F-15 to Carry PAC-3 Missiles?

Inside the Army, Dec. 25, 2006 -- The Missile Defense Agency will soon award Lockheed Martin a $3 million contract to study the feasibility of equipping F-15C fighters with Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles to counter cruise missiles and intercept ballistic missiles in their boost phase, according to agency and company officials.

External Source: Inside the Army; 12/25/2006 (subscription service)
Inside Defense Headlines - MDA STEPS UP STUDY OF FIGHTER AIRCRAFT EQUIPPED WITH PAC-3 MISSILES

The F-15 could carry 2 possibly 4 PAC-3's - Also being considered for such a mission is the B-1B, but the F-15 is thought to be the best option.
These F-15's would have enhanced avionics systems onboard packaged for just this sort of mission profile and be datalinked into the IAD network.

Sounds like a viable plan against a North Korean threat if you have them stationed in Alaska, Japan and South Korea.
Remember this is boost phase defense - therefore the western US coast would not be a good base.

Also, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean would be good locations for this sort of defense against Iranian missiles.

Thoughts?

How would you get F-15s in the Indian Ocean??!


Diego Garcia?

So...


Almost immediately after phasing out the primary long range interceptor (the F-14 Tomcat), the DoD realises... "Oh Sh_t!! We need a missile interceptor - now, lets burn some money doing feasibility on this"


Even better - F-14s could be parked on a carrier off the Korean coast - and be sure of getting the missiles.




Ahhh.... sometimes ye gotta wonder

deff due to the loss of the 14. holy crap the military seems more then absent minded sometimes.

Yeah, this is probably an effect from phasing out the F-14.

How well could the system be enhanced and what plusses are there? Would it be possible now in stead of the PAC-3 being a Theatre Anti-Missile system to be air mobile?

Are there any other Anti-Air systems that have been placed on aircraft such as the one their researching now?

Shattered OUT...

Originally posted by kilcoo316
Almost immediately after phasing out the primary long range interceptor (the F-14 Tomcat), the DoD realises... "Oh Sh_t!! We need a missile interceptor - now, lets burn some money doing feasibility on this"


Even better - F-14s could be parked on a carrier off the Korean coast - and be sure of getting the missiles.

Ahhh.... sometimes ye gotta wonder

If you're going to park it off the coast, why don't you just modify a Standard missile tube on a warship and fire it from that, instead of from an F-14? The only logical location for an airfield based interceptor seems to be Japan - if you have F-15's in SK and an ICBM is launched from NK at the US, you are already playing catch-up. The Taepodong-2 engines only burn for 5-6 minutes, so Alaska just looks too far away to launch an aircraft and still hit a missile in boost phase. Even if the aircraft is already airborne, I would think that the mission profile required would be beyond the limits of the F-15 and the known capabilities of the PAC-3.

Originally posted by crusader97

If you're going to park it off the coast, why don't you just modify a Standard missile tube on a warship and fire it from that, instead of from an F-14?

Surely that is obvious - you can keep a CAP close enough to the coast from a decent distance (for the carrier) offshore without compromising carrier security. What your saying is comparable to saying "why bother with carriers at all?"

By limiting yourself to what is essentially a missile frigate, your dramatically reducing both your window of intercepting the ICBM, and your chance of surviving long enough to actually attempt an intercept.

[edit on 27/12/06 by kilcoo316]

Originally posted by kilcoo316
By limiting yourself to what is essentially a missile frigate, your dramatically reducing both your window of intercepting the ICBM, and your chance of surviving long enough to actually attempt an intercept.

[edit on 27/12/06 by kilcoo316]

Total burn time for all three stages of the Taepodong-2 maxes out at about 6 minutes. That is pretty much your total window for boost phase intercept. The max range of the missile BARELY puts the West Coast of the US in danger. Both of these factors really limit the number of possible launch trajectories. I would think that keeping multiple frigates (2 or 3) along the most likely launch trajectories (which if you look at the great circle path, say on Google Earth, there are not many and would be very narrow) would be more effective coverage than keeping specialized F-15's and Cobra Ball (or other aircraft necessary to provide target info after launch) always in the air. The F-15's would be able to provide greater flexibility if required, but the Taepodong would need a dramatic increase in range to widen the possible trajectories.

