In an age over ever increasing effectiveness of jammers, decoys, active defences and cyber warfare - is a return to SACLOS and even MCLOS weapons likely?
Pic related, my favorite SACLOS missile - Streastreak HVM. Can be mounted on a Vehicle, monopod or carried by a man. Laser beam riding as the operator tracks the target, it fires three tungsten darts each with their own guidence at Mach4+. Can enage tragets out to 7KM and up to 5KM, it's intended to destroy pop up targets like attack helicopters and jets. Once of the few western man portable missiles that can destroy Russian attack helicopters in a head on engagement.
Starsteak was also trialed as a potential air to air weapon for use on Apache with the already present TADS laser designator being able to provide the guidance beam.
Konkurs can be switched over to MCLOS in heavy jamming, not sure if the capability exists in newer missiles like Kornet. MCLOS requires extensive training to get any hits though and I believe accuracy against moving targets is atrocious, SACLOS is 'easy' against ground vehicles and I assume it's doable against low speed aircraft, but MCLOS against aircraft sounds like an absolute no-go.
Henry White
Probably not. Imaging sensors and sensor fusion are good at defeating decoys and jamming. Anything that would stop them would probably also stop a human eye.
Easton Bailey
MCLOS with a camera in the missile and fiber optic wire is pretty good. They can attack without line of sight and the operator can just fire them in the general direction of the enemy and find the target in flight. I think there's Spike variants like this and some chinese missiles. America had something similar and promptly cancelled it as they do with most new weapons.
Noah Williams
added bonus is that its tungsten darts can penetrate IFVs, not a intended design feature but its a tungsten dart traveling at very high speed
Ryan Ortiz
The British army tried to make MCLOS work in the 70's and 80's for MANPADS because fire and forget was deemed too easy to spoof.
The problem was the implementation. Blowpie (pictured) and later Javelin (not to be contused with the ATGM) had a small thumb joystick on the launcher that the operator would need to use to steer the missile onto it's target.
In practice it took a long time to learn but operators became very good at hitting drones. In combat the adrenaline and unpredictable nature of enemy aircaft made it even more inaccurate than the fire and forget weapons that it was meant to be better than.
So they were dropped in favour of starstreak where all you need to do is keep the target in your sights for a few seconds.
VLO aircraft pumping out multi spectral flares, active RF decoys and pulling a towed decoy would be a nightmare for a fire and forget system.
But if a dude on a hill is keeping you in his sights with a beam riding weapon then chances are better than not that you'll get hit.
PLOS only really works on the ground, but for a fast moving weapon like NLAW that only engages
Anthony Lewis
Multispectral (and active RF) mobile decoys are fourth generation kit - 1980s level. They're kept around because they are cheap (so why not, even for a tiny increase in survivability) and old missiles are common, but DIRCM is the new norm.
Liam Reed
F22 is 1980's tech.
Sure DIRCM is newer, but it's not going to help against a beam rider that uses a camera in the rear. DIRCM only works against missiles with a front facing sensor that can be blinded. DIRCM can't use the visible spectrum to dazzle or blind an operator as thats illegal.
Ethan Cruz
>active defences Speaking of, I wonder if the kinetic energy missile concept will be revived to punch through these at some point
Jackson Bailey
Starstreak was demoed as a light AT weapon as well, three high velocity submunitions in a single warhead sounds like it'd cause problems for APS.
Austin Nelson
I Just can't wait for aircraft to start using small missiles to shoot down incoming missiles.
Oliver Walker
It probably depends on the country.
America probably wouldn't and would just rely on their overwhelming money to request a CAS to take down what a MANPADs should be able to take down.
Unlike China that can protect itself from jamming because it knows all the secrets of Russia and America and improved upon it.
Angel Morgan
It could blind the sensor the operator is using (or kill the operator, with the 90/120/150kw laser pods coming out), though I'm not aware of any DIRCM with that firmware.
Beam rider models alert the target by marking it with the beam, unlike imaging missiles, and unlike onboard radar guidance, the emission points directly back to the shooter.
That's why beam riders originally went out of use, after all. Jamming a MILAN operator with GPMG fire through his face is more effective than jamming a top-attack Javelin.
Alexander Wilson
APS missiles that fit into flare boxes already exist in America, where they're being sold to the helicopter market on grounds of preventing Black Hawk Down II.
Dylan Evans
Something like starstreak would be moving far too fast for an APS to deal with. Mach 4 is faster than any cannon round.
The problem is, it only travels that fast because each dart is fairly light with a low payload. WHich is fine if you need to penetrate an aircraft or APC and explode within. but pretty much useless against a tank.
Now, if you had a large AT missile that launches a couple of slightly faster inert sub-munitions 2-300 meters out from the target, that could be a good way of making an APS shoot it's load early.
