Wild Weasel/SEAD against soviet/russian SAMs

wait, so in this alternate universe Pantsir or any other form of point defence does not exist?!? great joke whatever they are going on with here.
not to mention medium SAMs like S-350 could be lying in wait with its radar off anywhere they might approach and they wont even notice- fly above one and get serbed.

So basically this is Soviet naval missile tactics. The innovative thing however is the triangulation using the UAV's.

Now they just need a time machine to go back to the 1970s when the S-300 was the standard air defence SAM of the Soviet Union and they are ready.

It is amusing that they clearly are admitting that the F-35 that will be made in its thousands wont have enough payload to take out one S-300 battery and it will only need what looks like a C-130 with four new jet engines to take on one S-300 battery with no decoys or jammers or support or co-located light SAM defences.

Funny when he said swarm... I thought of a couple of 57mm SPAAG vehicles with laser guided rounds and a few Verba MANPADS.

Also an enemy with an integrated air defence network will likely also have something called an air force...

and I would bet money guided 57mm shells and Pantsir-SM and even Kornet EM missiles will be cheaper and produced in greater numbers than any weapon the US ever produces.

My worst nightmare. Fanboys running DARPA.

It's a marketing video, so designed to show it in it's best light

That's a pretty cool video for PR undoubtedly . Iran got S-300 so they must sell it now .

By the way those planes and uavs will be intercepted the moment they came anywhere close to their zone how exactly usaf will buy time to fire those missiles .


They have made LRASM , JSOW , JASSM specifically to go past china's AA/AD capabilities .

GarryB wrote:Now they just need a time machine to go back to the 1970s when the S-300 was the standard air defence SAM of the Soviet Union and they are ready.

It is amusing that they clearly are admitting that the F-35 that will be made in its thousands wont have enough payload to take out one S-300 battery and it will only need what looks like a C-130 with four new jet engines to take on one S-300 battery with no decoys or jammers or support or co-located light SAM defences.

Funny when he said swarm... I thought of a couple of 57mm SPAAG vehicles with laser guided rounds and a few Verba MANPADS.

Also an enemy with an integrated air defence network will likely also have something called an air force...

and I would bet money guided 57mm shells and Pantsir-SM and even Kornet EM missiles will be cheaper and produced in greater numbers than any weapon the US ever produces.

Decoys and Jammers seem to always be omitted from these Hollywood promos, a strategic jamming system like Murmansk-BN could jam any F-35B II Lightning, at massive standoff ranges...

True it is a marketing video... they need to justify the costs that will be involved in having a C-130 sized aircraft follow around every US fighter... especially that appears to be unmanned... which with all its jamming and decoy equipment on board would be very expensive, but a bit of realism could only further justify the costs and effort needed.

the F-35 is supposed to be a stealthy aircraft, but no amount of RAM will turn even a jet powered C-130 into a stealth aircraft... so we are talking about a swarm of attack decoys that will need to be able to kill an S-300PMU2 system from 250km... I really don't see that happening and that would just be Iran... who could tie in their other SAMs and systems further away from whatever the US wants to attack that could also be a real problem...

Decoys and Jammers seem to always be omitted from these Hollywood promos, a strategic jamming system like Murmansk-BN could jam any F-35B II Lightning, at massive standoff ranges...

Yes... a black and white world where we automatically win because we are the good guys just doesn't cut it.

the Russians have put an enormous amount of time and money into their air defence... not to make some money out of a naive government/public, but to defend the motherland...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DlTwsw1N7cA. Is this a holywood script....

moskit wrote:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DlTwsw1N7cA. Is this a holywood script....

Disillusion wet dreams, Raytheon did it better ( /watch?v=0acJ3xyhaJo ) simply put all these plans fall apart as soon as you add SHORADs and MRADs  to the mix, be it these systems of the current or even Legacy variety.

In this article the author's thesis statement is that SAM's even of the modern generation have a low kill probability in combat. He sites several conflicts where they have been used.His main points supporting his conclusions includes:
1. Limitations by radar horizons
2. Obstacles that cause interference
3. Enemy SEAD/ DEAD tactics
4. Saturation attacks
5. Maneuverability of aircraft
6. Static operations of radar, which lack on the move operations

Personally,I agree that the probability of kill for these systems were pretty dismal, even if wrong tactics, incompetent operators or legacy systems were employed.

Are the S300V4 , S400 and S300F + supporting systems integrated in a network? Or does each battery operate on its own? It has been mentioned that the frequencies of these radars are not high enough to identify aircraft? In the event of a crisis in the Syrian theater does these systems have friend or foe identification to prevent the shooting down of Russian and Syrian aircraft? In the 2008 war some aircraft were lost to fratricide by MANPADS. Are systems in place to avoid this?
Finally, could these Russian Systems, be integrated with E or export models such as Syrian BUKS, Kubs, Tor, S200, S125 sites?
SAM Threat

I don't even know what your point is. A shotgun is inaccurate but is the perfect weapon for brining down aerial targets. A Pantsir cannon is inaccurate. If you fly a helicopter through the feild of fire you will probably only get hit by 5% of the shells fired. By your logic you can fly willy nilly through protected airspace because surface to air systems have low hit ratio's. Density of air defense dictates how many aircraft can be effectively repelled. One guy with a manpad won't change much, but its cheap. How many S-300, Buk, Pantsir, Tor can you buy for the cost of an F-35 ? You can mass air defense alot better than mass air attack. You can deploy one S-300 for every F-35 you can buy. Who wins that one? If Turkey and Syria had equal military budgets, Turkey buys 50 F-35 and Syria buys 50 S-300 batteries who wins?

