Is Russia safe from F-22 and Β-2?

I am the kind of a person who likes turning things around.

What can the US do to counter a PAK-FA over its territory? ......duuuuuh.......

What low flying aircraft?

The only footage I saw was of Rafales flying at medium altitude above MANPADS height.

Why does it need to be on the cheap?

I think the most and major of the damage done to Green Libyan Army was by NATO air power. Tanks, BMDs, Artillery etc. were all killed by NATO not the rebels. So you want to say that all the action took place above 15K feet outside the range of Igla and others. This alone is an example to make a manpad which cheap like $250K most, mobile i.e. broken into two parts and carried by two men, able to kill birds much above 15K feet. For price of one Tor there can 100 manpads of this kind. Tor and Buks are good to protect SAMs like S300s and other valuables because they need to kill the cruise missiles and JDAMs but manpads will keep hawks away from tanks and troops which will then be free to move. I believe items like CIWS Phalanx, Goalkeeper etc. that protect the ships should be developed which can engage the incoming cruise missiles and JDAMs. Unless they are hypersonic these can be slammed well by CIWS protecting an important piece of equiptment, ofcourse in addtion to point defense deals like Tors. US has a semi stealth cruise missile called SMACM, but for now these travel at subsonic (i think) because they cost only $100K each. Not like Tomahawks which cost good $1M and more. These SMACMs can saturate a S300 or S400 and then like you said, main SAM is gone and left is the business of F-18 Grolwers for SEAD and then F22 and F35s for initial at will bombing.

There has to be a cheap answer to SMACMs type missiles and point defense CIWS needs to be available at half dozen or more angles on the clock to provide 360 degree defense.

I am sorry Victor, I understand what you are suggesting but you are mistaken.

If you make the modifications to a MANPAD that makes it as capable as Pantsir-S1 or TOR then your MANPAD ends up as big an heavy as a Pantsir-S1 or a TOR.

That means to move it around the battlefield you need a vehicle, and you need sensors to detect targets and guide the missiles, and you need a power supply... and you end up with a Pantsir-S1 or a TOR.

It is like the Americans and their fixation with assault rifle accuracy to 800m.

They spend a fortune on their rifles and ammo to make them accurate to that range and then find in Iraq that they never use them beyond 300m. Then they go to Afghanistan and when the enemy (which they trained in the 1980s to take long range potshots at Soviet troops because it helped them live longer) they suddenly found that their little assault rifle bullet really doesn't have the power to be lethal at anything more than 300m from the M16 or SA80, or 200m from weapons with shorter barrels like their M4 and para barreled FN Minimi.

The problem isn't their assault rifles and LMG, their problem is trying to use an assault rifle as a battle rifle and the fact that an assault rifle round in a light machinegun makes it a slightly longer range assault rifle and not a LMG.

The Russians knew that and included PKMs and SVDs in their platoons to give range (and along with RPGs) they have plenty of shorter range firepower, and significant longer reach too.

Units that operate in certain situations get different weapon choices.

I have an old photo somewhere in a french military magazine of a Russian unit moving to relieve a Russian position on some mountaintop somewhere in some Soviet republic that was fighting a civil war or something, and all the guys going up the hill had SVDs and all the guys coming down the hill except the commander had SVDs too.

What I am trying to say is that MANPADS have a role... they need to be cheap and they need to be mobile.


The fact that NATO airpower operates above 15,000 feet is not some advantage... they are afraid of MANPADS... MANPADS are doing their job.

The problem is that to make MANPADS a high altitude SAM is to make it immobile, and much much more expensive.

The purpose behind Pantsir-S1... the reason they extended its max altitude engagement to 15,000m (which is over 40,000 feet BTW) was directly in response to NATO operating above 20,000ft in Kosovo/Serbia.

Pantsir-S1 forcing NATO planes to operate at over 40,000ft would have made most of their missions pointless.

The main problem in Libya was lack of a modern fighter and lack of modern long range SAM... once these two were defeated then the rest didn't have a chance because most short range range missiles can't engage high altitude targets and are not designed for that.

Do you understand what I mean?

