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Dogfighting with guns is a great way to stop an incoming missile. You just need the ability to do high-G maneuvers and aim well. Shoot the missile. It helps th

by burfog 6y ago

Dogfighting with guns is a great way to stop an incoming missile. You just need the ability to do high-G maneuvers and aim well. Shoot the missile. It helps that bullets as small as 12.7mm can be steered.

stouset 6y ago
This comment is so far into Poe's law territory, I'm past the ability to tell if I'm being trolled or not. In case I'm not being trolled: the way to defeat a radar-guided missile is to beam (fly perpendicular to) the radar source. For an missile with active or semi-active radar guidance, this means you need to fly perpendicular to it. And, preferably, fire lots of chaff. This is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of flying straight at the missile trying to shoot it with guns. Head-on, a missile will close the last mile in under one second. During this second, you need to accurately track, predict the flight path of, and reliably put guns onto a target that's cold (all the fuel has been burnt) and has (in the case of an AMRAAM) a 7 inch diameter. And that very well may not even care about being shot up with bullets; at best, I think you'd kill the seeker, but within the last mile it's not changing course much to have to come close enough to kill you by the proximity fuze (of which I believe there are two, one in the nose and one in the tail). By the time the first of your slow-moving bullets has any shot of reaching it, it will easily be within a quarter of a mile. This is not even a remotely plausible way to defeat an oncoming missile. It runs directly counter to the actions you already be taking to maximize your chance of survival. And on top of that, bullets are only going to damage the leading-edge parts of the missile which aren't particularly critical to its ability to kill you, at least not within the distance it will be by the time your hail-mary bullet salvo hits it.
- burfog 6y ago
  We're assuming an AI here. It can aim. Bullets as small as 12.7 mm can even steer. Larger ones, such as those carried by modern fighter aircraft, can have independent seekers. You said the missile had some amazing ability to turn, and now you're saying it has no fuel. You can't have it both ways. There is fuel, or there is no energy to spare. Being "cold" isn't generally possible; nothing cools instantly. Modern IR sensors do not rely on engine heat. Supersonic flight generates plenty of heat on the nose. That last bit deserves more emphasis. Heat was a serious problem for the Concorde and SR-71, despite operating at much slower speeds. The missile is hypersonic. That is the speed at which air molecules come apart from the heat. IR detection will be trivial. There is a circular circuit board that is very much needed for the proximity fuse. That is full width. The speed of the missile contributes to its own destruction. Bullet impact will be devastating. The missile can not endure supersonic flight with a lopsided hole and a bunch of cracks, and it wouldn't fly straight even if it could. Tumbling means instant destruction, like Space Shuttle Columbia. Shooting back is the action to maximize chance of survival. It takes priority; all other options are obsolete.
  - thomasmeeks 6y ago
    What you’re suggesting is possible technically but nobody does it because the idea of having to turn your entire plane towards a missile threat to neutralize it virtually guarantees your destruction if two missiles are fired at you in rapid succession. This is not a rare occurrence. At all. Yes, from multiple directions. That’s exactly how surface-to-air systems are set up. It becomes slightly more reasonable if you turret the gun, until you factor in the weight of the necessary ammunition to neutralize multiple threats, the turret itself, and the independent radar used for target acquisition and tracking. A B-52 could pull it off, a fighter couldn’t yet. Not without massively compromising their payload and aerodynamics. Chaff, flares, stealth and jamming are used because they actually work in practice. Jamming is a big one that people don’t hear about much. Wonder how the B-52 is still in service? Jamming. Wonder how wild weasels do their job? Jamming. When you see a turret like that on a bomber then you can get excited for self-guided bullets shooting down dozens of multiple incoming missiles. But tbh at the rate we’re going it’ll just be a laser instead.
    - vl 6y ago
      >Chaff, flares, stealth and jamming are used because they actually work Don’t modern missiles use optical target acquisition in the first place? BTW, tanks have active automatic ballistic defense systems for a while now.
      - afrodc_ 6y ago
