Russian R-77-1 based FrankenSAM

Well, well, well....

Russia joints the FrankemSAM club....

There has been speculation for around a year now that Russia's reserves, and indeed production, of SAM's might not be as big as some people were assuming....recent reports of Pantsir systems in Crimea having no missiles (although the huge expansion of the Pantsir fleet is partly the cause of that...but why build more launchers if you cannot provide them with ammo...) to Strela 10 having new missiles being put into production for a very limited system, regular sightings of Buk without its full complement of missiles etc etc.

Putting R-77 to use would use a comparatively underutilised resource and provide some support to the very much under pressure Buk force, which currently appears to be low on missiles and being butchered by Ukrainian loitering munitions...

 
NMaude said:
Probably a substitute for its' dwindling supplies of SA-11 Gadfly, SA-17 Grizzly and SA-27 Gollum SAM systems (Ukraine has been very busy destroying them mostly with drones since 2022).
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Impossible, it's a large footprint system. More so because it can't be dropped off like NASAMS, it's more or less MICA-VL/CAMM set. Imagine, idk, two fire units, 1-2 radar vehicles(1 if dedicated multifunctional, more likely 2 off-the-shelf ones, search&fire control), maybe a separate command unit. It isn't survivable anywhere where it can be engaged by drones.

A simple answer is that it allows the use of thousands of missiles that have already used their life under the wing, which are either not usable anymore, or would waste manufacturers' time, which can be spent making new ones. Pool is free, but result absolutely have the performance to hit any high-performance cruise missile.
If it can use R-27s stocks, the seeker is a downgrade, but performance goes way up, and the missile pool goes into tens of thousands. Same thing as Ukrainian Shershen, but well ahead.

As a bonus, KRTV for decades dreamed about breaking into the Almaz-Antey SAM monopoly. Now they have their shot.
 
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timmymagic said:
which currently appears to be low on missiles and being butchered by Ukrainian loitering munitions...
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SA-11, SA-17 and SA-27 systems have been a priority target for Ukrainian drones.
 
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Ainen said:
A simple answer is that it allows the use of thousands of missiles that have already used their life under the wing, which are either not usable anymore, or would waste manufacturers' time, which can be spent making new ones. Pool is free, but result absolutely have the performance to hit any high-performance cruise missile.
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Time under the wing might lead to that...but R-77 has only been in service for 10 years with RuAF, and the RuAF has never had enough of them, you never see a fighter with more than a handful (if that) onboard. And from the early days of the war the RuAf has clearly moved to limited loadouts specific to a mission, usually including 1 or 2 (max) of a missile type to specifically reduce issues of time on the wing. So I find the idea of there being 'thousand's' of time expired R-77 extremely unlikely....sure there might be a small number, but 'thousands'??? Just can't see it....now it might be worth re-using those flight expired examples, but if the RuAF had a choice they'd definitely get them rebuilt...

But....supporting your hypothesis....RuAF aircraft are also being seen with R-27 variants loaded on a increasingly regular basis...that 'might' be a similar story as the Israeli's continuing use of AIM-7 Sparrow, which appears to be considered still useful against certain drone threats due to larger warhead (and perhaps even active RF missiles struggling to get lock on small targets) plus the fact they're in stock and need using...

Personally I think the only explanation must be Russia trying to plug the gap that Buk losses and depletion of their missiles has caused, and to extend additional all weather AD to other areas.
 
VKS has had enough of them since the very large (several thousand) 2020 order, which came before the war procurement (2022-). Now we're in 2026.

Wartime patrols expend the flight life of missiles quickly, and missiles can't be refurbished indefinitely (plus they use some of the same stations that are used to produce new missiles). Assuming that the production version is now R-77M, there's probably more merit in making a simple MICA-VL-like solution.

I.e. it's likely the two largest pools of "traditional" quality ammo left untouched: AAM production and old AAM stocks. Some others exist (like Kalashnikov running around with Krona), but this is the most obvious available one.
 
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Although it may work as a temporary emergency solution, the grid fins used in the early versions of the R77 cause very high drag, and therefore these makeshift SAM systems will have terrible aerodynamic performance at low altitudes where air is signficantly denser then fighter patrol altitudes, and consequently a short range.
 
timmymagic said:
Well, well, well....

Russia joints the FrankemSAM club....

There has been speculation for around a year now that Russia's reserves, and indeed production, of SAM's might not be as big as some people were assuming....recent reports of Pantsir systems in Crimea having no missiles (although the huge expansion of the Pantsir fleet is partly the cause of that...but why build more launchers if you cannot provide them with ammo...) to Strela 10 having new missiles being put into production for a very limited system, regular sightings of Buk without its full complement of missiles etc etc.

Putting R-77 to use would use a comparatively underutilised resource and provide some support to the very much under pressure Buk force, which currently appears to be low on missiles and being butchered by Ukrainian loitering munitions...

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I suppose the primary reason for R-77 being employed as SAM is simply that it's irrelevant in its AAM role, as Russian air combat happens at more extreme ranges (in large part to avoid long range SAM threats). It has also become obsolete in face of Meteor and Aim-120C/D.

