PLA Anti-Air Missile (SAM) systems

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
Well according to Henri K the PLA anti air missile will undergone transform from purely anti aircraft to other thing
So better missile is in the pipeline
According to an October 13 article in the Chinese military's official journal, PLAAF's anti-aircraft force is undergoing a major transformation to become an anti-aircraft, anti-missile and anti-aircraft defense. spatial "(向 防空 反导 防 天 型 转变).

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Tam

Brigadier
Registered Member
That is an issue to be levied with most SAMs of Russian/Chinese of whose origins which dates back before the 1990s . To be fair most of the SAMs they deploy has a bigger warhead compared to Western SAM systems, but that does not explain away the extra bulkiness of the entire missile.
Another possible explanation would be that the missile was intended to have that kind of range, but China could not be bothered to come up with a new missile body for it, opting instead of reusing the HQ-9/S-300 series missile.

The warheads are awfully big, if HQ-9 is said to have a 180kg warhead. In comparison, a 48N6E is about 155kg if I can remember and a Yakhont --- an antiship missile --- is 200kg. A YJ-83 is said to have 190kg. If the missile has surface targeting, add to the supersonic speed at impact, a 180kg warhead is going to hurt.

The blast radius must also be big. The Buk has a 70kg warhead in comparison and the blast radius is 17m.
 

Hyperwarp

Captain
He said "how relatively short ranged it is for something so big." Which in this case holds some water. The exact specifications of the HQ-22 missiles as to their length, width and weight is unknown but seeing as it can trace it's lineage back to the HQ-9 we can make a reasonable assumption that it totals out as such :
1) Length=6.8m
2) Width= 700mm at the widest
3) Weight= Around 1300kg

In comparison, other SAMs like the SM-6 has a weight of 1500kgs, a length of 6.6ms, and a width of 530mms max, with a range of 250km and a operational altitude of 34,000m. One can make the completely sound argument that the extra 200kgs is relegated to fuel for the missile, but it does not change the fact that the SM-6 is a sleeker and slimmer missile in comparison with the HQ-22.

HQ-22 is said be a lower-cost suppliment to the HQ-9 series. For example, the the export version of the HQ-22, FK-3 minimum engagement altitude is 50m which is aweful and won't be useful when intercepting low flying drones and cruise missiles. Edit: Can't expect the HQ-22 to be any better in that regard. HQ-9 and HQ-16 on the other hand can engage very low flying targets. Its a trade-off.
 

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
What short range, 175km is not short by any mean I don't know what you mean by short? Even HQ 9 is only 200 to 250 km. The export version is 100 km

The HQ-22 has large kill airspace ranges up to 150-170 km at an altitude from 50 to 27,000m which super adaptive anti-jamming capacity with several anti-jamming measures.

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The HQ-22 have FK-3 export version. It is capable of intercepting various targets like fixed-wing aircraft (including UAV), cruise missiles, tactical air-to-surface missiles, armed helicopters, etc. Killing zone: slant range 5km-100km/altitude 0.05km-27km.

Well 175km is still approaching 100km shorter than longest range HQ-9. All in a missile body that's almost identical in dimensions to HQ-9 and each truck can transport a max of 4? rather than 6? I don't know but so far the images I've seen only have two canisters though I'm sure four is doable.

Maybe it's just optimised for high altitude or some other parameter worthy of focus. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons for the apparently "short" range for its size.
 

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
The warheads are awfully big, if HQ-9 is said to have a 180kg warhead. In comparison, a 48N6E is about 155kg if I can remember and a Yakhont --- an antiship missile --- is 200kg. A YJ-83 is said to have 190kg. If the missile has surface targeting, add to the supersonic speed at impact, a 180kg warhead is going to hurt.

The blast radius must also be big. The Buk has a 70kg warhead in comparison and the blast radius is 17m.

