PLA News, Pics, and Discussion

sndef888

Senior Member
Registered Member
I don't think the indian border will really shake up PLA all that much, its a relatively low risk border compared to the Indo/Pak one. Neither side really expects anything more than a skirmish. The mountains are really a great natural barrier

That said there has been more modern equipment entering the area like the Type 15 and recently the PHL-03
 

ohan_qwe

Junior Member
Not disputing that. It's a given that the longer the ToF, the harder it'll be to hit anything with dumb projos.

BUT ....

DART is a guided projectile. CLOS riding on a Ka-Band RF beam. Looks like this ...

View attachment 72396

Should be a whole lot easier intercepting at range when the projectile can maneuver and track the target (like a missile).
If there is data on exactly how maneuverable it is then we can reason about hit probabilities. Usually good SAM have 40G maneuverability.
 

DaTang cavalry

Junior Member
Registered Member
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Talking about the PLA Army's infantry and helicopters mixed brigade for military training. The brigade is equipped with helicopters such as Z-10, Z-19, and Z-20. The video mainly describes the training scenes of the Z-20. It praises the excellent performance of the Z-20 and is more mobile and flexible than other transport helicopters.
 

Heliox

Junior Member
Registered Member
A missile has sustained manuverability though which is a very different to an unpowered projectile.

But that's not how missiles work either.

Most non-air breathing missiles have rocket motors that burn out early (Boost phase), glide the rest of the way unpowered (Midcourse Phase) before engaging the target (Terminal Phase).

Take the RAM-116 RAM Block 0/1. The missile body is taken off that of the AIM-9L, which we are fortunate to have a lot of OSINT on.

AIM9L.png

This is the velocity curve of the AIM-9L. The RAM should be fairly similar to this.

What it shows is that the rocket burn out is at approx. 5s (when acceleration stops)
At T+5s, the missile will have flown a grand total of approx 2km.
Past 2km it is no different from any other gun projectile in that it is no longer being propelled.

Velocity loss is fairly steep up to the transonic region.
At approx T+10s, it will have flown about 5km with retained velocity at about 475m/s (approx M1.4)

Compare this with the DART projectile that at T+5s has also flown 5km with velocity still at approx. 800-900m/s.

Missile, T+10s to 5km, V=475m/s
DART, T+5s to 5km, V=800m/s

So I respectfully disagree with you. The DART projectile doesn't necessarily have inferior kinematics to a SHORAD missile. For engagements within T+5s/1.7km, when the missile still has significant delta vee, sure, the missile is definitely better. Past that, it would seem to be advantage DART based on raw kinetics. Yes, there are other factors but the principle behind the DART seems pretty sound if a tad misunderstood by some.

Note:
The above is based on the AIM-9L which includes the initial V0 of M0.9 provided by the launch platform (an aircraft). The RAM launches from a pretty much stationery platform which means it burns out at a lower speed (lets call it M2.0) and closer to the launch platform (lets ballpark it at about 1.7km) with a velocity at T+10s very close to M1.0 (about 340m/s), which means it will come out worse than an air-launched AIM-9L unless we have OSINT that indicates what improvements (if any) have been made.
 

silentlurker

Junior Member
Registered Member
But that's not how missiles work either.

Most non-air breathing missiles have rocket motors that burn out early (Boost phase), glide the rest of the way unpowered (Midcourse Phase) before engaging the target (Terminal Phase).

Take the RAM-116 RAM Block 0/1. The missile body is taken off that of the AIM-9L, which we are fortunate to have a lot of OSINT on.

View attachment 72525

This is the velocity curve of the AIM-9L. The RAM should be fairly similar to this.

What it shows is that the rocket burn out is at approx. 5s (when acceleration stops)
At T+5s, the missile will have flown a grand total of approx 2km.
Past 2km it is no different from any other gun projectile in that it is no longer being propelled.

Velocity loss is fairly steep up to the transonic region.
At approx T+10s, it will have flown about 5km with retained velocity at about 475m/s (approx M1.4)

Compare this with the DART projectile that at T+5s has also flown 5km with velocity still at approx. 800-900m/s.

Missile, T+10s to 5km, V=475m/s
DART, T+5s to 5km, V=800m/s

So I respectfully disagree with you. The DART projectile doesn't necessarily have inferior kinematics to a SHORAD missile. For engagements within T+5s/1.7km, when the missile still has significant delta vee, sure, the missile is definitely better. Past that, it would seem to be advantage DART based on raw kinetics. Yes, there are other factors but the principle behind the DART seems pretty sound if a tad misunderstood by some.

