Chapter 1049 New Tactics Pilot Force

Chang Haonan's reaction immediately caused some confusion.

After all, A shoots and B guides is not a new concept.

In fact, using airborne radar to relay and guide anti-ship missiles launched by warships or submarines had become one of the Red Navy's very mature tactics by the late 70s.

Although that was indeed the other side's heyday, in terms of communication technology alone, there is no reason why China in the early 21st century should be inferior to the Soviet Union more than years ago.

So next, Chang Haonan spent about twenty minutes to finally explain why this "A shoots, B guides" was very difficult to implement.

The main reason is that the nature of the goals is too different.

Surface ships are generally 200-300 meters long, have a maximum speed of 30 knots, and can only move in a two-dimensional plane.

The wingspan and length of an airplane are generally around 20 meters, and it can easily reach speeds of 600 knots or even faster, and can also maneuver in three-dimensional space.

The latter's requirements for target refresh rate and communication delay are far more than 20 times that of the former.

Similarly, the requirements for target refresh rate during the search and lock processes are also very different.

Therefore, the bandwidth occupied by providing guidance for an air-to-air missile is likely to be two orders of magnitude larger than that of guiding an anti-ship missile or sharing target information with friendly aircraft.

With the communication technology in the early 21st century, it was far from luxurious enough to allocate precious data link bandwidth to such usage needs.

In addition, in terms of hardware, each missile needs to be equipped with an airborne two-way data link of the same level as the aircraft.

The resulting cost issues can be imagined.

Even if we exclude the factor of money, a complete set of antennas and processing systems in the early 21st century would be quite large in size.

For airplanes, of course, you can just find a place to stuff it in.

But on an air-to-air missile, where every inch of space is extremely precious, it is actually not easy to leave a large enough space.

Taking a step back, the C-band radar of the early warning aircraft was not designed for fire control, and its accuracy is limited, and it is not enough to guide the air-to-air missile to a close enough position.

Not to mention the L band on the other side.

In short, if you only test it once or twice under ideal conditions, it may be possible to succeed.

But if you want to use it in real combat...

All I can say is that the future is promising.

This result is not unexpected.

After all, just less than an hour ago, China achieved data link communication between early warning aircraft and combat aircraft for the first time.

Even decentralized data sharing between two combat aircraft has not yet been tested.

It's indeed a bit too early to try other tricks now.

However, the truth is the truth.

A little regretful feeling is inevitable.

Looking at the scene in front of him, Chang Haonan suddenly had an idea.

After about half a minute of brainstorming, he roughly determined the feasibility of this new idea:

"Although it is still somewhat difficult to use early warning aircraft to guide air-to-air missiles under current conditions, we may be able to change our thinking."

Originally, everyone else had already looked back at the computer screen.

As a result, his words drew everyone's attention back.

"How to say?"

A senior staff officer asked curiously.

"If the surface-to-air missiles were guided by fighter radars... it would be much easier."

Chang Haonan expressed his thoughts:

"Because surface-to-air missiles, especially long-range surface-to-air missiles, are large enough, it is relatively easy to fit some additional hardware equipment into them. We can even design a communication system that is responsible for information transmission between aircraft and missiles without relying on universal data links. In addition, the missile-borne guidance radar is large enough to complete autonomous locking at a relatively long distance from the target, so there is no such high demand for guidance accuracy and transmission delay..."

"Of course, this is just a technical consideration. The specific engineering implementation will not be so simple, and the most important thing is... the cost will probably be difficult to reduce."

When he said this, his original intention was actually just to comfort the Air Force leaders who had just been hit hard, and he didn't really want to produce any specific product.

Because there is another problem he didn't mention.

It's the range.

The maximum range of surface-to-air missiles in the early 21st century was only about 150km, and ground-to-air missile forces were generally deployed far away from the contact line. In terms of range, it was actually not much different from fighter jets launching their own missiles.

It won’t be too late to consider this matter after we have surface-to-air missiles with a range of 300km.

However, Chang Haonan clearly underestimated the desire of the PLA commanders and fighters to pursue new technologies and new tactics.

And the level of trust in him.

"It sounds like... it's quite useful?"

After a period of silence, the first comment was that Chang Haonan couldn't do it.

Unexpectedly, someone responded:

"really……"

"In this way, at least when facing a large number of low-altitude targets, the ground-to-air missile force can also respond in advance, instead of just watching and taking effect at the end..."

"..."

Hearing this, Chang Haonan suddenly realized something——

Due to the rapid development of technology in all aspects of China in recent years, my understanding of this era has become much slower than when I was just reborn.

After all, it was only 2002.

The new three strikes and three defenses are still key issues that the People's Liberation Army needs to consider.

Especially the anti-cruise missile system.

Compared with previous years, the pressure has not only not decreased, but has increased.

Because after the Allied operation went awry, the U.S. military tried to make up for its mistakes and quickly upgraded its military GPS terminals to the third generation in the following years.

At least in the short term, the effectiveness of electromagnetic interference will be compromised.

Against this backdrop, the technology that allows surface-to-air missiles to overcome the curvature of the earth and attack low-altitude targets hundreds of kilometers away is obviously very attractive.

After all, although the number of air-to-air missile equipment in China has increased rapidly in recent years, it is also stockpiled according to normal air combat standards.

If it is used to intercept a huge number of cruise missiles, it really seems a bit stretched...

"Comrade Haonan, do you have any plans to develop this type of technology?"

Qiao Chenqing obviously felt that what Chang Haonan said might have been quietly progressing.

It should be said that this situation has indeed happened many times.

But not this time.

The latter quickly shook his head:

"That was just my idea. I don't have any research plans yet..."

"Then what if..."

This time, Chang Haonan could guess what the other party meant without even having to finish speaking:

"If there is a real need, we can develop it based on the existing data link technology and do a few test launches to see how it goes. This is not a difficult task. We can get the comrades from CASIC and CETC to work together and it should be done."

"But if we want to test it, it will involve multiple units such as aviation, ground-to-air missiles, radar, etc. I'm afraid we need to coordinate with the Air Force..."

Now almost half of the Air Force leadership was standing next to Chang Haonan.

Coordination is certainly not a problem.

But Qiao Chenqing obviously had some other ideas.

After thinking for a while, he turned to the staff officer beside him:

"Can we go one step further and use the current Dingxin training base as the backbone and incorporate other arms besides aviation to build a pilot unit for the long-term future that specializes in new technologies and new tactics?"