Re: Iran/Syria to get MiG-31?

On 2007-06-20 22:47:20 -0700, "Flashnews" <skitech@xxxxxxxxx> said:

...If the MiG-31 is looking for a stealth fighter it may not see it head-on, but
some combination of airborne radars and IR sensors on the array of
fighters may just pick up one or two hits - well the idea is to
correlate all this into firing solutions that would allow many missiles
to saturate couple of square miles with the hope of a terminal seeker
finding the target. Kind of like using a fly swatter the size of a
football field - if it works - look out.

If the Russians upgraded the raw transmitter power by another slug, and used it to drive a pretty good air-intercept AESA, that would make the MiG-31 a nifty stealth-killer, I'd think. If you had enough of them. If they were backed up by dedicated air-refueling assets. A few squadrons of so-upgraded MiG-31's running search patterns, if they had a good guess as to the inbound vector of the stealth strike package, wouldn't have to get that lucky to pick up enough bogey blips to start localizing the strikers. That's a lot of high-power, datalinked air-intercept radars at altitude painting your F-22's at angles for which the stealth features are less optimized. Yeah sure, the F-22's have already pickled off a wave of AIM-120's by then, but how soon will the MiG's detect the missiles with their IRST or radar? Soon enough to avoid the Slammers with a Mach 2 dash? For some of them maybe. Meanwhile you've broadly localized the strike package for the second echelon of intercepting MiG's to vector in on a rear-aspect search, only now with their IRST's hunting for exhaust plumes as well.

Sure that's a lot of MiG-31's, being flown by a lot of very well-trained pilots and RIO's. But how cheaply might the Russians sell their reserve MiG-31's, or even new-build interceptors of equivalent capabilities? A lot cheaper than the US is going to pay per F-22, that's for damn sure. You know that whatever tactical warfighting plans USAF has envisioned for the F-22, it's never going to use them to fight a war of attrition in the air, because even we can't afford that.



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