-level United States Air Force doctrine used to contain a statement that “The Armed Forces of the United States are constituted for maximum wartime effectiveness , not peacetime efficiency.” (Approximately, since I’m going from 25-year-old memory and the current doctrine document doesn’t address this.)
In other words, cost savings is much less important than probable combat value, including keeping stocks refeshed by not being too concerned with expending a few.
Also, training rounds exist. They’re still over $200k each, and wouldn’t be useful. You probably need the blast and fragmentation to get your kill.
Yes, the trainers exist. If you’re targeting a radar return or heat signature you’re not going to hit the balloon. If you’re targeting a an illuminated target then you have a good chance of punching a hole the size of the missile’s fin footprint. the fins would probably make a nice cutting tool.
Not much of a hole. And no pressure differential.
Why don’t the high altitude balloons leak when you shoot holes in them?
There is no ‘POP’. The pressure differential between the atmosphere at altitude and inside the balloon is negligible. There is such a thing as a “superpressure balloon” that does have non-negligible internal pressure, but they are only about 0.026 psi. Regular high-altitude balloons are less than even that (basically zero).*
A high altitude balloon with a 200 ft. diameter has an area of 126,00 sq. ft. (no math is guaranteed).
On the subject of the missiles. They have a shelf life (various components degrade over time - pyrotechnic initiators, thermal batteries, capacitors, and more). Once placed on an aircraft such as fighters on alert/standby, another clock starts ticking - service life. Service life is shorter than the shelf life (easy living in a cozy container in a cool dark storage magazine). Vibration, extreme temperature and pressure variations, abrasion of control surfaces and seeker domes all contribute to shorter life. Using them up as they age out is a smart policy. Later replacement missiles may also have improved components and capabilities.
*Borrowed from Dr.Strangelove from a related post in Factual Questions.
The AIM-9X in all its variants is strictly a heat-seeker. There is no “illumination” (but see below for more on that.)
As such, the pilot’s job is to point the missile seeker towards the target, wait for feedback from the missile that it “sees” something trackable vs. the background, verify in the pilot’s mind that the thing it sees is actually the target, not something else nearby, then let it go. Whether the missile subsequently finds its way to the target or not depends on the vagaries of the seeker, the target, the background, the geometry, etc.
AIM-9X reportedly has a much more capable seeker than did prior models. The idea that it could “see” a sunlit balloon against the cold background of the upper atmosphere and space seems sensible to me. Hen I was doing this 35 years ago (!) we had the immediate predecessor to the AIM-9X, namely the AIM-9 L/M. I’d not like the odds of success with that much older more primitive seeker, but I would guess they’d not be totally zero either.
But regardless of missile model, that’s what’s going on; the seeker seeing the slightly warmer balloon versus the less-warm air around / beyond it.
Now for the “see below” …
It is at least theoretically possible to illuminate the balloon with a ground-based laser to warm the balloon up to provide a better contrast with the background. But ISTM the amount of laser power required to make an appreciable temperature difference is a lot. And AFAIK, the US doesn’t really have ground based laser illuminators.
It is also certainly technically possible to create a laser-guided air to air missile, where an aircraft or ground station illuminates the aerial target then the missile seeker chases the laser spot on the target. At least in public, there’s no evidence such a weapon has been developed. But would certainly be an obvious path of least resistance towards fielding a quickie counter-balloon weapon.
The utility of laser-guided air-to-air missiles against anything but a balloon or very slow-moving solar glider seems very, very low to me. You’re gaining all the hassles of keeping the laser on the target that we already face with radar-guided missiles, but with the added hassle of needing to keep the laser illuminating on target all the way to impact. That’s how we did radar-guided missiles in the 1960s-1980s. Not nowadays,
Well, yes, that was my point regarding balloons. If you’re shooting at it from the air then the spotter plane lines up on the wind track. That reduces 1 of the 3 axis of alignment and should be easier to track. Now other jets or space aliens. that’s another matter.