Note:
The above is based on the AIM-9L which includes the initial V0 of M0.9 provided by the launch platform (an aircraft). The RAM launches from a pretty much stationery platform which means it burns out at a lower speed (lets call it M2.0) and closer to the launch platform (lets ballpark it at about 1.7km) with a velocity at T+10s very close to M1.0 (about 340m/s), which means it will come out worse than an air-launched AIM-9L unless we have OSINT that indicates what improvements (if any) have been made.
So you acknowledge that the missile has velocity loss due to drag but the shell magically keeps 80% of its velocity over 5 kilometers?
 

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
But that's not how missiles work either.

Most non-air breathing missiles have rocket motors that burn out early (Boost phase), glide the rest of the way unpowered (Midcourse Phase) before engaging the target (Terminal Phase).

Take the RAM-116 RAM Block 0/1. The missile body is taken off that of the AIM-9L, which we are fortunate to have a lot of OSINT on.

View attachment 72525

This is the velocity curve of the AIM-9L. The RAM should be fairly similar to this.

What it shows is that the rocket burn out is at approx. 5s (when acceleration stops)
At T+5s, the missile will have flown a grand total of approx 2km.
Past 2km it is no different from any other gun projectile in that it is no longer being propelled.

Velocity loss is fairly steep up to the transonic region.
At approx T+10s, it will have flown about 5km with retained velocity at about 475m/s (approx M1.4)

Compare this with the DART projectile that at T+5s has also flown 5km with velocity still at approx. 800-900m/s.

Missile, T+10s to 5km, V=475m/s
DART, T+5s to 5km, V=800m/s

So I respectfully disagree with you. The DART projectile doesn't necessarily have inferior kinematics to a SHORAD missile. For engagements within T+5s/1.7km, when the missile still has significant delta vee, sure, the missile is definitely better. Past that, it would seem to be advantage DART based on raw kinetics. Yes, there are other factors but the principle behind the DART seems pretty sound if a tad misunderstood by some.

Note:
The above is based on the AIM-9L which includes the initial V0 of M0.9 provided by the launch platform (an aircraft). The RAM launches from a pretty much stationery platform which means it burns out at a lower speed (lets call it M2.0) and closer to the launch platform (lets ballpark it at about 1.7km) with a velocity at T+10s very close to M1.0 (about 340m/s), which means it will come out worse than an air-launched AIM-9L unless we have OSINT that indicates what improvements (if any) have been made.

I think he's just talking about the initial phase. Missiles still have infinitely more maneuverability than an unpowered projectile.
 

Heliox

Junior Member
Registered Member
So you acknowledge that the missile has velocity loss due to drag but the shell magically keeps 80% of its velocity over 5 kilometers?

Sure why not?

How much velocity an unpowered projo loses is a function of it's ballistic coefficient. Shape matters (Cd). Heft (Sd) matters as well.

Do you expect a snub nose 9mm parabellum round to maintain their velocity like a 30:1 l/d DU APFSDS round?

The velocity loss of the AIM-9L is charted per my previous post.
The velocity loss of the DART round is deduced from the statement by Leonardo that ToF to 5km is 5s. Given initial velocity of 1,100m/s, you can infer the velocity loss to 5km to be -200m/s. Nett velocity @ T+5s of 900m/s or 20%ish

There are open source statements that the initial muzzle velocity of DART is 1,200m/s which will make "5s to 5km" work out to 800m/s at 5km or a velocity loss of 33% over 5s. I'm more inclined to take this figure as the eyeball test of the DART projectile places it as somewhat similar to a DM13 APFSDS penetrator.

Look at the chart below for an indication of the velocity curve of the DM13.

APFSDS.png

The graph is v/d, but do a bit of maths and you can figure out the v/t.
Ballparking the figures, the Dm13 loses about 30% at T+5s while the M829 with better Sd only loses 20%. So the 20% velocity loss you seem so incredulous over is not that far fetched if you are shaped and weighted like an APFSDS.

Why is the missile so much worse? Probably because while it is shaped like an APFSDS (kind of), the Sd penalty of a hollow rocket body on the missile doesn't help.
 

Heliox

Junior Member
Registered Member
I think he's just talking about the initial phase. Missiles still have infinitely more maneuverability than an unpowered projectile.

The boost phase last up to only 1.5 to 2km. Past the boost phase, the missile is an unpowered projectile. It's not much of an advantage.

Missile or DART, one will have the advantage over the other depending on which part of the engagement envelope you are looking at.
 
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