You can't make a few modifications to an M16 and make it a sniper rifle... well you can by changing the calibre and the barrel and everything else and making it an M24... which will cost the same price as an M16 and an M24...

It seems Pantsir provides 12 missiles and 2500 bullets/min CIWS type feature also. However, cost is $13-15 million, although that might include the support ammo vechicle and other spare parts deals.

It should be interesting to see how Syria Air Defense pans out if NATO attacks them. Basically they have everything that Russia counts on except for S400s. Syria has most advanced S-300 SAMs, Tor, Buk and Pantsirs. Do they have anything to ward off the saturation attack by the cruise missiles. Tor and Buks should help for a while and then it becomes a question of who has deeper pockets given the decoy attacks that NATO can launch also to deplete their missiles. However, once S-300s are taken out it should be an accelerating attrition. It would not be as fast as Libya was, i.e. 2 days around but it will get there. Would love to have some CIWS like Phalax try to kill off cruise missiles 1 km from the target. Cost of 1 phalax gun system without radar is $1.5M. Am sure Russian/Chinese CIWS would be slightly cheap. This is more so because cruise missiles are sub sonic and can be handled by anti aircraft guns if located in time.


Btw, UCAVs flying around armed with Iglas is a good idea. But they might need some top grade jamming resistence and sophistication to locate and lock on incoming cruise missiles. Anything that get through meets CIWS types and ofcourse T/B/Ps point defenses. No wonder US is coming out with stealth cruise missiles already.

I would also like to add that performance, training and dedication of Arab armies is really C- grade. Serbians showed a much more B+ grade performance and thus saved lots of their equipment from NATO bombs. So men behind the machines bring out different results also.

It seems Pantsir provides 12 missiles and 2500 bullets/min CIWS type feature also. However, cost is $13-15 million, although that might include the support ammo vechicle and other spare parts deals.

The 2A38M 30mm twin barrel cannon the Pantsir is fitted with fire at 2,500 rpm each, so its rate of fire is actually 5,000 rpm per vehicle.

I suspect the original figure you gave of 25 million would be for one battery, which would be 6 vehicles with guns and missiles on them ready to fire plus the support vehicles, which would include a mechanical maintainence vehicle (for engines and turrets and other mechanical issues, a repair and maintainence vehicle for electronics (radar and EO sensors), and alignment vehicle, one reload vehicle for every two armed vehicles (ie three), a test equipment vehicle for the missiles, and a mobile and fixed trainer system.

If you want to save money there is a version of the system that does not use radar and only uses the optics system for day night all weather operation which according to the makers costs 2-2.5 times less than the fully equipped model.

Would love to have some CIWS like Phalax try to kill off cruise missiles 1 km from the target. Cost of 1 phalax gun system without radar is $1.5M. Am sure Russian/Chinese CIWS would be slightly cheap. This is more so because cruise missiles are sub sonic and can be handled by anti aircraft guns if located in time.

Ahhh, Victor... you do realise that the two twin barrel cannon on the Pantsir are 30mm cannon with 4-5 times the power of the little 20mm cannon shells the Phalanx fires? You also realise that Phalanx is useless beyond about 1.8km and fires at a max rate of 4,500rpm, while the 30mm cannon on the Pantsir-S1 fire at 5,000rpm out to 4km with HE shells rather more effective at destroying a cruise missile than a DU round that simply punches a neat little hole through... if it hits.

I would also like to add that performance, training and dedication of Arab armies is really C- grade. Serbians showed a much more B+ grade performance and thus saved lots of their equipment from NATO bombs. So men behind the machines bring out different results also.

This is critical. Even ancient equipment used professionally can evade a superior force and remain a threat despite the best efforts of the enemy.

Good equipment badly handled will not save you.

NATO intervention into Syria would be a total mess and would likely bring Iran into the conflict too.

be-and-co.com/oaf_pdf/oaf040750.pdf

Visit this link on Russian AD systems. Pg 6. Kill probability of Tor and Buk overs around 50 to 75% against the cruise missiles. End stage CIWS defenses like Pantsirs should be pretty handy, almost critical requirement.


