Shipbucket

Hm? Aren't AN/SPG-62 single-channel?

As far as I know, you can't attack by the SM-2 more targets than you have a AN/SPG-62. Of course, you can "hold" the missile in the air waiting for the queue. But the attack at the same time - only those targets that are pointed by AN/SPG-62. And it need several second to re-aim on next target.

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My understanding of how the AN/SPG-62 works is it can guide several missiles to different targets at once by hopping its beam to different targets intermittently because the SM-2 missile is smart enough to keep heading toward its target without constant illumination from the -62. The -62 uses a different frequency to guide each missile and it can switch to a different frequency/missile nearly instantaneously. It can also guide several missiles to the same target at once, which is usually necessary when destroying a missile target because missiles are hard to hit.

As I said, that's my understanding of how the AN/SPG-62 works, although I could be completely wrong. Perhaps a missile expert could tell us.

Hm. According to my information - you are wrong. AN/SPG-62 must direkt beam on target for the final phase of missile flight. So, you can HOLD the missiles in air (they fly to the target AREA on inertial guidance), but for attack on target - the beam must be lock on them!

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Ah, well, I'm no missile expert, and I can't find enough information to support either yours or my understanding of how the SPG-62 works, so I won't dispute you further, but, getting back to Karle's designs, his ships all have the same number of fire-control directors as other ships that serve in the same role, so he should have an adequate number of fire-control radars.

EDIT: With the exception of his Batch 1 destroyer, which you and I both agree needs more directors.

The information that I have is that if the targets are close together the SPG-62 can illuminate multiple objects at the same time. I've also seen that the final illumination time is much less than you probably think (less than one second per target), and that it's a fraction of a second (not several seconds) to switch targets.

There have also been some indications that the SPY-1D in the later baselines don't actually need SPG-62s for target illumination, as they can generate their own S-Band illumination beams, with the accuracy of long rage S-band illumination being left as an exercise for the reader.

I'd also like to remind everyone that a lot of the data out there is for the earlier baselines of AEGIS, and that a lot of the information out there in open (non-classified) sources is conjectural based on lots of bits and pieces.

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Well, but were are talking about early AEGIS versions, isn't it? And you undoubtley need some time to turn the antenna on the next target, if there are some distance between them!

I know that USSR used the multi-channel "Top Dome" radar to illuminate several targets for S-300F. So, the soviet cruisers could aim more missiles, but the size and weight of the radar make it... impractical, in case of multi-vector attack (even the "Kirov" have only 2 radars, so it could illuminate the missiles on only 180 degrees of horizont in each time)

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Completely agree.

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Looking back over my notes, the indications are that the SPG-62 can change direction at something closer to 270 degrees per second rather than 90. So yeah, changing from one target to the next is fractions of a second for targets on opposite sides of the ship. Terminal illumination time is of course, classified but I'd hesitate to put it above 3/4ths of a second.

I'll post more later.

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Hm! Very interesting information, thank you, colleague! But how can the inertion were compensated in this case?

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The rotational inertia?

The same way the other radars turn (brakes and servos), just faster. The antenna is also only a part of the entire system, the rest of the electronics stay in the cabinet.

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