Ground to air missile: long tassel shoots Sirius ■ Zhang Hui, Li Weijian According to the Russian satellite news agency, in December last year, Yemeni Hussein armed forces destroyed an F-15 fighter with a "fat-1" surface to air missile in malib province. An advanced fighter fell under a relatively old surface to air missile, which made people focus on the equipment of surface to air missile again. Surface to air missiles are missiles launched from the ground to attack air and even space targets. In the past, they were mainly defensive aviation weapons, which were used to deal with reconnaissance aircraft, bombers, fighters, helicopters, UAVs, cruise missiles, etc. Now, in order to cope with the increasingly advanced air and space attack system, it is developing towards the integration of air and space defense. Compared with the antiaircraft artillery, the ground to air missile has long range, high firing height and high single shot hit rate; Compared with interceptors, surface to air missiles have fast response and strong power. They can form a multi-channel air defense fire network at high, medium and low altitudes and at long, medium and short ranges. As an important part of modern air defense weapon system, what development process has surface to air missile gone through? What are the main technical features at present? What is the future development trend? See the interpretation. A brief history of surface to air missile evolution A spear makes a shield. From the 1870 Franco Prussian War, the general army made "anti balloon guns" to shoot down the French army's contact balloons, to the anti-aircraft guns, searchlights, air defense radar... Air defense weapons evolved with the evolution of air attack weapons in World War I and World War II. In the middle of World War II, the Allies began bombing Germany. In order to counter the overwhelming bombers from the United States and Britain, Germany has stepped up the research and development of surface to air missiles, mainly including "gentian grass", "Rhine daughter", "Butterfly" and "waterfall". Some progress has been made in the research of these types of missiles, but Nazi Germany was destroyed before it could be put into actual combat. Germany's pioneering exploration in this field became the basis for the study of surface to air missiles by the United States and the Soviet Union after the war. The first generation surface to air missiles were developed from the end of World War II to the end of 1950s. The main R & D countries were the United States and the Soviet Union. On the basis of German technology, they studied, imitated and tested a number of missiles, and began to design and manufacture the first generation of surface to air missiles by themselves. In order to deal with high-altitude and high-speed targets such as strategic bombers and strategic reconnaissance aircraft, the United States and the Soviet Union focus on the development of medium, high-altitude and medium and long-range missiles. Representative models include the American "pomak" and "Nike" type I and II missiles, and the Soviet Union's sam-1 and sam-2 missiles. The first generation surface to air missiles generally have a range of 50 kilometers, a maximum of 140 kilometers and a firing height of about 30 kilometers, which poses a certain threat to high-altitude aircraft. In October 1959, our surface to air missile unit shot down a US made rb-57d high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft with Soviet made sam-2 missiles, which was the first to shoot down enemy aircraft with surface to air missiles. Sam-2 missile. The second generation surface to air missile was developed from the late 1950s to the late 1960s. Under the threat of medium and high altitude and medium and long-range missiles, combat aircraft began to adopt low altitude and ultra-low altitude penetration tactics. Accordingly, a new generation of surface to air missiles capable of attacking medium and low altitude, medium and long-range, low altitude and short-range targets have been launched one after another. Representative models include "Hawk", "little Quercus" and "red eye" of the United States and sam-3, sam-6 and sam-7 of the Soviet Union. In addition, medium and high altitude and medium and long-range surface to air missiles have also developed. The Soviet Union has successfully developed sam-4 and sam-5 missiles, of which sam-5 has a range of 250 km. It has been widely equipped with Warsaw Pact and Middle East countries. The second generation surface to air missiles are characterized by mobile launch capability, fast response speed, high degree of missile automation, diversified guidance systems, and basically forming full airspace fire coverage of high, medium and low altitude, long, medium and short range. In the fourth Middle East War, the Israeli Air Force's low altitude and short-range penetration tactics forced Egypt to deploy 62 ground to air missile battalions, 200 sam-7 missiles and more than 3000 anti-aircraft guns in an area of more than 90 kilometers in front and 30 kilometers in depth. In this war, Israel lost hundreds of aircraft, 70% of which were shot down by ground air defense weapons. The third generation surface to air missile was developed from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. As air defense weapons have initially formed a full airspace defense posture, air raid weapons are still dominated by low altitude and ultra-low altitude penetration. In addition to the Soviet Union's sam-11 medium range missiles, the rest of this generation of surface to air missiles are low-altitude and short-range surface to air missiles. More countries have begun to develop surface to air missiles, and individual air defense missiles have developed rapidly. The representative models of the third generation surface to air missiles include the "stinger" of the United States, sam-8 and sam-9 of the Soviet Union, the "Bobcat", "light sword" and "blowpipe" of Britain, the "rattlesnake" of France, the "Roland" of France and Germany, and the rbs-70 of Sweden. Rattlesnake anti-aircraft missile. The fourth generation surface to air missiles appeared after the late 1970s. At this time, stealth technology is widely used, the speed is increased to about Mach 2, and the maneuverability and low altitude penetration ability are strong; Tactical ballistic missiles pose a new threat because of their small target and high speed. For air defense and anti missile, the fourth generation surface to air missiles pay attention to all-round development on the basis of giving consideration to low altitude. Its representative models include the "stinger" series, the "Patriot" series and the "modified Hawk" series of the United States, the "needle" series of Russia, the sam-19 and sam-22 combined with missiles and guns, the self-propelled surface to air missile systems sam-15 and sam-11, and the strategic surface to air missile system S-300 S-350, S-400, S-500, etc., France's "northwest wind" series, Britain's "starlight", Israel's "arrow-2", Japan's type 91 "Keke", Italy's "air defense guard", etc. Due to the use of phased array radar and advanced microelectronics technology, this generation of surface to air missiles can track and attack multiple targets, and also improve the hit accuracy and combat effectiveness. Israeli "arrow-2" ground to air missile. "Armor-s" missile gun integrated air defense system. In the 1991 Gulf War, the US "Patriot" missiles intercepted