If Phalax and Goalkeeper types can handle supersonic Yakhonts missiles, then cruise missiles should be easy deals and more so when they are detected much in advance, unlike Yakhont which dips down for last 15kms and gets lost to the radar detection. Stealth cruise is another game in town.

Phalanx was developed well before Yakhont, its ability to deal with any numbers of Yakhont is I think suspect.

Visit this link on Russian AD systems. Pg 6. Kill probability of Tor and Buk overs around 50 to 75% against the cruise missiles. End stage CIWS defenses like Pantsirs should be pretty handy, almost critical requirement.

These are single shot kill probabilities... and the figure for TOR is 50%-99%.

The best defence against cruise missiles is a functioning air force with aircraft carrying modern R-77 and R-73 like missiles.

If Phalax and Goalkeeper types can handle supersonic Yakhonts missiles, then cruise missiles should be easy deals and more so when they are detected much in advance, unlike Yakhont which dips down for last 15kms and gets lost to the radar detection. Stealth cruise is another game in town.

If Phalanx could deal with sea skimming cruise missiles (supersonic or otherwise) they would not be replacing it with SEA RAM.

The critical factor with cruise missiles is detection. The sooner you detect a cruise missile the much greater the chance of defeating it becomes. Having radars looking out to sea to very low levels with no hills or mountain ranges to block the radars view cruise missiles can be detected fairly early.

With plenty of warning aircraft can be scrambled to engage the threats at extended ranges.

Missiles coming from nearby borders are more difficult especially if such areas have fairly rugged terrain.

The thing is that most enemies will have a range of fairly predictible targets they will want to hit and they will certainly have a fairly easy to work out order in which they will want to hit them.

Very long range cruise missiles can be sent on quite a journey that involves a fairly unpredictible route, but the point is that most targets are deep within enemy territory and sensible placement of air defence units and sensible aircraft deployment should make the flight of the cruise missile very difficult.

The greatest advantage of the cruise missile is choosing where and when to attack so that it comes as a surprise.

When the enemy knows it is coming then there is a good chance it wont make it.

Personally, if I was Iran, I would have put in an order in the early 1990s for 200 Mig-31s, but modified so that the belly positions had conformal positions for R-77 missiles. With their tail surfaces folded forward they are very long slim weapons and with a large aircraft like the Mig-31 you could probably fit up to 6 R-77s side by side under the belly of the aircraft. With two rows of 6 missiles that means each fighter could carry 12 missiles on its belly and with special triple ejector racks on each wing pylon for R-77s with their tail control surfaces folded forward you could get another 12 missiles on the 4 standard wing pylons.

In terms of weight the R-77 is a very light weight missile and drag would be little problem either.

With 24 R-77s and a 23mm cannon each Mig-31 would be very well armed to meet even a full scale US cruise missile attack, and with that powerful radar and IRST most other US aircraft would have trouble too.

By now of course I would trade one row of 6 missiles on the belly for 3 RVV-BD missiles, and the outer wing pylons might get RVV-MD (R-73s) and the inner missile pylon RVV-SD(R-77) in new digital form, and I would look to upgrade some of the radars to AESA together with Mig...

Probably look at engine upgrades as well to improve fuel efficiency and power.

The engines of the Mig-31 share a heritage with the engines of the Il-76, so the changes made to the engines in the IL-476 could be applied to the engines in the Mig-31 to increase thrust and reduce fuel consumption.

Wow! infact that's what one Russian Air Force General also said about Mig-31s defending Iraq during the Operation Desert Fox in late 90s. Do not know the details, but he surely mentioned that if Mig-31 was defending Iraq then it would have been a different game all together.

Infact RuAF is itself going for upgrades on its 31s going all the way to 2020s. 31s armed with Novator the Awacs killer missile would be a fearsome theater to hover around in.

The Mig-31 is designed to operate in groups of four with their radars linked together via a datalink.

The four aircraft would fly in an enormous formation in a line with 200km between each aircraft. Together the four aircraft covered a frontage of 1,000km across that was 200km deep where the radars could detect targets.

