What's the common thing between anti-radar and anti-Ship missiles? They both climb up to attain altitude.
But the difference?
Anti-radar missile will climb up right after launch.
Anti-ship missile usually skims to the surface and climbs up in final stages of the attack aka pop-up attack.
The purpose of SEAD is suppression and not destruction necessarily...can't say more than this.
@Windjammer
CM-400 is different from other anti ship missiles. Most ASM are cruise missiles. CM-400 is Quasi ballistic.
The problem with CM-400 is that to comply with being carried by small jets such as JF-17, it had to be lite , weighing 910kg, but to kill a ship, it also had to carry a significant sized warhead.
AVIC says either a 150kg blast fragmented warhead or 200kg penetration warhead.
For a range of 100 to 240 km, while reaching speeds of Mach 4+ in terminal phase.
AVIC gives a minimum range of 100km , because of ballistic flight path to be followed for speed and range.
Cruise missiles don't have minimum range, ballistic have.
Likewise cruise missiles like Brahmos/Oniks weigh 3 times as much and carry lots of fuel to sustain leveled supersonic flight all the way.
CM 400 don't have that luxury. Its too light and carries little fuel. Cannot sustain leveled flight as atmospheric drag will eat up all the range .
Unless I am wrong in my thinking that 100km minimum range is due to mandatory quasi ballistic path, and its the range while level flying?.
But the question is, will a JF-17 want to come to within 100km of a S-400 ?
However for 240km maximum range it "Must" rise the 60km Altitude to comply with maximum range expectations, while carrying that much weight of the warhead and reaching those high mach numbers. Otherwise it doesn't carry enough fuel to accomplish those requirements.
That's why AVIC specified launch envelope for JF-17 firing CM-400 is , while flying at Mach 0.7 and M0.9 at an elevation between 26,200ft and 39,400ft.
At this altitude, the line of sight is 300km +.
Meaning the JF-17 even before firing the missile will be visible and tracked by S-400 radars.
So, what i think is ( and I can be wrong) that the JF-17 will fly at lower altitude until about 200km from target, rise on full afterburner to the required launch altitude. Fire the missile, and dive down back to safety, hiding behind the earths curvature, from S-400 radars .
While S-400 units will immediately detect and track the launch, and get busy defending. Another salvo of conventional Raad or Babur will fly below the radar, to the target and do the actual job.