Bright Sword Military System

Chapter 1557 Pod
The development of air-to-air missiles can be said to be going smoothly, or it can be said to be not going smoothly.

It went smoothly because with the support of transistors, radars, computers... Strictly speaking, they can only be regarded as calculation units rather than computers. The calculation units used for air-to-air missiles are not as complicated as computers. It is calculated based on the received data. The position of the missile and the target then steers the missile closer to the target.

The miniaturization of these things has been realized with the efforts of R&D personnel, and the weight has also been reduced to less than 100 kg.

It was not smooth, because when I contacted the "La 5" production line, I found that even though they had been miniaturized, it was still difficult to install them.

The reason is that airplanes are relatively sophisticated equipment, even for Mao Xiong’s airplane. It has to design the size and location of various equipment, instruments, fuel tanks, etc. from the very beginning. A piece of equipment weighing more than 100 kilograms will affect the whole body.

The words from the aircraft factory are: "It is impossible to fit such a large thing into it by improving or canceling some parts, unless it is redesigned!"

Everyone understands what "redesigned" means.

If this "redesign" is just a car or a tank that runs on the ground, it will be easy to handle, and it will come out after modification.

But that is an airplane that flies in the sky. Once it is redesigned, many issues such as aerodynamic layout, balance, and maneuverability must be considered, and then it must be tested and tested.

Obviously, the Eighth Route Army can't wait that long... Even if the Eighth Route Army is willing to wait, the BF109 on the Devil's side will not let the Eighth Route Army wait.

This question baffled a lot of researchers in the institute, and even the progress of the research was delayed for a day. In the end, there was really no other way to ask Su Xin to report to Wang Xuexin.

Su Xin went to Wang Xuexin's office and said with a embarrassed face: "Commander, there may be something wrong with our air-to-air missile. This is a radar and a calculation unit. They said that the fighter must be redesigned... ..."

Wang Xuexin asked strangely: "Why did you redesign it?"

"This is too big!" Su Xin said, "And the shape and size are not suitable. Even if we dismantle all the machine guns and guns, and change the pilot's seat, it still won't fit in..."

Wang Xuexin rolled his eyes and replied: "Can't you hang it outside? Wouldn't it be enough to install an extra hanger on the belly of the aircraft?"

Su Xin was stunned for a while, then said "I'll let them try" and fled away.

Wang Xuexin was to blame for this.

From the very beginning, Wang Xuexin planned to hang these things outside, but he just thought about it in his mind but didn't make it clear to the researchers.

This is very common in modern times. For example, a certain fighter can perform electronic warfare missions by adding an electronic pod, and by adding an aerial refueling pod, it can refuel other fighters in the air.

Therefore, Wang Xuexin took it for granted that the researchers knew this, so they would also think of adding pods.

Who would have thought...

What Wang Xuexin didn't know was that as soon as Su Xin came back to the research institute and shared this idea, the researchers once again experienced the feeling of being overwhelmed by Wang Xuexin.

"Yeah, why didn't we think of it?" He Zhimin said, "'La 5' is a fighter jet that can carry more than 500 kilograms of bombs. We only need to integrate the radar and computing unit into one piece, and make the shape of the auxiliary fuel tank into a streamlined shape. Wouldn’t it be possible to bring things up and reduce the impact on the aerodynamic layout?”

Professor Su patted his legs and said, "Fortunately, we still have to think about it for two days. The telegram was sent to the aircraft production line to discuss how to improve it, and we are thinking of redesigning it. It is built so neatly that the aircraft does not need to be modified at all!"

"Small changes are still needed!" Su Liguo said: "But you only need to connect the data to the cockpit and add a radar display screen, and the rest can be put into the pod!"

So this matter was settled like this. At that time, what the researcher thought was not the joy of solving the problem, but feeling ashamed of himself... Such a simple problem actually stopped the research progress for a day. If you spend time, you don't know how much time you waste.

The time they saved by forgetting to eat and sleep was not as good as Wang Xuexin's words in the end.

But objectively speaking, they can’t be blamed for this. The most fighters in this period were to hang auxiliary fuel tanks and bombs under the fuselage. Who would have thought that they could also hang modular pods to increase the performance of fighters?

Wang Xuexin's ability to think is not a skill, he does not rely on his own brain and imagination, he relies on historical knowledge.

With the concept of the pod, there is no difficulty in the development of air-to-air missiles. After all, any accessories you want to add can be freely inserted into the pod. It should be noted that the pod should not be too large, otherwise it will affect the take-off and speed of the fighter. maneuver.

The other change is to change the three machine guns into one machine gun (the two machine guns on the two wings are canceled and only the nose machine gun is kept).

The reason why only one machine gun is left is because Wang Xuexin believes that the combat mode has changed when there are air-to-air missiles, or it can be said to be partially changed.

"La 5" originally had four pylons, two on the left and right wings, and then Wang Xuexin added another wingtip pylon, so there are six pylons.

In fact, "Pull 5" is not a big problem for the load. After it is upgraded to "Pull 7", it can mount 600 kg of bombs.

The reason why "La 5" limits the weight of the bomb to 300 kilograms is because its wings are made of wood and cannot carry too much weight, otherwise the wings are likely to break.

For this reason, it is obviously inappropriate to directly move the anti-aircraft missiles to the aircraft, because one of them weighs more than 200 kilograms, and only one can be hung on one side of the wing, and it would be overweight to hang one more.

On the other hand, the range of anti-aircraft missiles reaches 10 kilometers, while the range of air-to-air missiles only requires 3 kilometers.

Although the longer the range, the better, but if the range of the air-to-air missile is 10 kilometers at this time, it is a great waste.

The reason is that the detection range of the radar brought into the air by the Eighth Route Army is only a dozen kilometers.

When an enemy fighter plane is detected more than ten kilometers away, the pilot needs some time to react, and then the enemy plane has already entered a range of about three kilometers. By then, even if the range of the missile is 10 kilometers, it only needs to hit 3 kilometers or even closer.

Considering these two aspects, Wang Xuexin decided to reduce the size of the air-to-air missile: reduce the range and reduce the weight, and control the weight of each air-to-air missile within 100 kilograms, so that just one "La 5" can take 6 air-to-air missiles into the air.

This improvement plan is obviously much better than a "La 5" launching with only 2 air-to-air missiles.

(End of this chapter)