180kg?! on a SAM?! Surely then it uses proximity fuses and improves probability of kill. HQ-9 must be the most effective SAM for its range class. That's the warhead size for an AShM. It just needs to detonate the warhead anyway within 20m of any target to knock it off course or destroy it completely.

It probably doesn't even need that for most tasks since it was proven to be the only SAM system in Turkish trials that hit all of its targets. Even though PAC and S-400 weren't part of the trials.
 
D

Deleted member 13312

Guest
The warheads are awfully big, if HQ-9 is said to have a 180kg warhead. In comparison, a 48N6E is about 155kg if I can remember and a Yakhont --- an antiship missile --- is 200kg. A YJ-83 is said to have 190kg. If the missile has surface targeting, add to the supersonic speed at impact, a 180kg warhead is going to hurt.

The blast radius must also be big. The Buk has a 70kg warhead in comparison and the blast radius is 17m.
But big alone does not explain away the larger missile size as it is more of a matter of weight than size. Other missile like the tomahawks have half ton warheads yet comes in smaller than most SAMs. Granted that cruise missiles use entirely different engines for propulsion, but still China can probably get away with a new missile design that is smaller yet is just as heavy as the HQ-22.
 
D

Deleted member 13312

Guest
I totally agree SM-6 is better than HQ-22 ... so what ? .. you don't need to have all super advanced SAM, it should be based on the purposes


do you know that SM-6 cost is US$4M each and HQ-22 cost I'd imagine is less than $0.5M, so SM-6 is like 10x more expensive than HQ-22, and only 1.5 to 2x better :p:p:p .. so please tell me which one is better overall? ;)
And I never said the SM-6 was the overall better missile in my post. But I brought it up for size comparison of missile body. I can name a few other advantages that the HQ-9 series has, namely a supposed higher top speed of mach 4.6 and a much heavier warhead to guarantee a kill and also opens it up to other potential uses like anti surface missions. And I would highly doubt that the HQ-22 has such a low price tag as you would claim, especially with all the supposed capabilities it has.
 

Biscuits

Major
Registered Member
That is an issue to be levied with most SAMs of Russian/Chinese of whose origins which dates back before the 1990s . To be fair most of the SAMs they deploy has a bigger warhead compared to Western SAM systems, but that does not explain away the extra bulkiness of the entire missile.
Another possible explanation would be that the missile was intended to have that kind of range, but China could not be bothered to come up with a new missile body for it, opting instead of reusing the HQ-9/S-300 series missile.

The HQ-9 in particular has a gigantic warhead. It's like a Brahmos that can hit planes and missiles.

Besides having the big warheads, tt's possible that Chinese SAMs have more redundancy and extra anti jamming equipment, since they were designed to counter fairly sophisticated western platforms. The lesser range is considered an acceptable tradeoff for being more accurate and harder to fool.

The HQ-9 was the only system to hit all targets in Turkey's SAM competition. It might be bulkier and have worse range than SM-6/patriot, but it seems to be better at hitting stuff within that range.

HQ-22 might also be handicapped to 175km for export purposes.
 

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
The HQ-9 in particular has a gigantic warhead. It's like a Brahmos that can hit planes and missiles.

Besides having the big warheads, tt's possible that Chinese SAMs have more redundancy and extra anti jamming equipment, since they were designed to counter fairly sophisticated western platforms. The lesser range is considered an acceptable tradeoff for being more accurate and harder to fool.

The HQ-9 was the only system to hit all targets in Turkey's SAM competition. It might be bulkier and have worse range than SM-6/patriot, but it seems to be better at hitting stuff within that range.

HQ-22 might also be handicapped to 175km for export purposes.

HQ-9 is available for export. Albeit not latest variants and likely a little more restricted in some ways compared to the PLA's HQ-9s. So HQ-22 as export product that competes with HQ-9 makes more sense if it is a simpler, less capable (someone mentioned minimum intercept height of 50m) and cheaper version of HQ-9.
 
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