Their primary targets were the bombers before they released their cruise missiles with the job of chasing down any cruise missiles that might have been launched before they get anywhere near their targets.

Even without any armament modification a flight of Mig-31s can seriously deplete a cruise missile attack before it even starts.

And that is the point... layers.

No one layer will be perfect... BUK might only have a 50% change of shooting down a cruise missile, but careful concealment of its existence might mean a cruise missile attack might cross over two or three BUK batteries on its way to its target which could mean the 10 missiles fired to overwhelm a specific SAM site might result in 6 missiles arriving with the target dealing with those.

Once the enemy is alerted then the airforce suddenly comes in to play too.

It should be interesting to see how Syria Air Defense pans out if NATO attacks them. Basically they have everything that Russia counts on except for S400s. Syria has most advanced S-300 SAMs, Tor, Buk and Pantsirs. Do they have anything to ward off the saturation attack by the cruise missiles. Tor and Buks should help for a while and then it becomes a question of who has deeper pockets given the decoy attacks that NATO can launch also to deplete their missiles. However, once S-300s are taken out it should be an accelerating attrition. It would not be as fast as Libya was, i.e. 2 days around but it will get there. Would love to have some CIWS like Phalax try to kill off cruise missiles 1 km from the target. Cost of 1 phalax gun system without radar is $1.5M. Am sure Russian/Chinese CIWS would be slightly cheap. This is more so because cruise missiles are sub sonic and can be handled by anti aircraft guns if located in time.

Syria doesn't have S-300 and Tor, but have Buk-M2, Pantsir-S1 and Igla-S. Tor-M1 is in Iranian arsenal. Don't forget, that all SAMs are operated by crews and quality of crews is most important. Serbian ancient air defense make a lot of troubles to NATO and in worst electronic warfare and SEAD/DEAD environment they managed to shot down around 200 cruise missiles, 30 UAV, 1 F-117 and 1 F-16 and damage some planes and helicopters. They have well trained crews and good discipline and good strategy and tactics, what Arabs never had. Libya have larger and better air force and air defense than Serbia and was not attacked by 1000+ planes, but i think with less than 100, but they were very quickly out of the game. the main problem in Libya was in air force and air defense personnel. Same goes for Syria and Iran. they have good air defense, but without competent crews they are useless.

It should be interesting to see how Syria Air Defense pans out if NATO attacks them. Basically they have everything that Russia counts on except for S400s. Syria has most advanced S-300 SAMs, Tor, Buk and Pantsirs.

With that sentence, i think, you render any further attempt to respond in a serious way totally worthless...
For some strange reason this attitude recall to my mind the Israeli PR campaign (so naive for any person with even only a minimum of knowledge to appear even childish.. ) just before the September 2007 Operation Orchard , with plentiful of interviews and articles attempting to depict the image of Syrian Air Force as...the best at world.
Such as this article named :" IDF: Syria's antiaircraft system most advanced in world "


http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3436827,00.html

Naturally any serious institution depict a completly opposite picture of the level of Syrian AD network


http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/081125_is_syria_air_sam.pdf


After the attack the PR effort came to the point to claim ,unshamedly, that the "heroic" IAF air squad ,with the aid of secret "wondrous" EW assets, had also surpassed the defense of modern Pantsyr-S1E's batteries !!!
Those EW assets should have been very miraculous, because the have not merely managed to jam those Pantsyr-S1E's batteries but have ......literally created them from thin air (the first evalutation unit was delivered only an year after the attack !! )

That type of low level PR campaign -to the limit of childish- have obviously a clear aim : if ,in the information war, i "transform" the air defence network of an enemy composed ,in reality, for 99% by 30 years old export version of Soviet SAM systems in bad conditions an operated by scarcely proficient crew in a "modern" Air Defence network armed with the most up-to-date air defence systems when i conduct...easily..an attack against this enemy i obtain to "stain" the image and ,consequently, the potential market of advanced SAM systems in the theatre .

This element is very important considering that the only instance(Yom-Kippur war) when IAF has confronted few batteries of an export version of a Soviet SAM system of the same generation of theirs aircraft -Kvadrat - the results was an horrible disaster for Isreali Air Force.