I’m sure the Air Force is knocking around some ideas. Just look at the Iraqi war. They welded up some tank barrels and made bunker busters out of them DURING the war.
Tracking is a non-event against a non-maneuvering target. Whether that’s an airliner or a balloon. Put it somewhere in the forward quadrant of the fighter, find it with the radar or your eyes, slave the missile seeker to that line of sight, and once it acquires lock you fire and veer away.
If the target is climbing or descending or drifting with a crosswind at the fastest possible rate it can, that’s still negligible by fighter standards.
Even against a stationary target the max range of an AIM-9X at very high altitude is probably 10+ miles, maybe even almost 20. That’s for a co-altitude or nearly co-altitude target. If your eyes or your radar can spot the balloon at 20 miles, even at 480 knots closure you’ve got 2-1/2 minutes to point your jet generally at the target, wait for the missile to acquire lock, then fire. Figure more like 2-1/4 minutes until you’re approaching min range for firing.
If the missile needs more launch speed or less distance to target or both to overcome a need to also climb a couple miles, e.g. from ~55K ft at launch to ~75K ft target elevation then the firing window gets narrower and the manuever to point the jet at the target gets a bit harder. But you really don’t need to point the airplane’s nose any more precisely than +/- 45-60 degrees of the target. Closer to dead-on aiming is better for increased missile kinematic range, but is otherwise mostly immaterial.
Ideally you’d want to get close enough to be inside the middle of the missile’s kinematic range at release. That’s generally the highest PK. In some cases the seeker’s acquisition or reliable tracking range is less than the missile’s kinematic range. In some cases it’s more. Depends on the background, the target signal strength, target aspect, etc. Regardless of which factor is more limiting, getting closer is generally better up until you’re so close you’re forcing a square-ish corner into the missile’s flight path.
For something non-maneuvering like a balloon or a high altitude solar glider, or something oblivious like an airliner, there’s no reason you have to shoot in a hurry. If it takes you three runs at the target to be satisfied with everything about your plan of approach and your understanding of the dynamics of the maneuver & the limitations of the missile’s seeker & kinematics against this particular target, OK. Then fire live on the fourth run with a high confidence of a kill. The target ain’t going anywhere while you’re practicing your strokes.
The Thursday Next books by Jasper Fforde were also set in a parallel earth with airships and no airplanes. Pretty standard, actually.
Not quite. “The initial batch of GBU-28s was built from modified 8 inch/203 mm artillery barrels…”. US tank barrels were 105mm (M48/M60/early M1/Stryker MGS) and 120mm (current M1 variants).
“It was designed, manufactured, and deployed in less than three weeks due to an urgent need during Operation Desert Storm GBU-28 - Wikipedia”
I’m having some difficulty imagining this. If the target is very small (say a small weather balloon, a drone or a large toy balloon), then the missile will take some time to ‘lock on’; then you have to get out of the way quick or you might get hit by the shrapnel. Small targets look challenging to me.
Would you use a continuous rod warhead against a ‘volkswagen-sized’ balloon/drone? How far away would you be when the warhead detonated?
Well it WAS over 30 years ago. I’m doing good if I remember what I had for breakfast.
But you left out a step. It was designed manufactured, TESTED and deployed in less than 3 weeks. that’s frickin amazing.
bear in mind that the missile’s fin footprint will hit the balloon with mach 2.5+ …
believe me - that DOES make a difference … ;o)
Maybe they’ll adapt the “Flying Ginsu”, recently demonstrated against al-Zawahiri:
Last part first. Air to air missiles only come with continuous rod warheads. Unlike, say artillery, you don’t have any other options. Other than the really silly ideas upthread folks have suggested of using a dummy warhead so all you’ve got is a guided spear, not a guided explosive projectile.
