Just when the Chinese lamented that our air force could be regarded as using the legendary PL-12 missile, then we took out the PL-15, a long-range air-to-air missile with a range of nearly 200 kilometersAnd just when we thought that this might be the limit of human air-to-air missiles, our army came up with missiles with a longer range
Recently, the J-16 fighter of the Chinese Air Force mounted a giant missile twice as large as the PL-12 and PL-15 and made an appearanceThe length of this missile reached a full 57 meters, even the Hongqi-9BE anti-aircraft missile, which has a range of more than 260 km, has a length of only 6It is about 51 meters. As for the function of this missile, there is no doubt that it is an air-to-air missileThe J-16 unveiled this time adopts the air combat payload mode, equipped with six air-to-air missiles and electronic countermeasures pods, which is obviously a payload mode to cope with high-intensity air combat preparations.
So this super-large air-to-air missile,What exactly is it aimed at?Looking at its appearance, we can briefly analyze it.
First of all, this missile has a radome in front, which means that the missile uses a radar guidance system, and in addition, the small area of the four rudder surfaces in the tail means that its range and flight speed are good. Generally speaking, this kind of radar-guided high-speed missiles are anti-radiation missiles used against ground radar stations, but considering its length and thickness, it must be an air-to-air missile, after all, such a thin missile has no other target suitable for dealing with except ***.
So combining these two speculations,The main target of this missile is to fight the enemy's early warning aircraft, which is an anti-radiation missile dedicated to anti-early warning aircraft
This missile design is very rare in the world, because very few countries will actually use missiles as the core combat means of air superiority fighters. It's not that the Americans haven't tried before, during the Vietnam War, they made the F-4 Phantom into a pure missile air superiority fighter. It's just that at that time, the guidance ability of missiles was not good, and the maneuverability of the aircraft was not as good as now, and the ghost directly became a live target for Soviet-style fighters, and had to add the cannon back, and until now it is still addicted to machine guns, even F-35 fighters have to install machine guns.
It's just that times have changed nowOriginally, China also felt that the Americans' decision was right, but in 2015, the Chinese Air Force participated in a joint air force exercise with Thailand Xi At that time, China sent an old Su-27 fighter unit, while Thailand sent an Gripen fighter imported from the Swedish company Saab. It belonged to the third generation and a half fighters and was the most advanced fighter in the world at that time. The Thai Air Force, out of consideration of its equipment superiority, chose to let the Chinese Air Force play dog fights with Chinese pilots without turning on the radar. The combat level of the Chinese pilots far surpassed that of the Thai pilots, and they were killed.
The defeated Thai pilot refused to accept and demanded to turn on the radar and use missiles to confront China. China agreed. Then the Chinese side had an unforgettable scene happenedThe Thai pilot, who turned on the radar and used the missile, actually killed China directly with a 4:0。At this time, we realized that the times have changed, and that the missiles of the present day are not the missiles of the Cold War era, nor are the planes of the Cold War period, and in the face of new technology, we must update our tactics in a timely manner. So after four years of thinking, I came to a conclusion:Modern air battles are all fought beyond visual range, and whoever fights dogs is stupid
Since then, China has begun to intensify the research and development of air-to-air missiles, more and more advanced air-to-air missiles have been developed, and the effective range of fire in the face of the US Air Force has become larger and larger, while the Americans still retain the old air force combat thinking that missiles are waste, and machine guns are decisive and defeatedIt can only be said that in the past few years, the Americans have been fighting against rookie opponents who do not have an air force, and they don't know what a modern air war is called by an equal force。**The design concept is still stuck in the last century.
The giant air-to-air missile newly developed by China this time is aimed at further reducing the effective combat distance of the enemy's air force, and the early warning aircraft is an extension of the effective combat distance of fighter aircraft. Without AWACS fighters, they can only rely on their own small radars for operations, and it is difficult to give full play to the maximum combat distance of missiles。Shooting down an early warning plane is tantamount to blinding the enemy's eyes, so that the superiority of China's air force in over-the-horizon long-range combat can be further brought into play
The effectiveness and reliability of this combat mode still need to be further verified by China through Xi exercises or actual combat in the future, but the technology of this giant air-to-air missile itself is still very valuableEven if the Americans see this kind of **, they have to hesitate and start by themselves, can they really get the benefits?