        Thanks have a much more robust complement of armor compared to an aircraft. They defeat the mechanism of armor penetration in munitions before impacting the armor. They still take a significant beating after the munition is "defeated". Airplanes don't have armor in the same way a tank has. Even small arms fire can take out an aircraft, generally speaking.
        vl 6y ago
        They now have active intercept systems: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_(countermeasure) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_(countermeasure)
- sandworm101 6y ago
  It is beyond Poe. This is harry potter territory. Even if one had the magic bullets, you need to know where the missile is to within a few inches. Good luck with that. The missile is doing Mach4 and has the radar cross section of a small flightless ant. And your magic gun system has perhaps one or two seconds to track and engage that ant. Add to that the fact that your gun system is presenting a wonderful IR and radar-emitting target for the missile, and his swarm of buddies, to better home upon. This is the sort of missile a fighter pilot is up against, 20 years ago. Look at what the sidewinder does at about 1:05. Good luck shooting that down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YMSfg26YSQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YMSfg26YSQ
  - burfog 6y ago
    Why mention speed at all? Mach 4 is nothing. We can hit satellites and ICBM warheads going between Mach 20 and Mach 30. Speed of approach just means that the impact energy will be greater. Impact energy grows with the square of the velocity. If the velocity doubles, that is like quadrupling the mass of the bullet, which is like turning 20mm ammo into 32.75mm ammo. It's not like a small flightless ant on radar, and anyway a Mach 4 object will be hot from compression heating. Mach 4 is just below what it takes to rip air molecules apart. That's damn hot. IR tracking would be trivial. There is no limit that says "one bullet only". Typically the Phalanx CIWS fires about 100 shells, and those aren't even equipped with seekers. It's just dumb 20mm shells, about the same as carried by the typical fighter plane, costing about $30 each. We use the Phalanx CIWS against incoming missiles. It works great. BTW, that was an unimpressive video with no clear point. Yes, missiles can fly and go after targets. We all know this. It works especially well in the missile vendor's promotional video.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      >We can hit satellites and ICBM warheads going between Mach 20 and Mach 30. I think you're forgetting that a lot of anti nuclear defense systems use nuclear weapons themselves. When you only need to be within a few hundred meters of a target accuracy suddenly doesn't matter at all, especially when you have several hours to predict the flight trajectory of the enemy missile. If laser based CIWS turns out to be viable on aircraft then we would see a focus on bigger aircraft that can defend themselves against missiles but even then they would not directly fly into a missile if they can avoid it.
jacquesm 6y ago
Fantasy beats technology and physics any day.
- burfog 6y ago
  Right: the fantasy Mach 4 missile that maneuvers with the engine shut down, does not experience compression heating from hypersonic flight, survives Mach 4 impact with tungsten 20mm shells, can track an enemy through a cloud of 100 incoming 20mm shells, and can maneuver with zero turn radius without losing energy. I'd like some of that. Phalanx CIWS was prototyped in 1973 and has been in service since 1980. Shooting down incoming missiles with machine gun fire has been viable for a very long time.
  - pdoege 6y ago
    Back when I was playing the game the Moskit and its derivatives made the CIWS obsolete. The short engagement range meant that the debris of the threat would impact and mission kill. The larger 30mm and RAM were created to extend that range. We planned to engage when the thermal plume was detected on the horizon. The higher speed of ballistic threats meant that the pK of the SM-3 was pretty low. Luckily finding ships at sea is hard. In a fight against a first line threat it was best to be in a boomer.
  - raducu 6y ago
    Has Phalanx ever been tested against a supersonic missile? Also, there is no way to install such a system on a fighter airplane.
    - burfog 6y ago
      The entire airplane is that system. It has nearly the same gun, 20mm in both cases. It has fancy radar. Basically, a modern fighter plane is a flying CIWS, if it has the software to do so.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Basically, a modern fighter plane is a flying CIWS, if it has the software to do so. No, it's not, because it can't change targeting axis fast enough; you'd have to have a turret mounted gun plus software, which is simply not feasible for a fighter. Also, a major surface warship can afford to expend a lot more weight of ordnance defending against a single missile than a fighter can without sacrificing whatever mission it was protecting itself to accomplish.