This would be a great mission for the supposed B-1R...

[edit on 27-12-2006 by JFrazier]

Iggy,

As others have stated, putting jets out of Japan, over water, on extended coverage CAPs for Korean missile systems is an exercise in diminishing returns. Not least because Japan is likely fully coverable with basic No Dong technology on any damn trajectory you care to name.

That said, I would start with a weaponized MQ-4 as a baseline and hope and pray the missiles high-endo mechanic was good enough to work as-is (rather than LEAP to an SM.4a equivalent as a pure high-tier weapon with long development lag of it's own).

We tried something like this with the HARM-ASAT simulations as part of Raptor Talon I think it was. Never could get enough cross track performance to get even a small threat country sufficiently 'on the rise' guaranteed of fallback kills without effectively making the UCAV as numerous as the tacjets it nominally was intended to preserve for other missions. And so the effort was 'abandoned for cause' beyond that of the DOD refusal to weaponize a superior HALE solution.

CMD is a more interesting issue, especially given the typically short range accredited to the ERINT. I would suggest that altitude buys you crossing planview geometries on LO target tracks and the interceptor speed/snap down of the weapon is then used to buy into the intercept geometry before the weapon passes from your radar cone.

KR-100/KS-172 functionally and by looks is more or less an ERINT as much as an AAAM clone and aside from the golden needle to needle $$:trade issues (for which DEWS /always/ win in the end), it could probably be made workable.

Still pretty worthless (as persistent coverage on a low-encounter probability threat) in comparison with the simpler notion of JLENS+MALI as a land-VLS launch box force cued by a few simple aerostats or an equivalent 'mountain top' (RQ-4+RTIP as SM.6 cuer) type handed defense from an offshore CG/DDG.

Given as they want me to register before I read even the synopsis, I cannot say what the article included beyond your initial quote to cover these issues.

ARGUMENT:
For every weapon there is a countermeasure. The Taepo Dongs are just so much fluff in the wind so long as the Chinese keep there hands on the Norkian's economic choke chain because they have only the one launch site, no silos and too damn few warheads to make the ending of all Peninsular life North of the 38th Parallel worth even Dear Leader's mad hatter teaparty.

OTOH, if you give the attention-deprived brat what he wants by way of trying to stopper his genie bottle, his next-best solution is going to be either out-of-country through subs and infilitrators.

Or road and rail mobile TELs and super hard if not 'dense pack' shell gamed silo fields. For which Korea's geography and status as something like the worlds fourth or fifth largest purchaser of LBTM positions it rather well.

CONCLUSION:
If you're not willing to start wars so that you can finish spending wastefully on 'defense' (by making a public hanging example of the losers), you are basically stuck with the notion of isolation-until-generational-death as the only means to rid yourselves of those you deem too unstable to have nuclear toys. And yet too dangerous to pull them from.

The sooner we come round to this conclusion, the sooner we can dual-key both the Koreans and the Taiwanese and stop letting the Chinese bleed us white 'defending against' a stalking horse strategic policy.

I mean after all, China doesn't have any problems threatening to invade a 'rebel province' with whatever means necessary so long as that is their point of access to Western banking and technology efforts. And the China/Norkian connection is also inherent to the Pakistani Ghauri and Iranian Shahab systems. Hell Norkias own nuke tech base is origin-sourceable to China.

So why can't we just hand the ROKs some glowey in darky counterforce and walk away cheap?

What all the morons at the five walled asylum fail to realize is that we are having the same game played against us as we once did unto Russia:

Namely that nuclear weapons trump conventional ones whether by mass or sophistication. Always have, always will. So if their stupidity lay in failing ot acknowledge that they can't beat us on the fields of a tripwire-NATO because we will rad their asses at least 30 minutes before they return the favor. And indeed, 'noone on the planet' can beat the Mighty War Machine that is U.S. militarist adventurism in the post Cold War environment.