This statement appear, more or less, on the same line.

Even without any armament modification a flight of Mig-31s can seriously deplete a cruise missile attack before it even starts.

In the case of Syria (for example), would these foxhounds if available be vulnerable to F22s and F35s. Syria has S300 but range is only 150-200 kms. Mig's Zaslon-M radar has 400 km range to kill off any AWACS and also has IRST but with only 60km detection. So F22s can still sneak in to say 75kms and release their AIM-120D missiles. While these are expensive missiles at $700K each but can get the job done to remove the Foxhound layer from IAD.

This infact brings the thread to full circle, regarding the main challenge being detection and tracking of F22s (when S400 is not in picture in case of Syria and Iran).

What would be your strategy for them. Syria has S300 and Iran only a domestic version of HQ-9.

Also very importantly, how would Mig-31 defend against the stealth cruise missiles like AGM-158 JASSM. Instead of F-18, if USAF uses F22 for initial SEAD ops, then a hole is already punched as some IAD radars would be out of the game.

victor7 wrote: Syria has S300 and Iran only a domestic version of HQ-9.

Syria does NOT have S-300 and god know what has Iran but I doubt is HQ-9.

It may be some PR info war.

Syria announced an intention to buy the S-300P in 1991 and now seems to possess the system. During the Syrian revolution, Russia supplied the Syrian military with an array of S-300 missiles and sent Russian technical advisors with the missiles to provide the technical support for Syrian military to operate the missiles


The above is from Wikipedia.

Why would a country buy S-300 system and not order say a dozen Mig-31s. Syria also orderd 8 Foxhounds but delivery got stopped either by pressure from Israel or Syrian lack of funds.

Israel threatened Russia that it will 'neutralize' S-300 if these were delivered to Iran. It seems Russia bucked and stopped the S-300 sales to Tehran. Do not know the real reason. Also, Russia has stopped the production of S-300 since few months ago. All focus is on S-400 and S-500 down the road.

Syria has S300 but range is only 150-200 kms.

Victor please , try to participate in a serious way : Syria has NOT any S-300 of any type ,the latest SAM it will receive is BUK-M2E ,in observance to has signed a contract still not implemented (at now only some evaluations units of this system are present in Syria ).

victor7 wrote: Syria announced an intention to buy the S-300P in 1991 and now seems to possess the system. During the Syrian revolution, Russia supplied the Syrian military with an array of S-300 missiles and sent Russian technical advisors with the missiles to provide the technical support for Syrian military to operate the missiles


The above is from Wikipedia.

There is a lot of good information in Wikipedia, but also a serious amount of inaccuracies and outright lies/false information. There are no reliable sources confirming S-300 in Syria claims, if such a deal was to be made you should expect a lot of noice and protesting from Israel as happened with the S-300 deal to Iran and Yahkont sales to Syria.

In the case of Syria (for example), would these foxhounds if available be vulnerable to F22s and F35s.

First of all lets eliminate the F-35 it is simply not ready for service yet.

With the F-22 a foreign deployment of F-22s would not go unnoticed and whereever they are based becomes a target for Syrian Scuds and Scud modifications.

Basing F-22s would be considered an act of war by Syria as soon as the first explosions occur, so any tankers belonging to NATO would be on the hit list along with any airborne early warning aircraft.

Ground based radar would be used, and I think probably a press release stating that any attack on Syria would lead to a direct attack on Israel and western assets in the region (ie oil assets and US bases) would be targeted if Syria was attacked by an outside threat would be sufficient to prevent the US risking an attack.

If they do attack then launching Scuds at nuclear facilities in Israel and US oil interests in Jordan and Iraq would be priority one.

The Israeli airforce would kill the Syrian Air Force, though with Mig-31s they would certainly have plenty of losses themselves.

The biggest problem with the Arabs vs the west and the Arabs vs Israel is their division...

The point is that the USAF will not deploy the F-22s anywhere.

Mindstorm wrote:

Syria has S300 but range is only 150-200 kms.

