In this Russo-Ukrainian war, britain has always been a relatively happy presence, before the war had sent a lot of NLAW anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, and then claimed to provide Starlight anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine on March 9, and then secretly sent officers to train Ukrainian shooters somewhere in Eastern Europe (possibly Poland), and has been involved in the war for a week, and it is estimated that it may provide a shoulder-propelled version. Then again, the British aesthetic is really debatable, the huge grenade shape of the previous generation of blowpipe and javelin anti-aircraft missiles is enough to be criticized, and the Starlight missile, although the launcher looks normal, but its huge launch control device erases all efforts about portability. Therefore, most of the starlight missiles we see are launched from triple brackets, not to mention the three dart ammunition in the missile barrel.
The Starstreak anti-aircraft missile system is a high-speed short-range anti-aircraft missile developed by the British company SCHOTT (later Thales Air Defense Co., Ltd.) on the basis of javelin missiles. In 1986, the development work began, in 1988 the shoulder-fired "Starlight" missile was successfully tested for the first time, mass production began in 1988-1989, and equipped with the British Army in 1993. It mainly consisted of shoulder-fired (SL), light tripod (LML) and vehicle-mounted types, and even once developed air-launched and sea-launched types, and later also developed the Starlight II missile. In addition to the Uk, the Republic of South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia have ordered Starlight anti-aircraft missiles, and India has also shown interest.
The Starlight anti-aircraft missile has a diameter of 0.13 meters, a bullet length of 1.397 meters, a missile weight of 14 kilograms, a total combat weight of 20 kilograms, a launch barrel outer diameter of 0.274 meters, a missile range of 0.3-7 kilometers, an altitude of 5 kilometers, a maximum speed of Mach 4, a single-shot kill probability of 96% (the author doubts), and a missile warranty period of 10 years. The missile uses a cylindrical projectile body, propelled by a two-stage solid rocket engine, the rear is a shorter take-off engine, the middle is a lateral folding 4 rectangular tail fins, the front part is a change of style, arranged in a triangle three 0.45 meters long, 20 mm diameter, weighing 0.9 kg tungsten alloy submunitions, the submunition adopts a canard layout, the front two large cardioson ratio with a certain mounting angle trapezoidal canard wing + tail cross layout trapezoidal tail, equipped with a drive system, laser beam reception control circuit, armor-piercing core, Warhead and thermal batteries, which control submunition flight by receiving laser beams. This design places higher demands on the precision of submunition production, so the price is also very high, with a Starlight missile selling for about $107,500 (1994 dollar value).
The guidance system of the Starlight missile is also maverick. He did not use the infrared guidance of general missiles, but directly chose laser beam guidance, which generally appears on anti-tank missiles, and the British had to take a different path and directly use it in air defense, which directly led to the huge size of their control units. The aiming unit of the Starlight missile includes an optical sight with a stabilizing laser system, a monocular sight, a control unit, a power supply, and a control unit consisting of a joystick, a trigger, a universal switch, a wind compensation switch, and an altimeter.
In combat, the missile shooter uses a monocular sight to keep the selected air target on the crosshairs of the sight, and then powers the aiming unit from the power supply, presses the trigger after stabilizing the tracking, the missile take-off engine burns out after pushing the missile out of the launcher, preventing damage to the shooter, while the missile side fixing block flies away, the tail wing is unfolded, while the rear section shell spins at 10 revolutions per second, and after flying out of the 4 meters, the secondary rocket ignites for 2 seconds to accelerate it to Mach 4 and spin, while the rear section shell spins at 35 revolutions per second, Due to the shock cone composed of three arrows, the missile resistance is greatly reduced and the speed of flight is increased. After shutting down the main engine of the rocket, three arrow-shaped submunitions are released by the signal transmitted by the speed pressure sensor.
