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UB-2000F Chayka Experimental guided bomb (1954 - 1955)

On October 15, 1951, Government Decree No. 3969-1815 was issued, providing for development work on two types of high-explosive gear guided bombs - UB-2000F Chayka and UB-5000F Condor2 and 5 tons, respectively. In addition, this Decree provided for the development of the UB-2000B armor-piercing bomb, which were subsequently discontinued after the November 27, 1953 release of Decree No. 2856-1213, specifying the tasks and deadlines for developing controlled bombs. Apparently, the refusal to develop an armor-piercing aerial bomb was associated with the outlined equipment of the potential enemy ships with fundamentally new highly efficient air defense systems. In the context of countering shipboard anti-aircraft missile systems, it was difficult for the aircraft to reach the line of bombing at medium and high altitudes. The first Soviet aircraft anti-ship missiles, the KS (“Kometa”), which had already been developed by that time, seemed to be more effective anti-ship weapons.

As a prototype, the German Fritz-X bomb was taken. The main carriers for the UB-2000F “Seagull” were considered Il-28, for the “Condor” - the Tu-16, and at first - the Tu-4. The technical appearance of the guided bombs was mainly determined in the course of preliminary studies even before the adoption of the first Ordinance. Constructively, the first Soviet guided bomb inherited from the Fritz only the X-shaped execution of the wings and the use of interceptors for flight control. The adopted arrangement of the wings was quite natural for an aircraft placed on the external sling with approximately the same level of maneuver both in the horizontal and in the vertical plane, which caused its use on most of the guided aircraft missiles. Unlike Fritz, the Soviet bomb was equipped with triangular wings with a large sweep along the leading edge, which reduced the loss of range and speed of the carrier with a suspended guided bomb; the hull of the German bomb. The roll control interceptors installed on the rear edges of the wings operated in the “yes-no” mode.

The UB-2000F “Chaika” tail unit also made of duralumin plates was made according to a two-killer pattern and differed favorably from the German counterpart in terms of the convenience of placing under the aircraft fuselage. Each of the two interceptors on the course and pitch channels worked in an oscillating mode, alternately deviating in opposite directions with a frequency of 5 Hz - the same as in the German system "Kel-Strasbourg". On both ends of the stabilizer, tracers of red light with a brightness of 500,000 candles each were placed with a duration of at least 83 s.

The bomb case of the UB-2000F "Chaika" consisted of a warhead and a tail section with control and stabilization equipment. The steel hull of the warhead consisted of a welded cast head part of an ogival shape, a main cylindrical part and a conical bottom with a closable hatch for pouring TNT. On the cylindrical part of the body there were two pilot glasses attached to the AV-139 fuses, two suspension bosses to the carrier and one bracket for fastening each wing. The tail compartment consisted of a welded thin-walled cone and an end part of two cast semi-cylinders. The tail compartment housed the receiver of one of the three frequency bands (K-4, K-6 or K-7) and the K-21 amplifier-decoder of the KRU-UB command radio control equipment, as well as the control unit BU-2.

The BU-2 unit consisted of the AP-59 autopilot developed by the OKB-122 with a roll-type gyro sensor DK-8F, a 14SB-40U battery, secondary power supplies PAG-1F and US-80F, and a switching unit BR-2. The equipment KRU-UB placed on the carrier used a continuous-radiation transmitter with time-pulse modulation. To control a particular “Seagull”, only one wavelength out of 600 available was used, and at another two frequencies the transmission was conducted only for disinformation of the enemy’s electronic warfare means. Three transmitters — K-14, K-16, and K-17 — were installed on the aircraft for operation in two meter (I and II) and decimeter (III) waveband groups. The signal to the transmitters arrived through the K-13 encoder from the K-26 command transmitter connected to the special optical sight OPB-2UP developed by TsKB-589 MAP.

The simplest so-called three-point method, in which the navigator of the aircraft carrying the handle (joystick) on the commander's unit tried to hold the Seagull on the plane-target line, was adopted as the main method of targeting, tracer lights should be observed against the background of the eyepiece sight.

The nature of the movement UB-2000F "Seagull"with its developed aerodynamic surfaces could differ significantly from the trajectory of the fall of an ordinary aerial bomb, which is close to a parabola. In the absence of guidance commands when flying with an autopilot involved, she would simply plan along an inclined straight line, keeping below the plane-target line. Therefore, the beginning of the three-point method was preceded by a section of the program launch of the Seagull on the plane-target line. In this area, the navigator, with the help of the joystick, tried to combine the observed lights of the Chaika’s tracers with a movable index, moved according to a previously developed time program in the field of view of the 0PB-2UP sight. Since the speed of the “Seagull” was obviously less than that of the aircraft, the guidance using the “three-point” method could be carried out only after the carrier overfilled the target, when the guided bomb.

As a result, the trajectory of the movement of the bomb acquired the character of a rather delicate figure of almost airplane aerobatics. When the carrier was flying at an altitude of 7 km, it was dropped at a distance of 2.6 km from the target, flew forward more than 4 km, and then returned to the target, hitting it by the time when the plane was already 5 km from the bombing object. At the same time, the slant range from the aircraft to the target increased to 9 km - the success of the bombing clearly depended on the proper transparency of the atmosphere. In addition to sensitivity to weather conditions, this combat use scheme also carried another organic flaw — to complete the targeting and hitting the target, the plane had to go straight along the entire zone of fire covering the target of antiaircraft artillery.

By decree of December 1, 1955 No. 2000-1070, the first Soviet guided bomb UB-2000F was put into service under the code UB-2F (4A-22). The Tu-16 aircraft could carry two UB-2Fs on the winged suspension, and the IL-28 could carry one under the fuselage. In 1956, the release of the installation batch of 120 guided bombs and the conversion of 12 Il-28 into carriers of this guided weapon was envisaged. According to experts of the test site, to hit a target measuring 30x70 meters, it was necessary to use two or three “Seagulls”, replacing 168 unmanaged FAB-1500.

The decree of December 1, 1955, also provided for the development of an improved version of the UB-2F - “Chaiky-2”, equipped with a thermal homing head. The main structural difference between the Chaika-2 and the prototype was the placement of a rather bulky thermal homing head 0-1-54 ahead of the warhead. The sensitivity of this head was rather low, corresponding to the application only for such powerful sources of thermal radiation, as metallurgical plants, coke plants, thermal power plants and ships. After being dropped from a plane, the bomb first carried out an autonomous flight with a transition to planning in the direction of the target, and then after hijacking the GOS target — homing. When installing the homing head, they refused to use the command radio link, so that the mass of the bomb increased by only 50 kg, and its length - 220 mm. We also carried out design studies on the Chaika-3, a variant of a bomb with a passive radar homing head PRG-10B, designed to hit radars and enemy active jamming stations.