WHY NOT make us spend money hand over fist to beat those whom they arm to stand-as-second-only-first in their place? They get money from the sale. They get the pleasure of seeing U.S. spend to ammeliorate the consequences of that sale. And nobody shoots his arms dealer.

Of course it's probably not the inhabitants of the Pentagon who are morons but rather those who believe the 'dire tales' coming out of the looney bin as an excuse to leverage our futures to their retirement plans.

Cost to Cost however; the only way to win is not only not to play. But not to spend like fools pretending we intended to.


KPl.

Don't see what this has to do with the F-14, it had no ABM capability and would be no better than the F-15 in this role, nor did it have any significant anti cruise missile capability. Personally I think this is an exercise in futility and will only waste more money, sort of like the F-15 anti-satellite craze.

You cannot continuously fly and base an F-15 close enough to offer the sort of time critical coverage needed with missiles that have boost and ascent stages of less than five minutes. The PAC-3 puts the F-15 in danger as it will have limited range (even if it is air launched) and it is not fast enough when used at extend ranges. In terms of cruise missile defense it also does not make much sense. Why load an F-15 with two short ranges PAC-3's when you can load it with 8 long range AIM-120D's which with an improved seeker, datalink and AESA radar should offer capability against cruise missiles. The only way to have a viable boost/ascent phase intercept system is with long range DEW's and space based boost systems, anything else and you're wasting money.

Originally posted by ch1466


What all the morons at the five walled asylum fail to realize is that we are having the same game played against us as we once did unto Russia:


KPl.

Interesting analogy.. I think I agree.. And they're(China) are becoming darn good at it too..
NK to contain/divert PACCOM and Pakistan to contain/divert Indian forces.

Its an interesting development. I wonder how it would impact the ABL as the F-15E would be a bit more easier to defend close in than a lumbering 747. other than that:


Air launching a PAC 3 from altitude and speed would give it quite an energy boost. It has a 100+ km range in its ground launched incarnation. An airborne launch would give it quite a boost in range easily outpacing the AIM-120.

In times of crisis it is not unreasonable for Japan to have a BARCAP up and oeprating. WHy not have some of the a/c armed and ready to go. While overkill the PAC-3's should be able to go after other aircraft as well if it came down to that.

I assume this is going to work on the same principles as an ASAT launch. F-15 climbs to its max ceiling and fires it off. Cheap and cheerful missile defence but at the same time they retain ASAT capabilities.

Also, $3m is a terribly small amount for any kind of large scale military study, is it not? I get the feeling that they already know exactly what will happen.

Originally posted by ch1466
What all the morons at the five walled asylum fail to realize is that we are having the same game played against us as we once did unto Russia:

Not even.

It seems as if the concept of MAD has been abandoned (or forgotten).


All dictators have one thing in common - they need to live to dictate - so no matter how dimented Kim Jong-Il is, he is not gonna do nothing stupid as it will be like placing a gun to his head and pulling the trigger.


Anyway, Nerdling, for the $3m being small, its only a feasibility study, looking at things like pylon weight limits, computer coding integration and launch seperation. Don't expect a working prototype at the end of it only a "yes, a prototype can be built" or "no, its impossible".



Crusader - how much you willing to stake on your intelligence estimates of the range of the Taepodong-2? Just considering how accurate intelligence estimates have been recently...

[edit on 28/12/06 by kilcoo316]

Originally posted by kilcoo316
Crusader - how much you willing to stake on your intelligence estimates of the range of the Taepodong-2? Just considering how accurate intelligence estimates have been recently...

[edit on 28/12/06 by kilcoo316]

It depends on the payload - are we launching another empty NK threat, or one of their full-on 1/2 KT Neighborhood destroyers? Theoretically, the deuce is supposed to have a range of 4,000 Km out to 10,000Km (developmental goal), with the US West Coast ranging in at around 8,800 or so. In reality, I don't think that the missile has survived more than 40s into it's boost phase.