The so-called laser beam guidance refers to the general anti-tank missile guidance system to launch a laser beam, from the laser receiver at the bottom of the ammunition to receive the laser signal into an electrical signal, the control circuit independently calculates the deviation of the heading and the center of the beam, and the rudder converts the signal into the deflection angle of the missile rudder wing, driving the missile to move to the center of the laser beam, and finally hitting the target. The calculation method of starlight submunitions is not the same as that of anti-tank missiles, the laser beam generated by the guidance system is formed by a aiming unit using two laser diodes, one of which scans the space on the vertical plane, the other scans the space on the horizontal plane, so each submunition can determine its own spatial position to control the ballistic, this ballistic is spiral-shaped, so that the submunition tends to the center of the two-dimensional matrix route generated by the laser energy, the projectile rotates counterclockwise around the axis, and the canard delta wing with the mounting angle at the front is rotated clockwise, Itself has a certain yaw force, by increasing the braking torque to make the duck rudder spin reduction change the direction of the force, thereby changing the submunition ballistic trajectory, this design is more similar to the PPK fuze. The diameter of the three submunitions triangle flying trajectories of the Starlight missile is roughly the same, about 1.52 meters, while the three submunitions of the Starlight 2 have different trajectory diameters, so the strike range and target adaptability are expanded.
This guidance method has strong anti-jamming ability, high precision, cheap price, not affected by infrared and radar jamming bombs, but the disadvantage is that the shooter has been tracking the target, can not have a cover, can not be launched after no matter, the shooter's control ability puts forward high requirements, high-speed direct shooting low altitude low speed head-on or tail chasing target force, hit high-speed horizontal targets depends on luck and shooter ability, there is a good chance that they have to go off target, and as long as the submunition is off target, even if it flies at close range, it will not explode. After all, such a small space can not settle for a near-explosion fuze. And in such a short period of time, I doubt how many people the British can teach to use the fine goods of starlight, and ordinary soldiers will definitely prefer the stingers that are not ignored after firing.
Eventually, the submunition hits the target and explodes internally with kinetic energy, claiming to hit a 9G target, while its explosive capability is said to be equivalent to a 40mm shell. For the three-legged architecture type, the tripod weighs 16 kg, the aiming device is 19.5 kg, the tracking system is 9 kg, the infrared sight is 6 kg, and it should be known that the stinger missile launches a total weight of only about 13 kg, while the starlight missile has a total weight of 14 kg plus a 19.5 kg aiming device, it can be said that the weight of this cargo is close to the bottom line of a single soldier, and other portable air defense missiles are not a weight class, and can even guest anti-light armored targets. Then again, you change the large warhead on the projectile body and the infrared seeker has the same strike capability on the aircraft, the charge will be more, the stinger is 70 mm bullet diameter to achieve 1 kg warhead, starlight such a design increases the cost and complexity. Starlight missiles can also be replaced with a stronger sighting and search system on tripods and vehicle-mounted models to enhance long-range detection capabilities.
Recently, the Russian army 1 Mi-28 Havoc helicopter gunship in the east of Ukraine in the Luhansk Golubivka area was hit by an anti-aircraft missile and broke the tail beam and crashed, fortunately two pilots survived, and was quickly rescued by the Russian army, this helicopter was shot down is very peculiar, after all, the general Stinger and other anti-aircraft missiles will see the missile trail when attacking low-altitude helicopters, but this helicopter explosion is very abrupt, there is no obvious wake. British newspapers confirmed that the culprit that caused the helicopter to be shot down was the British "Starlight" man-portable air defense missile, which was also its first record since its service.
For the Mi-28 helicopter gunship that was shot down this time, in fact, he was also quite wronged, although he strengthened his armor, but he did not even react to the starlight missile's high-speed strike under its tail beam and fell, if it hit the fuselage, it may be able to resist for a while. It can be said that even the Ka-52's Vitebsk system cannot counter the starlight missile that has been launched, after all, it is difficult to interfere with the flying starlight missile whether it is throwing jamming bombs or using directional lasers, and can only hope that the jamming bomb will disturb the shooter's line of sight. But then again, the laser beam guidance itself has a weak resistance to bad weather, obscured will lose the target, the shooter operation complex training difficulties, in advance with the laser irradiation of the aircraft may trigger the aircraft's laser alarm to move (there is also news that the laser is very weak can not trigger the alarm), the tail flame of the main engine will also make the aircraft ultraviolet alarm move, so that the pilot in advance to know the existence of anti-aircraft missiles to start doing horizontal complex maneuvers to increase the difficulty of the shooter's aiming, the key is to find in time, timely countermeasures, This poses a higher test for the helicopter's alarm system.