I have also thought the same but bit different in terms of missiles, in my opinion two box of 5th gen missiles like ASRAAM (because of LOAL & LOBL capabilities) will be great for
defending AWACS specially from incoming missiles, reason for box is that it will help to reduce RCS like the pod in F-18s and will accommodate more missiles like 4 to 6 at least.
I think @
gambit can put some light on that and explain what really is possible.
Missile against missile aerial engagement is still very much theoretical. The most difficult is the head on scenario where you basically have only one chance of defense.
I read a few papers about this a long time ago and the best odds is using proximity fused explosion to disrupt the attacker's flight path, as in aerodynamic disruption, in conjunction with fragmentation damages (hopefully), to the attacker.
Something to mull over...
The AIM-54's warhead is about 135 lb or 60 kg to produce a maximum blast radius of about 100 ft or 30-something meters. The AIM-120 AMRAAM warhead is about 40 kg.
Understand that these missiles are intended to be against large bodies -- like aircrafts -- where the bodies have wide expanses of surfaces that are vulnerable to the blast wave and any fragments.
Designing Buildings to Resist Explosive Threats | Whole Building Design Guide
Blast Loading
Because this Resource Page focuses on explosive threat, one must first understand how a blast affects its surrounding environment. When an explosive device is detonated at or near the ground surface, shock waves radiate hemispherically and the peak intensity blast pressure decays as a function of the distance from the source. The incident peak pressures are amplified by a reflection factor as the shock wave encounters an object or structure in its path. Reflection factors depend on the intensity of the shock wave and the angle of obliquity of the shock front. However, when the explosion is within an occupied space, the confinement of the explosive by-products produces a quasi-static gas pressure that needs to be vented into the atmosphere.
The intensity of the blast pressures is therefore a function of the charge weight and the standoff distance to the protected space. Charges situated extremely close to a target structure impose a highly impulse, high intensity pressure load over a localized region of the structure. This high intensity loading tends to shatter or shear through the structural materials. At greater distances, the intensity of the peak pressure is significantly reduced; however, the surface area over which it acts is much greater. As a result, the hazard potential is increased over a larger portion of the structure.
Blast effects on a combination of material, structure, and rigidity is the reason why light weight and low mass objects like paper survives explosions. It is also the reason why the more accurate and precise the missile, the less warhead load necessary to produce the desired goal -- destruction of the target.
Of course, the greatest accurate and precise interceptor would not need any warhead at all but rely strictly on a collision to effect a kill -- a kinetic kill weapon.
When a missile physically collide with an aircraft, the collision alone is enough to render the aircraft ineffective for whatever its mission, the explosion from the warhead is just gravy or candy, so to speak. But if it is not possible to physically collide with the aircraft -- 100% -- then we must rely on warhead and its blast effects to produce any level and types of disruption and/or physical damages to the aircraft. We already know that airfoils require uniform airflow across their surfaces in order to give us stable and controllable flight. A blast wave would definitely disrupt those airflow and most likely send the aircraft out of controlled flight, no matter how temporarily.
Tactically speaking, if you are in a four-ship sortie and one of you is under attack, the rest of the flight will scatter. You will unload your bombs, originally designated for some vital enemy ground targets, and effect some kind of self defense. This is what happened back in the Vietnam War where the North Vietnamese Air Force was able to disrupt many USAF ground strike missions just by hit-and-run against a few heavily loaded F-100s or F-4s.
But to return to the missile against missile defense...
The attacking missile is already small size and low profile to start. In order for any aerodynamic disruption to be effective, the blast effects, therefore the explosion, would have to be very close, more like a few meters, not dozens. Any ideas on why hardened aircraft shelters (HAS) are either angled or curved topside ? Explosions, like electricity and pressurized water, always seek the paths of least resistance. Angled faceting and/or curvatures works very well in being blast wave protection methods. The missile with its rounded body is already naturally protective. So in order to knock a missile off its course via a blast wave, the explosion would have to be on the missile's side and very close, or the warhead would have to be larger than 60 kg to produce as large a blast wave as possible.
To date, the best defenses against a missile, assuming it has acquisition, are seduction/distraction methods. We are not talking about ground based ballistic missile defense, which is another can of technical worms, have been discussed elsewhere here, and why a kinetic kill in that scenario is more possible than an aerial missile vs missile scenario.
