Missile launch gone wrong.
On Jul. 18, U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer USS The Sullivans was damaged after an old Raytheon Standard Missile 2 Block IIIA guided missile exploded shortly after launch off the U.S. Atlantic coast., exploded shortly after takeoff.
As a consequence of the explosion, the warship was showered with debris that sparked fire on the port side of the destroyer.
According to the report published by USNI News, that obtained the pictures of the explosion, The Sullivans was involved in a missile exercise along with the guided missile destroyer USS Carney (DDG-64) which was not damaged during the incident.
There were no reported injuries.
“The SM-2 Block IIIA, first fielded in 1991, was developed to not only handle traditional air threats like fighters but was modified to interdict sea skimming targets like cruise missiles. […] While the Navy didn’t comment on why the missile failed, the photos point to a problem with the rocket engines that drove the SM-2,” USNI Editor Sam Lagrone explained in his post.
Image credit: U.S. Navy via USNI News.
Cool photo of a Vympel R-73 (NATO reporting name AA-11 Archer).
The R-73 is an infrared homing (heat-seeking), short-range missile with a sensitive, cryogenic cooled seeker that can “see” targets up to 40° off the missile’s centerline.
Developed by Vympel NPO, the missile has an off-boresight capability and can be targeted by a helmet-mounted sight (HMS): pilots can designate targets from a minimum range of about 300 meters to nearly 30 km by simply looking at them.
In this post you can see an interesting image released by UAC, the Russian holding which encompasses Irkut, Mikoyan, Sukhoi, Ilyushin, Tupolev, Beriev and Yakovlev, showing an R-73 just fired by a Sukhoi Su-27.
Image credit: Airforce.ru
Footage from the Syrian Air War, showing a Syrian Mi-8 helicopter hit by a surface to air missile was turned into a commercial by a Ukrainian company.
In order to showcase the resilience of their products, Motor Sich, a large aircraft and helicopter engine manufacturer has created a controversial advertising campaign based on the scene of a Hip helicopter (one those aircraft equipped with their engines) surving the direct hit of an IR guided missile in Syria.
Not all Assad’s choppers were so lucky.
The slogan at the end of the commercial is related to the Syrian war: the “Motorsich Akbar” (with Akbar meaning Great in Arabic) hits off the “Allah Akbar” that can be heard repeated endlessly by the rebels in most, if not all, war videos coming from Syria.
H/T to Andriy Pryymachenko for the heads-up
India has signed a new contract with Russia that settles the cooperation regarding the BrahMos missile.
With the agreement signed in 1998, New Delhi and Moscow had initially agreed for a 15-year partnership, then extended up to February 2014 earlier this year.
With this new contract, the two countries will continue to work on project as long as needed.
Brahmos is an air-to-surface supersonic cruise missile able to achieve a top speed of Mach 2.8. The missile is to be a standard armament of the navy vessels and ground forces, and a submarine variant and aircraft variant are also being developed, with the latter being pitched for Su-30MKI fighters.
Comparable to an American JASSM, BrahMos is 3 tons in weight with a 300 kg warhead. Indian Flankers will only be able to carry a single missile.
Guidance system is inertial in the first stages of flight; later the precision is ensured by a radar or GPS/GLONASS guidance.
Range is about 300 km.
Testing is to begin next year.
A BrahMos-M miniaturized version is also being developed, and it is planned to enter service in 2017 at the earliest. The mini version is expected to weigh 1,500 kg and a Su-30 should be able to carry 2-3 of them.
The weapon is also to be integrated with the MiG-29s and Rafales.
Image Credit: defense-update.com
Jacek Siminski for TheAviationist
Among the hardware on display during the annual military parade in Tehran, on Sunday Sept. 22, 2013, Iran not only displayed a new indigenous passive phased array radar system for detecting stealth targets and cruise missiles, but it also showed the country’s latest home-made missile productions, including the Fakour-90.
The Fakour-90 missile is one of the latest “state-of-the-art productions” of the Iranian Armed Forces which can be mounted on F-14 fighter jets.
It’s almost identical to the AIM-54 Phoenix and, more than a brand new missile, is just a domestically upgraded, partially reverse engineered version of the famous long range missile carried by the U.S. Navy Tomcat.
The AIM-54 was developed in the mid-sixties and the IRIAF has operated some of them. Even if we can’t talk of a “new missile”, we can’t but notice that the Iranians managed to keep them in service and, maybe, upgrade them a little bit. What’s even more surprising is that Tehran managed to keep the F-14s airworthy, considered the sanctions on Iran and the consequent lack of spare parts for the Tomcats.
The different component is hidden inside the missile’s nose cone and is (probably) a semi-active homing system of the Shalamcheh surface-to-air missile – once again a reverse engineered, improved version of the U.S. MIM-23 Hawk SAM.
Image credit: FNA, PressTV