by burfog 6y ago

stouset 6y ago

This comment is so far into Poe's law territory, I'm past the ability to tell if I'm being trolled or not. In case I'm not being trolled: the way to defeat a radar-guided missile is to beam (fly perpendicular to) the radar source. For an missile with active or semi-active radar guidance, this means you need to fly perpendicular to it. And, preferably, fire lots of chaff. This is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of flying straight at the missile trying to shoot it with guns. Head-on, a missile will close the last mile in under one second. During this second, you need to accurately track, predict the flight path of, and reliably put guns onto a target that's cold (all the fuel has been burnt) and has (in the case of an AMRAAM) a 7 inch diameter. And that very well may not even care about being shot up with bullets; at best, I think you'd kill the seeker, but within the last mile it's not changing course much to have to come close enough to kill you by the proximity fuze (of which I believe there are two, one in the nose and one in the tail). By the time the first of your slow-moving bullets has any shot of reaching it, it will easily be within a quarter of a mile. This is not even a remotely plausible way to defeat an oncoming missile. It runs directly counter to the actions you already be taking to maximize your chance of survival. And on top of that, bullets are only going to damage the leading-edge parts of the missile which aren't particularly critical to its ability to kill you, at least not within the distance it will be by the time your hail-mary bullet salvo hits it.

burfog 6y ago
We're assuming an AI here. It can aim. Bullets as small as 12.7 mm can even steer. Larger ones, such as those carried by modern fighter aircraft, can have independent seekers. You said the missile had some amazing ability to turn, and now you're saying it has no fuel. You can't have it both ways. There is fuel, or there is no energy to spare. Being "cold" isn't generally possible; nothing cools instantly. Modern IR sensors do not rely on engine heat. Supersonic flight generates plenty of heat on the nose. That last bit deserves more emphasis. Heat was a serious problem for the Concorde and SR-71, despite operating at much slower speeds. The missile is hypersonic. That is the speed at which air molecules come apart from the heat. IR detection will be trivial. There is a circular circuit board that is very much needed for the proximity fuse. That is full width. The speed of the missile contributes to its own destruction. Bullet impact will be devastating. The missile can not endure supersonic flight with a lopsided hole and a bunch of cracks, and it wouldn't fly straight even if it could. Tumbling means instant destruction, like Space Shuttle Columbia. Shooting back is the action to maximize chance of survival. It takes priority; all other options are obsolete.
- thomasmeeks 6y ago
  What you’re suggesting is possible technically but nobody does it because the idea of having to turn your entire plane towards a missile threat to neutralize it virtually guarantees your destruction if two missiles are fired at you in rapid succession. This is not a rare occurrence. At all. Yes, from multiple directions. That’s exactly how surface-to-air systems are set up. It becomes slightly more reasonable if you turret the gun, until you factor in the weight of the necessary ammunition to neutralize multiple threats, the turret itself, and the independent radar used for target acquisition and tracking. A B-52 could pull it off, a fighter couldn’t yet. Not without massively compromising their payload and aerodynamics. Chaff, flares, stealth and jamming are used because they actually work in practice. Jamming is a big one that people don’t hear about much. Wonder how the B-52 is still in service? Jamming. Wonder how wild weasels do their job? Jamming. When you see a turret like that on a bomber then you can get excited for self-guided bullets shooting down dozens of multiple incoming missiles. But tbh at the rate we’re going it’ll just be a laser instead.
  - vl 6y ago
    >Chaff, flares, stealth and jamming are used because they actually work Don’t modern missiles use optical target acquisition in the first place? BTW, tanks have active automatic ballistic defense systems for a while now.
    - afrodc_ 6y ago
      Thanks have a much more robust complement of armor compared to an aircraft. They defeat the mechanism of armor penetration in munitions before impacting the armor. They still take a significant beating after the munition is "defeated". Airplanes don't have armor in the same way a tank has. Even small arms fire can take out an aircraft, generally speaking.
      - vl 6y ago
        They now have active intercept systems: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_(countermeasure) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_(countermeasure)
sandworm101 6y ago
It is beyond Poe. This is harry potter territory. Even if one had the magic bullets, you need to know where the missile is to within a few inches. Good luck with that. The missile is doing Mach4 and has the radar cross section of a small flightless ant. And your magic gun system has perhaps one or two seconds to track and engage that ant. Add to that the fact that your gun system is presenting a wonderful IR and radar-emitting target for the missile, and his swarm of buddies, to better home upon. This is the sort of missile a fighter pilot is up against, 20 years ago. Look at what the sidewinder does at about 1:05. Good luck shooting that down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YMSfg26YSQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YMSfg26YSQ
- burfog 6y ago
  Why mention speed at all? Mach 4 is nothing. We can hit satellites and ICBM warheads going between Mach 20 and Mach 30. Speed of approach just means that the impact energy will be greater. Impact energy grows with the square of the velocity. If the velocity doubles, that is like quadrupling the mass of the bullet, which is like turning 20mm ammo into 32.75mm ammo. It's not like a small flightless ant on radar, and anyway a Mach 4 object will be hot from compression heating. Mach 4 is just below what it takes to rip air molecules apart. That's damn hot. IR tracking would be trivial. There is no limit that says "one bullet only". Typically the Phalanx CIWS fires about 100 shells, and those aren't even equipped with seekers. It's just dumb 20mm shells, about the same as carried by the typical fighter plane, costing about $30 each. We use the Phalanx CIWS against incoming missiles. It works great. BTW, that was an unimpressive video with no clear point. Yes, missiles can fly and go after targets. We all know this. It works especially well in the missile vendor's promotional video.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    >We can hit satellites and ICBM warheads going between Mach 20 and Mach 30. I think you're forgetting that a lot of anti nuclear defense systems use nuclear weapons themselves. When you only need to be within a few hundred meters of a target accuracy suddenly doesn't matter at all, especially when you have several hours to predict the flight trajectory of the enemy missile. If laser based CIWS turns out to be viable on aircraft then we would see a focus on bigger aircraft that can defend themselves against missiles but even then they would not directly fly into a missile if they can avoid it.

