Shooting down cruise missiles with planes

[ColonelMolerat]

I always forget that planes are a valuable defence against cruise missiles. The idea of a plane shooting down a missile seems weird to me...
This gif shows how it really isn't such an odd concept!
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasf ... urce=share

[Tailhook]

At cruising altitude and subsonic, sure. But I've DPRK MiG-15s shoot down Tomahawks along the northern border in super mountainous terrain at minimum altitude, using only the gun. That should be all but impossible.

[Dimitris]

ORIGINAL: Tailhook
At cruising altitude and subsonic, sure. But I've DPRK MiG-15s shoot down Tomahawks along the northern border in super mountainous terrain at minimum altitude, using only the gun. That should be all but impossible.

That's a very good point, and we're looking at an A2A gunnery modifier to represent how "stable"/smooth a target is during a gun engagement, both in the horizontal and vertical plane. This should bring value to jinking maneuvers, both intentional (evasion during dogfight) and incidental as in the case you describe.

[Filitch]

ORIGINAL: Tailhook

At cruising altitude and subsonic, sure. But I've DPRK MiG-15s shoot down Tomahawks along the northern border in super mountainous terrain at minimum altitude, using only the gun. That should be all but impossible.

Not sure that Tomahawks will fly at minimum altitude in super mountainous terrain. AFAIK they will stay enough high to be hit with MiG's guns.

[SeaQueen]

Not sure that Tomahawks will fly at minimum altitude in super mountainous terrain. AFAIK they will stay enough high to be hit with MiG's guns.

Probably depends on a lot of variables like where the radar sites are, how close to the target they are, and how detailed the terrain data is. If there's a really big mountain between them and a SAM site, then maybe they don't need to be so low. If their RCS is low enough, then maybe they don't need to be so low either. The whole point of having weapons like TLAM which are programmable is that you don't know exactly what they're going to do every time. It depends on the situation.

[Tailhook]

This is a valid point but we don’t know whether those Tomahawks are flying that high by choice (I.e. terrain masking in the continental US would definitely raise eyebrows in a test shot from ship to shore) or by some limitation. I imagine the former is much more likely and that you’d plan a route that would maximize low level flight to the utmost extent that range allowed (I believe in my example it was a river valley of some sort). The problem is flying low (for a human) is extremely taxing to even the best trained pilots. Now couple that with extreme terrain and aerial gunnery and you have pretty much an impossible scenario. Put another way, if someone told me to take my fancy Super Hornet with all its bells and whistles and try and gun a high subsonic missile at 50’ AGL in a canyon I’d have some very choice words for them and update my life insurance appropriately. Now give me a vintage MiG and questionable training and that sounds like a great way to die in vain.

[Filitch]

I think, that choosing of flight altitude should bases on target distance (fuel consumption), degree of cross country (time to react on heavy gradient is much lesser than on easy one), allowed G-factor of missile (G-factor at avoiding heavy gradient is much greater than on easy one). Physics - first.

[Tailhook]

Definitely all true considerations, but as a Tomahawk planning officer is a full time job in the Navy I’m sure all these things are considered when route plotting but also with keeping the minimum possible altitude especially when “I’m-country”

However, as those pictures were almost certainly taken of missile tests rather than war shots, it can’t be discounted at all that they’re intentionally flown high to avoid civil disturbances. Also if the test doesn’t require terrain masking through mountains they might forego that, while in war they’d exploit that.

The gameplay point though is that if a missile says “60 feet AGL” I am trusting that information, and as such that’s pretty much an impossible shot for a pilot to pull off in super rough terrain.