Silent Hunter

Has the USAF ever considering making a "aerial battleship"- an E-3 equipped with a lot of AAMs?

Blademaster

Then the USAF should be voted as the dumbest air force in the world.

GAU-8

Not that I've ever heard of.

Way back at the dawn of time when I was flying, the AWACS was always placed far enough away from the exercise area to be safe. There was usually a screen of air-to-air assets that could protect it if the red team made a go at it. In the exercises I took part in and the exercises I monitored when I worked at Red Flag, I never saw the red team get anywhere close to AWACS.

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When a prang seems inevitable, endeavor to strike the softest, cheapest object in the vicinity, as slowly as possible. --WW II RAF Instructor Pilot

Stitch

Yeah, that would kinda defeat the purpose of having an AWACS; if the AWACS is doing it's job, no enemy aircraft should get within 100 miles of a multi-million dollar asset, like an E-3 or a J-STARS.

And, besides, the only missle that would make sense for an AWACS to carry would be a Phoenix, and those have all been retired.

bfng3569

for the sake of argument, why not develop a new misslie?

or, take say an amramm, and give it a 'booster' to cover a couple hundred miles, then sepration from the booster, and you have a standard amramm and a target? Pratical, i doubt, but as an idea, why not?

GAU-8

I must be missing something here. Why the interest in turning a surveillance, command and control aircraft that is already maxed out on weight into a weapons platform? There are other aircraft that are purpose built shooters.

???

Here's a web site you can learn a lot from:
Weapon Systems

I hope this can be of some help to you.

Bill

Silent Hunter

I'm now thinking more of an air-to-air equivalent of the AC-130.

GAU-8

Have fun with it partner.

Jimmy

This. This x10.

Also, the radar isnt really a fire-control setup. Just cause we can see it doesnt mean we want to direct so much of the power down that "soda straw" that it takes to actually guide a missile.

GGTharos

Further, jack of all trades, master of none.
This is why you have fighters and bombers; bombers engage in explosive landscaping, and they do it very well.
Fighters engage in explosive flyswatting, and they do that very well.
AWACS aircraft engage in directing both, and they do THAT quite well.

Now try to mix them up into one plane, and you've basically overloaded the aircraft and crew functionally at the least. They won't be able to do anything well. It's like wanting to have a truck that's also a formula 1.

gunnut

Look up "missileer" to see why such a concept would not work.

US Navy thought about the "aerial battleship" concept and it was utterly impractical.

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"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

Tin Man

Hmm, think Silent` is on to something there! Somebody once said that in the future, the USAF would consist of 12 super-battle satellites that orbit the Earth and can hit any target on the globe in seconds with directed energy weapons.

Until then we will have to make do with Vipers and Mudhens

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"Liberty is a thing beyond all price.

avon1944

The USAF and US Navy has always devoted a good deal of attention in defending AWACS and other HVAC's. I remember reading about an air exercise (F-15's 'blue' and F-16's 'red') in which two large groups (around sixteen versus sixteen) of fighters engaged in WVR dogfighting. A small group of F-16's suddenly broke off as though they were going to reposition in the vertical and instead headed for the AWACS. Several F-15's responded and killed the F-16's with BVR missiles before the F-16's were able to get within missile range of the AWACS. The US air forces continuously working on tactics and counter-tactics defending HVAC.


You mean like the Russian Novator KS-172 missile? It has its merits, the F-14 Tomcat used the same philosophy when engaging enemy bombers that had fighter escorts. There were exercises in which the B-1 Lancer played the Backfire/Blackjack bomber and F-15's played the Su-27's. To launch the Phoenix Missile at a range where the escort fighters still could not engage the F-14, yet the F-14's killed the bombers. Could it work against AWACS, yes.... it greatly depends on the efforts being put forth by the anti-AWACS' forces and the air superiority situation at the time by the forces protecting the AWACS.
URL;
Novator KS-172 AAM-L - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


I know back in the mid-1980's the WP planned to send a dozen or so aircraft to attack each AWACS. The WP command realized there would be a high loss rate for these missions but, if only partially successful would be worth it.

As for the concept of an aerial battleship, I don't think it is feasible yet! Maybe in future generations of missiles where the kill percentage is near 100% throughout the kill envelope.
One real problem is, the aerial battleship might shoot down many aircraft but, the loss of one aerial battleship would be a huge loss. Not only has an AWACS been loss but, also a weapon that was supposed to equal many fighters is also.

Adrian

zraver

Given the threat of long range ARM's to AWAC's some sort of small anti-missile missile might make sense in order to keep the big radar functioning even when the bad guys are lobbing missiles at it.

Stitch

This will probably be laughed at by the defense professionals on the forum, but I play a flight sim which offers an "EB-52 Megafortress" as one of it's flight models. If you want to talk about an aerial "battleship", I can think of no better candidate than a heavily-modified B-52H; between it's payload, range, and room for add-ons/upgrades, no other airframe has as much room for expansion/modification as a B-52H. Give it a couple of CSRL's, one CSRL loaded with AIM-54C's, the other loaded with AIM-120D's, AIM-9X's on the wing pylons, a new multi-mode AN/APG-77 AESA radar in the nose, and you've got a major stand-off anti-aircraft platform.