PAF Goes For CH-4A Wing Loong-2 Armed UAS, While The IAF Goes For Almaz-Antey S-400 Triumf ADMS

China’s AVIC Chengdu Aircraft Industrial Group (CAC) will next month ink a contract to supply the Pakistan Air Force with 48 CH-4A Wing Loong-2 armed UAS in knocked-down condition.

These will in turn be licence-assembled by Pakistan’s state-owned, Kamra-based Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC).

The CH-4A, developed by the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics (CAAA, also known as the 11th Academy) and built by CAC, had made its maiden flight on February 27 this year. The CH-4A carries 12 air-to-surface weapons on six hardpoints. These include the 50kg BA-7 guided-missile and LS-6 precision-guided glide-bomb.

The CH-4A is powered by a Rotax 914 piston engine imported from Austria-based company BRP Powertrain. More than 60% of all components for the Wing Loong family of UAS platforms come from private-sector companies of China. The CH-4A has a maximum takeoff weight of 4,200kg, nearly four times greater than the CH-4.

Of its six hardpoints, four of them can carry double payloads, giving the UAS a potential payload of ten air-to-surface precision-guided munitions. Maximum takeoff weight is 4,200kg, maximum external load-carrying capacity is 480kg, maximum cruise speed is 370kph, service ceiling is 9km, and endurance is 20 hours.

The CH-4A has to date been ordered only by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

The PAF has already set up the necessary ground infrastructure at the following five air bases in both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan for housing the CH-4A UAS platforms.

On March 16 this year, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology signed an industrial partnership agreement with the state-owned China Aerospace Science & Technology Corp (CASC) to establish a manufacturing plant in Saudi Arabia for as many as 300 CH-4 and CH-4A UAS platforms.

Following the signature of a contract on October 5 that is valued valued at US$5.43 billion, the Indian Air Force (IAF) is all set to receive its initial five squadrons of the Almaz-Antey S-400 Triumf ADMS, with deliveries commencing in late 2020.

Plans call for eventually expanding this LR-SAM network into five Brigades in the following decade, and deploying them for the air-defence (against hostile manned combat aircraft, SRBMs, TBMs and LACMs) of major cities and industrial corridors located in western and central India.

The sector-wise command-and-control posts of each of these Brigades will be integrated with the IAF’s already-operational five nodes of the Integrated Air Command, Control & Communications System (IACCCS) at Barnala (Punjab), Wadsar (Gujarat), Aya Nagar (Delhi), Jodhpur (Rajasthan) and Ambala (Haryana).

Initially, the S-400 ADMS will come equipped with only the 380km-range 40N6E LR-SAMs, which were declared by Russia as being ready for series-production following a series of user-assisted successful test-firings last August.

In the following decade, the 40N6E LR-SAMs will be joined by the 77N6-N and the 77N6-NI LR-SAMs, having top speeds of 7km/second and also being the first LR-SAMs of Russian origin to possess INERT warheads, i.e. warheads that do not contain any explosives and instead, are ‘hittile’, meaning they will destroy inbound IRBMs or MRBMs by sheer force of impact. Both these missiles are still undergoing development.

The most revolutionary element of the 77N6-N and the 77N6-NI hypersonic LR-SAMs will be their on-board nose-mounted, Ka band millimeter-wave active phased-array radar seekers and their real-time discrimination algorithms required for fire-control and guidance of hit-to-kill interceptors. To this end, the radar seekers have been designed with a rigid mount and narrow beam to provide precise angle metric accuracy. The combination of metric accuracy, wide bandwidth, and high Doppler-resolution capabilities makes them excellent sensors for real-time discrimination, for they can provide extremely accurate identification-processing estimates of motion differences caused by mass imbalances on real and threat-like targets.

The 77N6-N and the 77N6-NI LR-SAMs will be new-generation replacements for the 1980s-era 9M82 and 9M83 LR-SAMs that had equipped the Almaz-Antey S-300VM and Antey-2500 strategic air-defence systems.

Since the IAF’s S-400 LR-SAMs will be high-value assets, they will require in-depth air-defence protection as well. For this, the IAF had ordered four squadrons of the RAFAEL-built SpyDer system back in 2013, but an amended contract had to be inked on August 3, 2015 following which deliveries commenced in February 2017 and were completed by August 2018.

Also to be enlisted are the services of close-in weapon system (CIWS), for which the IAF wants to procure 244 cannons along with 228 search/fire-control radars, and 204,000 programmable bullets.