Possible, pretty possible. A new electronic package would need to be developed, but if Talos ARM was created, the Sea Dart could be too.
That would be more problematic. The nose cone of Sea Dart is only protruding a bit from air intake. So unless the IR sensor is very small to fully fit into protruding part - a MANPAD-scale one at most - it's field of view would be extremely limited. And a MANPAD-size IR sensor would likely not be capable enough for supersonic interceptions.
Possible, but what exactly do you want to transmit through it? Command corrections for missile autopilot on mid-course?
? ARH - Anti-Radiation Homing?
That was actually suggested and even explored at least a bit, but it would require a nuclear warhead to make any good. The tiny Sea Dart warhead (11 kg) of continious-rod type would be next thing to useless against ballistic target; the rods expansion velocity is neither fast nor even enough to reliably hit such target.
Active radar homing.
You would need the significant rebuild of guidance system, so it would accept seeker position as guidance command, instead of polyrod antenna signals. It's doable, but it would require rebuilding the whole guidance electronics.
Ah. Hm. Theoretically possible, but again, the antenna question. You probably would be forced to use something like Yagi-Uda array protruging out of missile nose to get any meaningful angle of scan.
The direct hit is out of question for 1970s electronics. It simply not accurate enough. And you can't improve the warhead much; it's just too small to do the job. Also, a fast-reaction fuse would be required.
Well, it's possible, since the missile range would be limited by horizon anyway (it was still semi-active homing).
Possible, but:
It is probably not against the law to use 1980s electronics.
Yes. Both Vulcan and VC-10 were proposed for that role.
Well, it's a supersonic missile - so the time of flight is very short, and enemy ship can't move very far from designated area. And the missile could always initiate a simple seeker pattern by giving missile a bit of spirale spin, so it's seeker area would rotate.
As I mentioned above, the problem mainly is that seeker have a very limited sector of view. It's suitable for anti-surface missile, but not for anti-air one.
But the polyrod seeker probably is not accurate enough anyway to ensure direct hit.
That's possible, yes.
One problem - the Sea Dart is not exactly ballistic. It's ramjet-powered aerodynamic missile with Mach 2.5 cruise speed. It's perfectly within the capabilities of M-11 Shtorm and M-22 Uragan (which used Buk-M1 missiles, which have anti-ballistic capability).
And so?
Please stop dragging politics into technical discussion, or should I remind you about all the cases Western tech did not live up to expectations?
Sigh. My point was, what exactly are you planning to do with it? You can't fit jammer on Sea Dart. And shipborne jammers could not cover the moving missiles. At most, they could create broadband noise jamming hoping to make aquisition of the missile more problematic, but even this would not be very efficient because antennas would not look at the direction of the launching ship, they would be tracking high-
Oh, by the way - I'm not sure that 1970s Royal Navy actually have any shipboard jammers. Type 42 destroyers apparently got the electronic warfare set (type 670) only in late 1980s. Before that, they relied on chaffs and AN/SLQ-49 floating decoys. Which are absolutely useless in offensive electronic warfare, you know.
- means absolutely nothing, because RN ships in 1970-1980s apparently did not have any electronic warfare capability.
The Mod0 missile had continuous rod warhead, but the Mod3 switched that to a fragment cloud warhead. This was not a new production missile, instead being old stock put through an upgrade. They also embodied an IR prox fuse to replace original EW version…..as it would go off if too close to the sea surface. When missile prior to Mod 3 where used in an anti ship role the prox fuse was switched off before to launch. Now that’s a serious problem if you’re trying to knock down a sea skimmer, not to mention a sea skimmer would fly through the middle of the expanding rods. I’m told the mod3 had a reasonable capability against sea skimmers and preformed quite well in testing.
The speed depends on the altitude, with low altitude flight limited to about 1.6 Mach but at high altitude 3.5+ Mach was possible. The Mod2&3 were optimised to cruise at high altitude. In the mid 70’s, 6 missile were modified for an aero performance trial. It was said these flew at well over Mach 4.
That's what I suspected, too.
I have an issue with using "I do not believe" in the discussion. It make it utterly pointless, because beliefs are not something that could be proven or disproven. If you have practial counter-arguments, it's one thing. But dismissing arguments only because you "did not believe" in them make discussion pointless.
So you are suggesting to use aircraft jammers to cover the approach of ship-launched missile? It's overcomplicated, not to mention that it would require aircraft to be presented relatively close to the action.
I haven't just woke up one day and decide not to believe the Soviet sales brochures.
Then this discussion is pointless, because it's not a matter of arguments, it's a matter of beliefs. Not to mention that you apparently did not grasp the simple logic; we are talking about Cold War era systems, and during Cold War neither side could allow itself to assume that "those guys stuff probably did not work as planned". The last time USA assumed something like that, their "invulnerable" U-2 was knocked down by S-75 SAM because guys that runned CIA just assumed the same thing as you - "nah, Soviet missiles could not be that good".
You are overcomplicating things, by assuming that each particular RN destroyer in position to launch relatively short-range anti-ship missile would always have the aerial jammers on its side, and air crew would always be ready and willing to provide jamming support for relatively short-range anti-ship missile (i.e. making themselves a potential target for enemy SAM's).
I will not force anyone to take part in this or other discussions with me.
Okay. Them I'm finished here. If you are willing to continue this discussion with factual arguments - I'll be glad to re-join it too.