Thomas Torres
>It could blind the sensor the operator is using
speaking of starsteak specifically, the radars and IR camera are only used for detection. The actual engagement can be done completely with the human eye.
As for lasers or other weapons engaging the emitter. We've had the ability to have a guidance system/controller and a launcher in separate locations since the 60's.
And as for beam riders going out of use, i have no idea what point in history you're referring to.
I'm not trying to tell you it's a guaranteed kill, i'm just explaining why there's no defence as strong as there is for other guidance types.
Tyler Myers
> i have no idea what point in history you're referring to.
The six-day war and onwards. Obviously Russia still uses beam riders, as they can't afford cheap or good microbolometers, but that's the point when the West realized SACLOS was a bad idea.
Bentley Jenkins
>Obviously Russia still uses beam riders, as they can't afford cheap or good microbolometers, but that's the point when the West realized SACLOS was a bad idea.
So you've not heard of TOW, Dragon, Hellfire or Maverick then? (a list which is far from exclusive)
Xavier Parker
Yeah, this is correct, because the operator only has to account for the position of the target, not both the target and the missile as in regular MCLOS. Unfortunately I don't think it's easy to get a high-def camera feed back to the launcher on a closed circuit.
John Smith
>Something like starstreak would be moving far too fast for an APS to deal with AMAP-ADS excluded, since it's a shaped charge kinda thing that helps against APFSDS even.
Charles Gutierrez
>technological limits of the time mean doctrinal awareness doesn't exist
Forget I said anything. Enjoy your techno-historically illiterate Slavwank.
Ryder Garcia
No need to throw your toys out the pram.
Eli Gray
None of the listed are beamriders, Starstreak is the only operational NATO beamrider I can think of and I believe that's only in the terminal phase with the submunitions ejected. Laser spot tracking and imaging electro-optical systems are pretty new to russian inventory and in such short supply that they cannot be expended at will in places like Syria.
Wyatt Thomas
>None of the listed are beamriders,
We were talking about SACLOS.
>Starstreak is the only operational NATO beamrider I can think of and I believe that's only in the terminal phase with the submunitions ejected.
Unsure why NATO use is relevent, but RBS 70 and ADAT's (RIP) use(d) it.
>Laser spot tracking and imaging electro-optical systems are pretty new to russian inventory and in such short supply that they cannot be expended at will in places like Syria.
They aren't that new, Russia has been using beam riding ATGMS since at least the 70's in 9K114, possibly earlier in ground launched missiles but i don't know them well enough.
It is a shame the cold war didn't last another ~5 years.
Connor Harris
>Laser spot tracking and imaging electro-optical systems are pretty new to russian inventory Russia has used SAL and TV/EO image guidance on the Х-25 and Х-29 since the mid-70s
Ryan Gonzalez
I would have been happy with some local war where we could see this stuff getting used.
Something like Poland V Germany or Bulgaria V Greece.
Turkey V Greece or India V Pakistan are still slight posibilities.
We can only dream of a Russia V China conflict, it's be great TV. But if China wins the resources of Siberia and gains lots of military experience in the process, we could all be fucked.
Daniel Hall
Can't we just fill it with WP or some dense explosive? I'd rather save my tungsten for cooler shit.
Seems big for a two man team, also what's a "monopod"?(as it relates to weapons of this size/scale)
Anthony Mitchell
>MCLOS requires extensive training to get any hits though and I believe accuracy against moving targets is atrocious
As I understand it, the Arabs were happy if 1 in 20 of their Sagger's hit an Israeli tank during the Yom Kippur War.
Caleb Campbell
there are explosives in the dart, 450g per dart with a delayed fuse so that it explodes after entering the aircraft
Didn't the planned MMEV go further beyond? I remember that the demonstrator was shown capable of mixing various missile/rocket types. So you could have a pod of guided FFARs as light artillery, a heavy AT missile, and AA missile(s) on the same launcher.
Jose Perez
Micro-MLRS more likely. Like, make a rack of RPG-7s or even RPG-29s, have a location sighted in and launch them. Just far enough apart that sympathetic detonations dont wreck them all and close enough together to overwhelm the APS.
Kayden Bailey
In the short term In the not too distant future missiles with onboard ai using a combination of optical, radar and thermal guidance will become nearly undefeatable
Nathaniel Martin
I think you might've forgotten "and too fucking expensive to use against a shitty low-end AFV".
Levi White
AI is just software, it wouldn't cost more than a javelin all things considered
Joseph Murphy
I'm talking about the multispectral seeker head.
Aiden Brown
Optical and thermal can easily be combined into one unit, radar has gotten a lot cheaper
Zachary Wilson
Fiber Optic guidance solves every jamming problem.
AND it doesnt expose the operator or the launching vehicle.