R-77 has lock on after launch capability. Its employment as SAM (if far enough forward, which is very doubtful)could counter the very low level Hammer PGM bomb tossing by the Ukrainians IF there is an airborne radar (Su-3x, MiG-31?) detecting them. It's again highly doubtful whether the Russians have developed the cooperative engagement capability for that, though.
 
lastdingo said:
I suppose the primary reason for R-77 being employed as SAM is simply that it's irrelevant in its AAM role, as Russian air combat happens at more extreme ranges (in large part to avoid long range SAM threats). It has also become obsolete in face of Meteor and Aim-120C/D.
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It's hard to call a weapon obsolete when it's a weapon in hi-lo pair with R-37M(which outranges any deployed western weapon). As a medium-range supplement, it's perfectly competitive and more (it doesn't live on updated 1980s vanilla seekers at least).

Furthermore, by itself it's perfectly comparable to the late C model AMRAAM, which form significant part of Western stock. Many frontline blue nations either don't have anything better yet(or sometimes even directly equal, like TAF), or are significantly limited in platforms able to use better weapons (JASDF).

lastdingo said:
R-77 has lock on after launch capability. Its employment as SAM (if far enough forward, which is very doubtful)could counter the very low level Hammer PGM bomb tossing by the Ukrainians IF there is an airborne radar (Su-3x, MiG-31?) detecting them. It's again highly doubtful whether the Russians have developed the cooperative engagement capability for that, though.
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AASMs can fly maybe a couple of dozen kilometers from a low altitude toss, minus manpad range. This would leave the truck in an absolutely unsurvivable position.
Furthermore, can you see on the leaked truck datalink mast?
If there's a way to use R-77-1 v AASM tossers, it is an ambush by the fighter itself. Certainly not a “sneaky" Katyusha launcher deep within drone wasteland.
 
and that image dated back from 2024 apparently but there dont seem to be a large scale fielding. 2 Years passed there should be more of that thing around.

lastdingo said:
R-77 has lock on after launch capability. Its employment as SAM (if far enough forward, which is very doubtful)could counter the very low level Hammer PGM bomb tossing by the Ukrainians IF there is an airborne radar (Su-3x, MiG-31?) detecting them. It's again highly doubtful whether the Russians have developed the cooperative engagement capability for that, though.
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It has its own radar seeker, so any radar in any bands provided it can provide say some enough accuracy, can use the missile. The beauty of Active Radar Homing missile is that the sensor aiming for the missile Does not need to be in the same band or even same type of sensor. Like you see why British Daring class have S-band Sampson providing tracking and engagement capability for Aster, can only happen because Aster have Active seeker.

MarineEngineer said:
the grid fins used in the early versions of the R77 cause very high drag, and therefore these makeshift SAM systems will have terrible aerodynamic performance at low altitudes where air is signficantly denser then fighter patrol altitudes, and consequently a short range.
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It is in Transonic speed but Supersonic it's kinda comparable to the conventional fins.
 

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The issue is to know when to shoot where, be able to tell the missile (computing, interface) and all this in time for a very likely very short opportunity. Russia was (is?) using handheld Garmins for navigation of their newest strike fighter (Su-34), the area close to the frontline is heavily jammed broadband - so it's rather unlikely that the Russians can establish a detection-identification-information handover-computation of firing solution-programming of missile-orienting of launcher-launch-flight-hit sequence.

And that's without the mess of timely decisionmaking with the Russian command system and culture.
 
Ainen said:
It's hard to call a weapon obsolete when it's a weapon in hi-lo pair with R-37M(which outranges any deployed western weapon). As a medium-range supplement, it's perfectly competitive and more (it doesn't live on updated 1980s vanilla seekers at least).
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R-37M does not outrange AIM-174 and it's questionable whether it outranges Meteor or AIM-260.

Medium range appears to merely be a contact breaker, suitable to threaten a pursuer in order to shake it off. It takes a huge no escape zone to actually score kills against aware enemies who get timely warning (by ground radar, AEW or own sensors) of incoming MRAAMs.
 
lastdingo said:
R-37M does not outrange AIM-174 and it's questionable whether it outranges Meteor or AIM-260.
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AIM-174A - point taken, I forgot about it; though it hardly seriously affects Russia and comes on a single American naval, effectively subsonic fighter.
AIM-260 - not operational, and honestly unlikely to be truly longer-ranged.
Meteor - no specific data, but Meteor is not considered terribly outstanding in dumb range even within its own class. It's ultimately a gimmicky MRAAM with very high Isp, not LRAAM.