Victor please , try to participate in a serious way : Syria has NOT any S-300 of any type ,the latest SAM it will receive is BUK-M2E ,in observance to has signed a contract still not implemented (at now only some evaluations units of this system are present in Syria ).

Syria has S300 or not does not matter, the question is how to defend a territory using a combination of S300 and Foxhounds. The attackers being F22s and F35s using stealth cruise missiles.

The whole concept of stealth aircraft was intended to defeat the combination of S-300 and Foxhound... both of which are late 1970s designs originally.

It is like saying "How do you use an M47 US tank to defeat a T-90AM"

In a conventional air attack both the Foxhound and S-300 can engage conventional enemy aircraft at extended ranges and cruise missiles at medium ranges.

Make them stealthy and the effective ranges shrink dramatically to the point where they are not much use.

But then you could say the value of having such systems drives up the cost of the attack.

The 120 cruise missiles used in Libya were not stealthy uber cruise missiles, and the aircraft used in the attack would all have been vulnerable to S-300s and Foxhounds.

The solution to evade S-300 most of the time is to fly very low... where MANPADS become a threat.

The point is that the cost of a regime change has skyrocketed when the opposition starts using air defence systems developed in the 1970s and 1980s by the Soviets.

Make them stealthy and the effective ranges shrink dramatically to the point where they are not much use.

This means Russia is vulnerable to salvos of stealthy cruise missile attacks in combination with F22s acting as some sort of jammer initially. May be IR type missiles might be able to locate these stealth cruisers and real late stage CIWS should fire like mad once JASSMs are optically visible.

Btw, does US have the capability to monitor a area say 10km x 10km in the real time via satellite. I know they can do that via spec ops planted in the area. But purely satellite ability is the question. Because that would further erode the advantages of mobile SAMs.

the question is how to defend a territory using a combination of S300 and Foxhounds.The attackers being F22s and F35s using stealth cruise missiles.

Victor i truly don't understand what is your fixation with F-22 and F-35 m which are obviously among the less worrying menaces for Russia in an eventual conflict against USA .

1) F-22 and F-35 DON'T carry in theirs internal weapon bay any type of long range (stealthy or not) cruise missiles , therefore if you want at any cost to employ those two aircraft (...i don't know why, but those seem to me the typical symptomes of the infamous F-16 . net disease) at least try to maintain integer their distinctive CONOPS and capabilities.
If instead you want to talk of a BY FAR much efficient and truly dangerous massive stand-off cruise missile attack ,obviously those two aircraft have literally zero strategic value and what become critically important is the efficiency of the opposing IAD's layers capable to credibly deal with that menace

2) The corollary to what up said is that the employment of stand-off cruise missiles and ballistic missiles attacks can render any critical not hardened asset, such as C4, radar stations and ....airfields of an enemy devoid of a very extensive ,dense and multilayered IAD ,COMPLETELY WORTHLESS and incapable even only to come into play in the conflict's operations (from that derive the very strong emphasis putted by Russians in the anti-ballistic and anti-cruise missile performances of almost any of its domestic SAM systems).
Destroy Elmendorf Air Base with almost any assets and aircraft here present (only to respond to your question on F-22s) become a truly trivial task employing real strategically useful capabilities between military great power .such as stand-off cruise missile attacks and even more ballistic missiles attacks.
Several groups of mobile Klub missile launchers form well within Russian Federation territory under the protection several layers and several hundreds of Kilometers of national IAD and Aior Forces, exit for a pair of minutes from : multi-exit redeploying tunnels , abandoned hangars, old trains stock, a group of inflatable launchers etc..etc...shoot theirs missiles and quickly disperse or return to the tunnels for reload and prepare to attack another target . From this instant the only element capable to save thiosd assets from complete annihilation is the quality and extension of the multilayered IAD at its defense ...if present.

