History, Politics And Current Affairs

clancyphile wrote: ↑Sun Jan 05, 2025 12:57 pm

Matt Wiser wrote: ↑Fri Dec 27, 2024 3:52 am Looks like the biggest day in the air over the Central Front since D-Day. Either there's going to be a Turkey Shoot or there's something bad coming....taking out AWACS and J-STARS is a real possibility.

What's to say both can't happen? The Soviets get the AWACS and JSTARS, but the victory cost them large chunks of their top-line (Flanker/Fulcrum/etc.) assets.

An active/passive air-to-air version for use against slow-moving support aircraft, a so-called "AWACS killer", was announced at the 1992 Moscow air show with 200 km (110 nmi; 120 mi) range.[6] That would be less than the 300–400 kilometres (160–220 nmi; 190–250 mi) promised by the Vympel R-37 (AA-13 'Arrow') and Novator R-172 missiles, but a Kh-31 derivative could be carried by a wider range of aircraft. However this may have been mere propaganda; in 2004 the Tactical Missiles Corporation "emphatically denied" that it had ever worked on an air-to-air version of the Kh-31.[28] In 2005 rumours emerged of a Russian "AWACS-killer missile" based on the Kh-31A anti-shipping model, and of the Chinese adapting the YJ-91, derived from the Kh-31P, for the same purpose.[7] In 2017, a representative of the Mikoyan company claimed that an air-to-air variant of the Kh-31 was in development, intended to equip the MiG-35,[29] but this is not confirmed.

Bernard Woolley wrote: ↑Sat Jan 11, 2025 3:48 pm From Wiki (make of it what you will ):

An active/passive air-to-air version for use against slow-moving support aircraft, a so-called "AWACS killer", was announced at the 1992 Moscow air show with 200 km (110 nmi; 120 mi) range.[6] That would be less than the 300–400 kilometres (160–220 nmi; 190–250 mi) promised by the Vympel R-37 (AA-13 'Arrow') and Novator R-172 missiles, but a Kh-31 derivative could be carried by a wider range of aircraft. However this may have been mere propaganda; in 2004 the Tactical Missiles Corporation "emphatically denied" that it had ever worked on an air-to-air version of the Kh-31.[28] In 2005 rumours emerged of a Russian "AWACS-killer missile" based on the Kh-31A anti-shipping model, and of the Chinese adapting the YJ-91, derived from the Kh-31P, for the same purpose.[7] In 2017, a representative of the Mikoyan company claimed that an air-to-air variant of the Kh-31 was in development, intended to equip the MiG-35,[29] but this is not confirmed.