In practice, VKS substantially outranges its western opposition for almost ~10 years, and the newly deployed picture is grimmer than the wide one (R-77M, R-97 are part of the picture as well).
lastdingo said:
Medium range appears to merely be a contact breaker, suitable to threaten a pursuer in order to shake it off. It takes a huge no escape zone to actually score kills against aware enemies who get timely warning (by ground radar, AEW or own sensors) of incoming MRAAMs.
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I think that the actual answer, since the very dawn of flight, is engaging unexpectedly at shorter ranges(=stealth is the way). Long-range throwing, unless completely unexpected by the opponent(intel failure), is bound to be not overly effective against an aware opponent.
While running down targets to exhaustion is interesting(via ramjets), I frankly doubt it'll emerge as a viable decisive tactic against jets, which will always have more energy, information superiority (after chase away from hostile sensors), and will reach active self-defense at some point. I.e. at least for now, I think Comete is an update to keep up with evolving medium-range SRFE weapons(PL-15,16; AIM-260; R-77M), and attempt to keep 3 unstealthy platforms in the game in a very unfriendly decade(2030s). I may be wrong, of course.

But what medium-range missile does(unlike LRAAM) is that it can be used effectively in almost any circumstances. High, low, fast, slow, high offbore, whatever. R-77s scored hits after R-37 was introduced. And to my understanding, at least in a couple cases, it was done at moderate range in low to low ambushes(I remember Ukr interview naming this as an employed Ru tactic).
LRAAM is ineffective in these circumstances(and btw use of R-33S pool as GL-AAM is probably absolutely ineffective for the same reasons).
 
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Tanks often get destroyed by something else than tanks.

I suppose the way to go for killing combat aircraft is to prefer launch from the surface (persistence and cost advantages despite the need for more rocket fuel), with fighters launching missiles being gap fillers for places where you need to destroy aircraft, but have no surface (or even subsurface) platform in range.

AAMs and SAMs have become interchangeable, in some cases near-identical (as in this topic).
You can create an xy km no escape zone SAM out of a xy km no escape zone AAM by adding a booster stage.

The migration of more or less modern AAMs into SAM jobs may be a symptom of a move from air superiority by air superiority fighter towards air superiority by cooperative engagement capability with SAM.
 
NMaude said:
That is a premature assessment to make.
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It's ultimately a medium-sized weapon. It will, on a philosophical level, define "normalcy", rather than long range weapons. Yes, this normalcy will be longer ranged than early LRAAMs(R-33s and AIM-54s), that's the way it is.
PL-15 didn't magically turn into LRAAM or make PL-17 unnecessary. Rather, it redefined MRAAM standard.

Furthermore, the same solutions applied to a weapon 2-3 times larger will produce more range, faster ToT, and substantially more independent seeker head; this is just the nature of things.
 
Forest Green said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/2043296465162781158
View: https://x.com/NOELreports/status/2043296465162781158?s=20
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It makes complete sense to me to configure such a simple and cost effective SAM system in time of war - giving mobility to a key targeted platform of any adversary, whilst utilising a missile already in one's inventory or in production. Of course one needs to be realistic and appreciate such an improvised SAM systems limitations, when compared to a tailored designed SAM systems. I wouldn't use such a system on a battlefield. But for defending rear echelons, yes.


Regards
Pioneer
 
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AIM-174A - point taken, I forgot about it; though it hardly seriously affects Russia and comes on a single American naval, effectively subsonic fighter.
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All of Russia has around 900 active fighter aircraft. The US Navy has around 450 AIM-174 capable Super Hornets (airframes that are suitable to use AIM174 with modifications, not talking about the numbers of all F18s or currently AIM-174 fielding test squadron hornets). That “single naval, effectively subsonic fighter” is equivalent to half of the entire Russian fighter fleet. The F-18 Super Hornet is not a plane to be underestimated, either in quantity or quality.

AIM-260 - not operational, and honestly unlikely to be truly longer-ranged.
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Saying that it’s not operational and probably not longer ranged is a bit of a stretch. The whole reason it exists is to counter stuff like the PL-15, so it would be pretty strange if it didn’t at least match or exceed that in reach. Also, the US track record with things like the AIM-120 AMRAAM shows a steady trend of improving both range and guidance at the same time. The lack of public specs is just normal for newer systems, not evidence that it underperforms. Also it is way closer to mass serial production (not producing a few and then using them for photo ops, talking about big numbers) then the new variants of Russian long range missiles.

Meteor - no specific data, but Meteor is not considered terribly outstanding in dumb range even within its own class. It's ultimately a gimmicky MRAAM with very high Isp, not LRAAM.
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Calling the MBDA Meteor gimmicky is absurd considering that objectively it is currently one of the best beyond visual range air to air missile in the world. The ramjet isn’t there just to push the max range number higher on paper, it’s there to keep the missile energetic much later into the engagement. The advantage is that they keep enough energy to stay dangerous for longer, which limits the target’s options over time. That translates into a bigger no escape zone, which in practice matters more than raw range. A missile that still has speed and maneuverability in the endgame is simply harder to defeat, so it’s not really a gimmick but a different optimization.

In practice, VKS substantially outranges its western opposition for almost ~10 years, and the newly deployed picture is grimmer than the wide one (R-77M, R-97 are part of the picture as well).
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Max range numbers of these classic rocket powered ballistic trajectory air to air missiles depend heavily on ideal launch conditions, which you rarely get in a real fight. Once you factor in maneuvering targets, electronic warfare, additional control surface drag caused by guidence algorithm inefficiencies and imperfect targeting data, the practical engagement ranges shrink a lot.

That's my two cents
 
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