jacquesm 6y ago

Fantasy beats technology and physics any day.

burfog 6y ago
Right: the fantasy Mach 4 missile that maneuvers with the engine shut down, does not experience compression heating from hypersonic flight, survives Mach 4 impact with tungsten 20mm shells, can track an enemy through a cloud of 100 incoming 20mm shells, and can maneuver with zero turn radius without losing energy. I'd like some of that. Phalanx CIWS was prototyped in 1973 and has been in service since 1980. Shooting down incoming missiles with machine gun fire has been viable for a very long time.
- pdoege 6y ago
  Back when I was playing the game the Moskit and its derivatives made the CIWS obsolete. The short engagement range meant that the debris of the threat would impact and mission kill. The larger 30mm and RAM were created to extend that range. We planned to engage when the thermal plume was detected on the horizon. The higher speed of ballistic threats meant that the pK of the SM-3 was pretty low. Luckily finding ships at sea is hard. In a fight against a first line threat it was best to be in a boomer.
- raducu 6y ago
  Has Phalanx ever been tested against a supersonic missile? Also, there is no way to install such a system on a fighter airplane.
  - burfog 6y ago
    The entire airplane is that system. It has nearly the same gun, 20mm in both cases. It has fancy radar. Basically, a modern fighter plane is a flying CIWS, if it has the software to do so.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Basically, a modern fighter plane is a flying CIWS, if it has the software to do so. No, it's not, because it can't change targeting axis fast enough; you'd have to have a turret mounted gun plus software, which is simply not feasible for a fighter. Also, a major surface warship can afford to expend a lot more weight of ordnance defending against a single missile than a fighter can without sacrificing whatever mission it was protecting itself to accomplish.