Russian su‑30sm2 spotted with r‑37m missiles capable of 400km range
A recording has surfaced online showing the Russian Su-30SM2 aircraft carrying the highly interesting and dangerous R-37M air-to-air missiles introduced into service just a few years ago. We present their capabilities.
The Su-30SM2 itself is not groundbreaking, as it is an evolution of the Su-27 fighter jet, first flown in the late '80s, similar to the Su-35S. We are dealing with an over 18,000-kilogram (takeoff weight) twin-engine, single-seat machine mainly designed to achieve air superiority but capable of attacking ground targets. Besides the 30 mm GSh-30-1 cannon, the aircraft has 12 pylons for carrying weapons.
The R-37M missiles it carries are much more interesting, visible in the recording below. These are very long-range weapons designed to combat aircraft such as AWACS.
R-37M - Russian AWACS hunter
The Russians introduced the R-37M missiles into service in 2019. They are a developed version of the R-33 missiles used on the MiG-31 interceptors. The main change was using an active radar homing head, making the missile a "fire-and-forget" solution.
This increased its effectiveness and allowed it to be mounted on aircraft equipped with more minor, and thus weaker, radars. The older R-33 missile required continuous target illumination by the aircraft's radar until impact, which was problematic for machines with weaker radars.
With the R-37M, this problem does not exist because the missile can be launched near the target area, and its onboard radar will find it independently. The main feature of these missiles is their enormous range, which, according to the Russians, reaches up to 400 kilometres in glide mode and a speed exceeding Mach 5 (6,182 kilometres per hour).
This allows for the engagement of AWACS-type machines at several hundred kilometres or fighter jets at distances over 100 kilometres (the more manoeuvrable the target, the shorter the intercept range).
As a result, this is a very heavy air-to-air missile weighing about 500 kilograms. Only 60 kilograms are allocated to the fragmentation warhead, which, however, is sufficient for airborne targets.
