Panic in the USA in connection with the fiasco of the Patriots led to an unexpected result. LTAMDS Project
It’s hardly worth showing any bit of surprise here, because literally overnight the prestige of the largest American manufacturer of advanced air defense systems and precision weapons, as well as a debilitating blow to the competitiveness of its main offspring - the multi-channel anti-aircraft missile / anti-missile systems "Patriot PAC-2 / GEM-T" and "Patriot PAC-3MSE". More than a dozen divisions of these air defense systems that September night did not even bother to partially cover the head infrastructure of the Arabian oil company "Saudi Arabian Oil Company" from the Houthis drones-kamikaze "Samad-1/3" and tactical long-range cruise missiles "Quds-1".
As you know, the low altitude flight paths of the latter left no chance for the multifunction radar AN / MPQ-53 and AN / MPQ-65 for the timely detection, stable linking of the tracks of attacking missiles, as well as for the illumination of anti-aircraft missiles MIM-104C / E GEM-T and target designation of promising MIM-104F PAC-3MSE missiles.
Failure after failure. Outdated "hardware" of AN / MPQ-53 / 65 radars makes itself felt
In our previous reviews, starting from the data published in the western and Russian segments of the Internet, we were able to accurately determine the “etiology of the genetic disease” of the AN / MPQ-53 / 65 family of multifunctional radars, which led to the failure of the Arabian Patriots.
It is connected, firstly, with a minimum beam elevation angle of the order of 1 degrees (the lower limit of the elevation viewing area for a given radar family), while, for example, the minimum beam elevation angle of a radar for target illumination of 9X36 Buk- M2 ”has a negative value of -5 degrees. It is logical to assume that this MPQ-53 / 65 radar index limits the minimum height of 30 meters to be detected, tracked and “captured” by targets, while the “Bukovsky” 9С36 radar operates on low-altitude targets operating in the range from 10 to 15 meters. Obviously, the trajectories of drones and cruise missiles launched by Husitian rocket-propelled gunners could have passed at “unseen” MPQ-53 / 65 radars at heights of 15-25 m, which no longer allowed the “Patriot” MIM-104F PAC-3MSE anti-ballistic missiles to successfully Aircraft AWACS E-3A Royal Saudi Air Force. As you know, at that time in the Arabian airspace aircraft of this type did not carry out combat duty.
Secondly, the AN / MPQ-53 / 65 family of radars do not have the ability to operate in a continuous all-angle scanning mode of aerospace with azimuthal coverage of 360 degrees. This drawback is observed in connection with the placement of the antenna array of the passive headlamp on a sedentary hardware container, the turn of which towards the new missile-hazardous sector is extremely slow, and even then at the time of the “time window” between the enemy’s massive missile attacks.
It is quite obvious that this state of affairs, especially against the background of the active improvement of low-altitude air attack systems of the enemy with low ESR, could not suit either Pentagon specialists and US ground forces, or the Raytheon corporation headquarters, whose missile defense rating over the past month was relegated to the level of "border".
Features of the LTAMDS project. Pentagon brainchild of Raytheon
A partial way out of this situation was a curtly designed project for the promising multi-functional AFAR-X / Ku-band radar LTAMDS (Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor) designed to re-equip existing Patriot PAC-2 / 3MSE anti-aircraft missile divisions having obsolete MPQ-53 / 65 stations with passive headlights.
After reviewing the full-size LTAMDS prototype presented at the AUSA-2019 US Army Association exhibition, you can pay attention to the full modular architecture of the new product. As you can see, to power the high-energy microwave gallium nitride PPM main antenna post and additional AFAR modules for viewing the side and back hemispheres, it was necessary to equip the platform with powerful power centers with 24 cooling coolers. Undoubtedly, the detection range of small targets with an EPR of the order of 0,01 sq. m through the main antenna post can increase to 90 — 100 km in comparison with 45 — 50 km for MPQ-65.
Moreover, the use of individual low-noise microwave transistors based on semiconductor gallium nitride in the transmitting and transmitting modules will allow expanding the radiation pattern in the lower sector by reducing the elevation angle of the beam of the new station to -3 / -5 degrees, which will allow to detect and effectively track targets at altitudes 3 — 5 m. According to this indicator, LTAMDS will be compared with domestic radars 9С36 of Buk-M2 systems, and possibly unique low-altitude detectors Podlet-K1, adapted for operation with goals, loitering over mountainous terrain with belittling of several hundred meters. Equipping two additional stationary AFAR modules with a total azimuthal viewing sector of about 200 degrees will provide the new LTAMDS station with the ability to view the entire airspace without any delay in the rate of updating radar information, which is observed with a low-altitude detector such as Podlet-K1 or a centimeter high 96L6 detector, which is part of the S-400 Triumph air defense system.
Meanwhile, a noticeably smaller area of antenna canvases (and, therefore, a lower energy potential) of additional radar modules of the LTAMDS station will still limit the detection range of small targets approaching LTAMDS from the rear hemisphere, which cannot be said about the Russian Vityaz 50Н6A multifunctional radar. Moreover, the LTAMDS concept still does not provide for the placement of antenna posts on a universal tower, which indicates a small radio horizon of the promising “Patriot” radar, reaching only 25 — 29 km, which is one and a half times less than Russian illumination radars 30Н6Е / 92Н6Е included in the structure of complexes C-300ПМ1 and С-400 "Triumph".
Information