URSS/Russia invest in this type of multilayered Strategic IAD since '50 years ; the results are : Mig-31 the aircraft at world by far more optimized for the task, various type of mobile ground based long range EW assets like SPN-2/4 ,SPN-30/40, 1L245 series and various type of GPS jammers (any of which ,like you well know, with a level of jamming power radiated 6-7 times greater than the greater airborne one !!), Long range SAM ,such as S-300 family, with 360 degree engagement capabilities and impressive anti-low-altitude cruise missiles and anti-ballistic missile capabilities, Medium range SAMs such as BUK-M1/2 with very good cruise missile interception features, and point defense systems , such as Tunguska-M1, Tor-M1/2, Pantsyr-s1 and Igla/Igla-s MANPADS all with impressive anti missile/PGM capabilities .
Now i am curious to know what is the "made-in-USA" corresponding of a Tor-M1 or a SPN-40 or a Tunhuska-M1 or Pantsyrs-S1 and the extension and density of the IAD ..if the employment of a similar word wouldn't appear ironic in this instance...at defense of its widely spread and insulated airbases and command centers , capable to save all those assets from similar decapitating attacks conducted safely from thousands of kilometers of distance under full protection of the enemy entire Air Force and National IAD

JASSM with range of 370Kms can be launched by F35.
JASSM-ER/XR can be launched from 500 to 900 to 1600 from the target even by a legacy bird.

The challenge for Russian AD and RuAF is the

"ability to detect, track and kill stealth aircrafts and missiles at longer ranges than 60km by S400 and that too in a hostile full power jamming assault on own assets."

F22 is a game changer and only lion in the jungle until Pakfa comes out in 2015.

Btw, thanks for the informative reply. So you think that Russian Federation will be able to "hold off" and "repel" a full scale USAF assault......successfully.

If someone asks me, I would say ICBMs are currently the main and probably the ONLY source of threat that Russia can pose to US/NATO and that is why Medvedev came on tv to warn about ABM plans in Poland and Czech. Once ABM is in full swing, then Russia's ability to counter strike will diminish by alot and that is why Russian high command is really worried. Strategic Rocket Forces (i.e. missiles research) has been probably the only area in Russian Defense that was not brutally neglected in the 1990s and hence Russian lead in air to air missiles, Topols etc.

This means Russia is vulnerable

THAT IS THE KEY.

Russia is vulnerable.

There is not sense in trying to be invulnerable because such a state does not exist.

Russia is vulnerable to stealth cruise missiles.

NATO and the US is vulnerable to stealth cruise missiles.

Russia is vulnerable to submarine launched ballistic missiles.

The US is vulnerable to submarine launched ballistic missiles.

It is the same with ICBMs.

It is the same with suicide bombers.

This means Russia is vulnerable to salvos of stealthy cruise missile attacks in combination with F22s acting as some sort of jammer initially.

If an F-22 wan'ts to give away its position by being a jammer then that is their mistake.

Btw, does US have the capability to monitor a area say 10km x 10km in the real time via satellite. I know they can do that via spec ops planted in the area. But purely satellite ability is the question. Because that would further erode the advantages of mobile SAMs.

The US has shown zero capability to hit scud launcher vehicles before they launch, their performance against mobile SAMs is worse.

Russia is too far north.

Satellites can't hover like you see in the movies, unless it is in a geostationary orbit very high up and near the equator, a satellite comes over every 90 minutes or so and can see one spot on the ground for between 2 and 6 minutes depending on its flight path in relation to the spot on the ground.

Most Russian SAMs are mobile to some degree, and some, like Pantsir-S1 can fire while moving... the thing is that the Russians would never just sit and take a US or NATO attack... odds are they would strike back... and NATO and the US's ability to stop a stealth cruise missile attack is worse than Russias.

The advantage of mobile SAMs over static SAMs is proven in Libya and any conflict before it.

MANPADS are effective because they are mobile and concealable.

They force the enemy to fly higher... that is their goal and a sign of their success.

It is normally the cost of the rest of the required system that prevents most non colonial/non imperialist countries from defending themselves against Team America World Lynch mob.

They force the enemy to fly higher... that is their goal and a sign of their success.

Just read that JDAMs and JSOWs can be launched by planes flying at 33-40,000 feet. I think that's what was happening in Libya and more so because both J's have gps/intertial/laser based targeting support and these can be updated while in flightalso.