Iraqi "Scud" missiles many times, creating a precedent for ground to air missiles to intercept tactical ballistic missiles. During the Kosovo war in 1999, the ground to air missile unit of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia shot down the U.S. - made F-117A stealth aircraft, breaking its invincible myth. In the 21st century, surface to air missiles have become an indispensable defense and deterrent force for land air defense, important area air defense and field air defense. Why do surface to air missiles work At present, the world's first-class surface to air missile systems have adopted advanced overall design technology. Most of the missiles used take the universal and modular design as the guiding ideology. Based on its mature aerodynamic shape, increasing thrust is adopted to realize rapid iteration and missile family development; Taking intercepting higher and farther targets as the development direction, through continuous optimization of aerodynamic shape and power system, improve the terminal speed and average speed of missile, reduce the design pressure of guidance system, and expand the combat boundary of surface to air missile. The "Patriot" series of the United States realizes the improvement of combat capability through the upgrading of on-board equipment, and has the function of air defense and anti missile integration. The aerodynamic layout of missile mainly includes the shape design of missile body, the shape of wing surface (including wing, tail, rudder, etc.) and its circumferential and longitudinal layout of missile body. Advanced surface to air missiles have different aerodynamic configurations. Russian S-300, S-400, S-500 and other surface to air missiles achieve better lift drag ratio and high-speed flight performance through wingless tail rudder aerodynamic layout, and use high angle of attack flight technology to improve the available overload capacity of the missile. Israel's "arrow-2" missile has four movable fins installed on the missile body, making full use of aerodynamic technology to strengthen the mobile interception ability of low altitude targets. Many of the fourth generation surface to air missiles use direct force technology to improve the response speed of the missile, but the interaction between the high temperature and high pressure jet of the direct force engine and the high-speed incoming flow will form a complex flow field, produce additional aerodynamic force and aerodynamic torque, and affect the high-precision guidance of the missile. The direct force / aerodynamic compound control technology can effectively improve the reaction ability and stability of the missile control system, realize the rapid maneuver of the missile and improve the hit rate. The stealth of modern air raid weapons is getting better and better. High performance and high-precision detection technology is the basis to deal with the threat of stealth targets. The radar cross-sectional area (RCS) of stealth targets is generally 0.01 ~ 0.1m2. In order to achieve long-distance and high-precision detection, advanced surface to air missile systems often use high-power phased array seeker technology. The phased array radar seeker on the missile increases the detection range of the target by increasing the power. At the same time, the phased array seeker can also realize the miniaturization of the equipment through the integrated design with the fuze. Almost every upgrade of Patriot series is accompanied by the improvement of seeker accuracy and detection performance. The important task of surface to air missile is to achieve effective damage to stealth aircraft, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and other targets. Traditional surface to air missiles are mostly explosive or fragment warheads, which have low damage efficiency. In recent years, high-efficiency damage warheads and technologies represented by multi-point directional fragment warheads, energetic adaptive initiation warheads, multi-mode composite warheads and kinetic energy damage technologies have gradually become the mainstream, and surface to air missile warheads are more "intelligent" and more efficient. Intelligence is the future development direction The research and development of surface to air missiles has high risk, large investment and complex technology. Military powers often take the development path of missile family and serialization. The medium and long-range surface to air missile equipment of the United States has only developed the "Patriot" series, which quickly forms the interception ability against new threat targets mainly through the replacement and upgrading of on-board equipment and aerodynamic shape optimization design. The S-400 and S-500 installed in Russia, including the S-550 under research, are gradually developed on the basis of the previous surface to air missile system. In the development process, these surface to air missile systems have always adhered to one missile with multiple functions and common functional modules. Through the upgrading of system platform and missile performance, they have realized the improvement of high, medium and low operational airspace, far, medium and near coverage and air defense and anti missile integration capability. In the future, the R & D of surface to air missiles will probably still strengthen the top-level planning and design, concentrate on intensive development, moderately simplify the spectrum series, adhere to the idea of modular development, and realize the serial development of surface to air missile system through module sharing and function upgrading. Starting from the fourth generation of air defense weapons, Russia has developed many equipment in accordance with the general principles of the land, sea and air services, including not only the S-300, s-350, S-400 and S-500 of long-range, medium-range and medium-range series, but also the "armor" series at the short-range end and the "dream God" at the ultra short-range end. The common use of the three services not only reduces the development cost, but also makes it easier to realize the transformation from single service combat capability to multi service joint combat capability. At present, air defense operations are developing from traditional multi fire platform integrated operations to networked operations with organic integration of land, sea, air and space. In order to effectively improve the utilization efficiency of land-based, sea based, air-based and space-based distributed early warning detection and Firepower Strike resources, and comprehensively improve the integrated operation efficiency, the construction of air defense missile system in the future may be guided by the concept of multi domain warfare, It will develop towards building a general air and space defense equipment system for the three services. In the future, air space integration may become a new form of air attack, and air space integration defense will also become a new strategic commanding point. The integration of air defense and anti missile is an effective way to deal with the increasingly advanced air space attack system. The next generation of medium range and long-range air defense missile system is bound to develop towards the integration of air defense and anti missile. It may adopt methods similar to Russian S-500 system integrated target allocation and indication and multi weapon cooperative operation to realize sensors and interceptors