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About 20 years ago people thought giving semi-active laser guidance to a 70 mm hydra missile would cut costs, for Hellfire misiles were expended on Afghna and Iraqi cars. It took a while, but APKWS II has been in service both for helicopters and aircraft, with occasional experiments to use it as a surface-to-air missile. These missiles turned out to be the best cost:performance munitions in Western arsenals and even the EXTREMELY wasteful CENTCOM has adopted their use to down Houthi Shaheeds.
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| https://www.twz.com/air/f-16s-with-larger-laser-guided-rocket-loads-drone-kill-marking-emerge-over-middle-east |
Their advantage isn't just the low costs (though using 1980's and 1990's era infrared guided missiles is kinda free, for they are already in inventory). You can carry 14 (2x7) or 19 such small missiles instead of two normal infrared guided missile or five LMMs under one pylon. I know of no LMM-certified fighter, but most Western fighters can carry a Hydra pod or NATO-origin equivalents.
Europe has smartened-up Hydra equivalents to APKWS II equivalents:
(more details on German wikipedia)
I'm not sure whether FZ71 features proximity fusing, but ACULEUS 68 LG does.
So these are the European APKWS II alternatives that can serve as cheap air-to-air missiles against munitions. They require laser target designation.
Semi-active
laser guidance basically uses a laser to illuminate the target at a
specific wavelength typical of the kind of laser and a seeker that just
pays attention to this wavelength (with a little tolerance to account
for doppler shift). This means the starget could be stealthy to it by either scattering the light (avoid returning it 180° back) or absorbing it extremely well (most likely a combination of it).
An imaging infrared seeker is under development for such rockets, but it might cost a lot more. There's the open question whether semi-active laser works against terrain following missiles. I don't know. Maybe the missile would chase the reflections on the (back)ground instead.
Such cheap A2A missiles might be the munition of choice for intercepting cruise missiles over land, both cheap and expensive ones. Fighters with built-in 30 mm gun might use a 30 mm proximity-fused HE cartridge instead, but these guns are AFAIK not prepared for single shots and AFAIK only Americans produce such fuses.
The platform needs to match and at least briefly exceed their cruise speed, which rules turboprop aircraft out.
The establishment may be able to assign jet trainer aircraft this mission, equip them with a FLIR with laser target designator plus whatever avionics it takes to coordinate a search line or hunt a particular missile. The problem here is that jet trainers fell a bit out of fashion (exception being the new high performance M-346) because of modern high end turboprop trainers and having jet trainers in the own air force somewhat fell out of fashion a swell because training in a joint establishment was more cost-efficient.
Another aircraft category that might come to the resuce are the business jets. Some of them have the size and flight performance to catch up even with turbojet-powered normal (not Shaheed-style) cruise missiles such as Kalibr (Mach 0.8 at very low altitude). They could fly at medium altitude for superior speed and dive close to their never exceed speed, then maintain M 0.8 long enough for the kill. It's mostly the big and long-range business jets that are this fast, though. There are about 700 business aicraft registered in Germany, but the vast majority will be unsuitable to more than interception of jet Shaheeds.
Fun fact; there was a project for using a business jet airframe as interceptor before, and it featured afterburners to catch up with business jet smuggler aircraft.
We should prepare: Choose business aircraft (and jet trainers) that are available (could be commandeered), test and certify them with equipment for the auxiliary interceptor role (including IFF), develop their integration into the air defence scheme, prepare the conscription of ground crews and pilots. We could greatly complement the normal fighter fleet in face of saturation attack waves.
S O
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