Part of the problem here is Hollywood has trained the public in lots of stuff about aerial battle that just isn’t so. Mostly how nearby everything is. “Close” in missile combat is on the order of one mile. “Far” might be anywhere from 5 to 75 miles depending on which missile & what sort of target & closure situation. For cannon fire, you want to open fire about a half mile out and cease fire no later than about 1/8 mile. Most of the aerial footage of jet battles in movies are taken at ranges of between 50 feet and 500 feet. So the lay audiences’ sense of scale is off by a factor of 100 or so.
Moving on …
The time the missile takes to lock on is a matter of how strong the heat signature is versus the background. If the signature is strong enough, whether the target is large or small, close or far, we’re talking a couple of seconds. If the signature is not strong enough, we’re talking “never”. A radar-guided missile and the aircraft radar itself have similar behaviors, although the ranges & controlling variables are all different. Unlike Hollywood, there’s just not that agonizing interval where we all see the target clearly but the seeker or radar is groping blindly nearby while the hero is pleading “come on … Come ON …”
For sure, for a small weak signal constant signal against a large constant background the situation can be improved by getting closer. Which would generally be the situation against a small balloon. But by “close” I’m still talking a mile or more, not a couple hundred feet.
The missile will accelerate away from the airplane very quickly. Such that the distance between the launching airplane and the missile also gets big quickly. The missile has an interlock to prevent warhead detonation before it’s safely distant from the launching airplane. The warhead lethal radius is small enough that you’re not greatly worried about being harmed by your own warhead. All the parts of the warhead immediately post-detonation are still traveling away from you at missile speed. Part of the genius of CR warheads is they don’t waste explosive energy or useful shrapnel blasting it backwards towards the launcher.
What you are instead worried about is that if you had your jet pointed at the target, very quickly you will fly near / through the debris field. Passing near a debris field is OK, passing through is probably fatal. So don’t do that. Hollywood notwithstanding.
However fast the target was going just before it was hit, very quickly the resulting rapidly expanding mess slows down and begins falling instead of zooming along at speed. In the case of something slow like a balloon or glider, the most “zooming” is can do is “not much”. So the debris field will stay more or less in the spot it was hit other than starting to fall.
One solution is to point the jet near, but not at the target, lock on and fire with the target off-axis, let the missile turn e.g. left towards the target while you turn e.g. right and there’s never a concern about you merging with the debris field.
My point about “square corners” was that if you carry that off-axis aiming to extremes, or get too close, the missile will have to make a very sharp turn after leaving the launcher to get to the target. However capable the missile is, which varies by model, there is an upper limit on how sharply it can turn and the closer you are to that limit the greater the odds of failure. So don’t do that either.
As to small targets in general, this is a major problem. All the current weapons were designed to seek and destroy airplane sized targets. Not large balloons, not ultralight airplane sized targets, and certainly not toy airplane- / helicopter-sized targets.
It’s evident that large balloons in the sunshine against the cold of space have enough of a heat signature to reliably guide & fuze an AIM-9X. AFAIK there’s no good answer to finding, much less shooting down, the drones being used in Ukraine. Much less stopping something like a terrorist attack or assassination attempt using quadcopter toys carrying explosives.
The Military Industrial complex is certainly working on solutions to these problems. Various prototypes have been tested and fielded here and there. None of which seem to be a very effective, much less cost-effective, solution to the problem of small slow lethal flying machines.
Thank you!
I expect a whole bunch of anti-drone, anti-balloon weapons are in the works now.
Why indeed might China behave as if spy satellites weren’t an option?
China conducted satellite shoot-down tests in 2007. China and Russia both conducted such tests in 2021. This led to an international outcry about debris hazard to other satellites. Justifiably so, because as more of these shootdowns happen, there’s a risk of debris fields causing cascading collisions that could eventually make low-earth orbit an unsafe place for satellites and most other craft.
So if your strategic military plans involved initiating hostilities by shooting down a lot of enemy satellites, which could put satellite navigation at risk for everyone, then it would be advantageous to have a lower-tech alternative at your disposal. Such as… balloons.