Aerospace Pictures and Art Thread

[LoooSeR]

 

 

[Priory_of_Sion]

Polish Grot-2 multimission trainer.

It is to have Ukrainian built engines. [insert joke about Ukraine here]

[Donward]

Polish Grot-2 multimission trainer.

It is to have Ukrainian built engines. [insert joke about Ukraine here]

 

Will it be flown by trained ferrets?

 

Oh wait...

 

It's a SCALE model.

 

...

 

...

 

A miniature fighter jet flow by ferrets WOULD be cool though.

[Collimatrix]

 

Advertisement for the L-150-16M "Pastel" RWR/ELINT complex, here proposed as an upgrade for the SU-25, but also available as an upgrade for the SU-27 family.

 

The radar warning receiver (RWR) portion of the complex is a passive and directional antenna.  When a radar waves from a hostile ground or aircraft radar hit the aircraft the pilot is alerted, and the system can cue a missile to fire in response to the threat.  As this infographic shows, this can be an anti-radiation missile for ground targets, or a radar-homing missile for air threats.

 

I am dubious that this would work particularly well in air-to-air mode.  Existing radar warning receivers do not give particularly precise bearings to threat radars.  I do buy that advances in antenna design and better digital signal processing could solve this problem somewhat, but a radar warning receiver is still no substitute for an actual radar.  Radars give not just a bearing to the target, but also the range velocity of the target, and radar warning receivers do not.  A missile fired without target bearing and range information would be much more likely to miss.

 

For ground targets this is not a pressing issue, as they hold still for the missiles to clobber them.

[Tied]

Those arent just any Active radar missiles, pictured is a R-77

 

it would be quite a feat to be able to fire one from su-25

[Collimatrix]

Those arent just any Active radar missiles, pictured is a R-77

 

it would be quite a feat to be able to fire one from su-25

 

 

Yes; R-77 works similarly to AMRAAM.  It has an active radar homing guidance package in the nose of the missile, but you can't pack a very big radar into a missile, so the missile's radar has short detection range.  So the host fighter needs to use its own (much more powerful radar) to detect the target and guide the R-77 until the R-77 gets close enough that the R-77's radar switches on and it can guide itself to the target.

 

But SU-25 isn't a fighter, it's a CAS aircraft, so it doesn't have an air to air radar, so it can't use R-77s.

 

What they're proposing is that if a Turkish enemy aircraft lights up the SU-25 equipped with their fancy new electronics warfare package, the L-150 will localize the threat and the SU-25 pilot will be able to fire an R-77 in response.  The R-77 will receive mid-course correction from the SU-25's L-150 until it is close enough to switch on its own radar and guide itself to intercept.

 

I don't think this will work particularly well, for reasons stated above, but I buy that it's a technically feasible system.  F-22 has something similar, but AIUI it uses the RWR to cue the radar before it fires a missile.  Also, AESA radars are much less likely to make RWRs go off, so this defensive measure would be much less effective against fighters with AESA.  Finally, R-77 is a big missile.  R-73s make more sense for self-defense; more weight left over for air to surface weapons, which is the SU-25's main job anyway.

 

Presumably when the L-150 is mounted on the SU-27 it cues the fighter's radar.

[cm_kruger]

And of course there's the question of why a ground attack aircraft would be operating without cover in the first place.

[LoooSeR]

[LoooSeR]

 

 

 

 

 

[LoooSeR]

[Collimatrix]

And of course there's the question of why a ground attack aircraft would be operating without cover in the first place.

 

 

Shit happens.  You can slap defensive air to air missiles on just about anything:

 

 

 

 

Raptor weapons bays doing their thing:

 

[Scolopax]

Shit happens.  You can slap defensive air to air missiles on just about anything:

 

[Tied]

And of course there's the question of why a ground attack aircraft would be operating without cover in the first place.

 

or the better question why ground attack aircraft would be targeted by NATO aircraft when bombing a supposed "common enemy" in the first place 

[Belesarius]

 

 

[Belesarius]

[Priory_of_Sion]

 

[RobotMinisterofTrueKorea]

 

Hill AFB, 1983

 

 

SBD-2 Dauntless from VMSB-241. This aircraft attacked Akagi during the Battle of Midway

 

 

Bristol Blenhiem Mk. IF

 

 

Rather impressive scoreboard on a USAAF B-17 assigned to the Pacific theater.

[Priory_of_Sion]

[LostCosmonaut]

[Sturgeon]

 

I adore the F-4 family.

[Toxn]

This was presumably taken before they discovered that the plane wouldn't fly unless they made it look like a broken-tailed hunchback.

[xthetenth]

 

Shit happens.  You can slap defensive air to air missiles on just about anything:

 

 

 

 

[cm_kruger]

 

"The crew and passengers were not to know that this aircraft, like every other aircraft within the Nimrod fleet, was not airworthy. What is more, the aircraft was, in my judgment, never airworthy from the first release to service in 1969 to the point where the Nimrod XV 230 was lost."

[Scolopax]

Mission Patches for US spy satellites

 

 

 

 

 

More with article here

[Collimatrix]

 

 

Raptor disapproves of the current weather.

 

Does anyone know what the little bay doors behind the sidewinder bays are for?