AVIONICS AND ARMAMENT FROM "A" TO "Z"

Independent Military Review. January 8 - 14, 2005. Vladislav Kramar

The 10th, jubilee volume of the Encyclopedia "Russia’s Arms and Technologies. The XXI Century Encyclopedia" covers aircraft armament and airborne radio-electronic equipment. The Encyclopedia already includes the volume "Military Aircraft" (Volume 4), but materials covering avionics and armament systems were not included there. Such an approach should be considered as optimal. On one hand, it would be handy to find everything in one volume: aircraft, engines, onboard radio-electronic equipment, and information about enterprises. On the other hand, an encyclopedic presentation should meet the requirement that the coverage has to be complete. Sergei Petrenko, the production editor of the 10th volume, told to the IMR correspondent that it was a complicated problem to describe just avionics and armament on 800 pages. Nevertheless, there was no publication covering this subject in such detail. As is generally known, the competitive advantage of a military plane or helicopter depends mainly on electronic and armament stuff. This fact explains, why radio-electronic and armament systems are being improved quicker than other aircraft components. If these subject areas were covered by the volume published in 2002, its content would be obsolete by now.

The new volume presents all the arsenal of modern and prospective air-launched guided missiles. Both classes "air-to-air" and "air-to-surface" are presented including strategic cruise nuclear missiles, anti-ship and anti-radar missiles. There are presented anti-tank and anti-aircraft heliborne missile systems, as well as guided bombs. It should be noted that editors included a separate chapter covering guidance systems for missiles and guided bombs. There is detailed description of guided aerial bombs including heavy bombs – 9000, 5000, and 3000 kg; newest designs – bombs with a correction and gliding module, bomb clusters with self-guiding units; conversion designs; as well as unguided missiles and launchers for them, guns and cannons.

But the main part of the book covers modern and prospective avionics. It contains systematic description of sighting and navigation systems, onboard radars, antennae systems, optoelectronic sighting and navigation systems and facilities, navigation systems for pilotage, onboard computers and data processing systems, displays, as well as flight information recording equipment and decryption facilities. There are described details of battle support facilities for reconnaissance, long-range radar detection, radio-electronic warfare and communications.

Great attention is paid to description of high technologies, constructive and technological solutions in the sphere of avionics, as well as new materials for aviation technics. Modernization of some military plane and helicopter models is described in a separate chapter. There is a chapter covering aviation trainers. The volume includes a section containing information about 68 enterprises and scientific-research institutes of the defense industry. Usage of the Common Classifier of Supply Items for Russian Armed Forces, compatible with similar foreign classifiers by its parameters, adds value to this publication, as well as the text in English.

The book is not a summary of development in avionics and aircraft armament during the last century quarter. It outlines prospects for future development as well. General of the Army Vladimir Mikhailov, the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, writes in his introductory article that avionics and armament must be compliant with new requirements, such as multi-function all-weather twenty-four-hour operations, high precision and selectivity of target hitting, as well as full integration of airborne systems into reconnaissance-information and reconnaissance-attack systems common for all kinds of military forces. Lieutenant General Alexander Zelin, the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, defines in his article main directions of development in aircraft armament. In particular, he means developing high-precision aircraft armament for twenty-four-hour operations, as well as modernizing existing aircraft weapons; increasing the share of high-precision weapons in the total structure of aircraft armament suite, arming attack aircraft with high-precision guided bombs of various caliber and with guided missiles for hitting small targets; improving the quality of combat control and information support for high-precision aircraft weapons by using new technologies and sensors; equipping guided air-to-surface missiles with multi-mode guidance systems containing radar and infrared matrix multi-spectral sensors and elements of artificial intellect, as well as with power plants and warheads adaptable to combat conditions; creating a prospective system of unguided aircraft weapons with an extended set of operating ranges based on simplified correction systems and modular design, with increased power and multi-factor destruction, adaptable to target types and combat conditions, and decreasing the number of models while improving maintenance technologies; designing new explosive compositions with increased explosive and propelling power and with sensitivity to external influence at the TNT level or less.