In this article the author's thesis statement is that SAM's even of the modern generation have a low kill probability in combat.

Yeah... that logic is pretty weak... he is basically saying that because Libya had 1960s era SAMs and were unable to defend against US cruise missiles and SEAD equipment that the S-400 will be crap?

Sorry but I think the russians know what they are doing... just like the Serbs did.

In fact we could turn that around and say NATO is pathetic at dealing with air defences operated by people who know what they are doing... they had total control of the airspace in Kosovo and over Serbia yet they were powerless despite the Serbs having substandard systems.

The fact of the matter is that NATO had short flight distances, total air control, no interference with their satellites or land based forces... they should have taken the Serb air defence network to pieces in 70 days... in practise they barely scratched the paint. They had to bomb infrastructure like the US did in Vietnam where they couldn't win with airpower alone either.

He sites several conflicts where they have been used.His main points supporting his conclusions includes:

The problem is that we have not seen a previous case of the Russians actually using their air defence network at home or overseas in a capacity similar to what they would provide for their own forces.

1. Limitations by radar horizons

Mobility of systems counters that.

2. Obstacles that cause interference

See above.

3. Enemy SEAD/ DEAD tactics

All modern Russian SAMs have layers and pretty much all those layers can now kill HARM type weapons and the launch platforms that bring them to the battlefield.

4. Saturation attacks

Most new Russian systems carry rather more missiles than predecessors and have more than enough missiles for so called saturation attacks... against a 1960s large SAM a saturation attack would be 2-3 cruise missiles as such systems could only handle one target at a time. Current missile systems not only can take on many times more than that number they are also defended by vehicles like Pantsir where each vehicle can take on 4 targets on its own and there are 6-8 units in each battery... so they can take out leaker weapons while the SAM they are located with can take the launch platforms and JSTARS and AWACS platforms supporting the attack.

5. Maneuverability of aircraft

Modern aircraft are no more manoeuvrable than aircraft from the 1980s... 9 g is about the limit a human can take and that has not changed... and by the way an S-300 missile coming in at mach 5 is a blur... even though it is a very big missile it will be moving at just under 1.6km per second... so one second before impact it will be 1.5km away... even if you could see it from that distance how tight a turn will you be able to make in one second before its 150kg warhead explodes... remember its seeker will be locked on to your aircraft so the smart fuse will explode in such a way that the fragments are directed on an intercept course with your aircraft... even if it misses by 10m you are going to be swiss cheese...

6. Static operations of radar, which lack on the move operations

Static radar can be defended with TOR and Pantsir and can also be co-located with jammers and distraction decoys that will lure incoming ARMS away from the real antenna.

The Russians have plenty of fixed and mobile radar systems.

Personally,I agree that the probability of kill for these systems were pretty dismal, even if wrong tactics, incompetent operators or legacy systems were employed.

Which systems?
The US has come up against a range of ex Soviet and ex Russian air defence systems... but never against newer systems. The newer systems were designed from the outset to take into account lessons from previous experience... so when SA-6 systems were defeated in the Middle east by taking out the radar vehicles which left the launchers vulnerable to F-16s with dumb bombs the replacement BUK design added guidance radars and EO alternative guidance options to each TEL vehicle... made them rather more expensive but also vastly more capable... but this authors arguments are that they didn't work well before so they wont work well now?

Interesting.

The U.S. and Israeli air forces have dealt with surface-to-air missile-defense networks before in Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) operations. Early SAM suppression missions undertaken by American and Israeli “Wild Weasel” aircraft in the Vietnam and Yom Kippur Wars sometimes delivered results, but also incurred substantial losses. In 1982, Israel launched Operation Mole Cricket 19 targeting Syrian SAM sites using nearly a hundred F-15 and F-4 Phantom fighters supported by E-2 radar planes. In a matter of hours, they succeeded in knocking out thirty Syrian SAM sites without losing a single airplane, demonstrating how a combination of electronic warfare and standoff antiradiation missiles could be used to methodically take apart even an integrated air-defense network.                 http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/syria-the-s-400-the-most-dangerous-game-cat-mouse-earth-20200?page=show                                                                                                       To begin with, U.S. warplanes can launch several types of air-launched antiradiation missiles designed to locate active radar stations, notably the AGM-88 HARM which has a ninety-mile range, and the AGM-158, which can traverse up to six hundred miles on the extended-range variant. These could target the radars an S-400 depends on from beyond its optimal range against fighter-type targets. RC-135W Rivet Joint electronic-warfare planes could also assist in detecting the electromagnetic activity around hostile radar sites, making them easier to eliminate one by one from a distance. A common SEAD tactic is to use forward aircraft to bait the defenders into turning on their radars and opening fire—thereby allowing the antiradar missiles to locate their targets.

moskit wrote: The U.S. and Israeli air forces have dealt with surface-to-air missile-defense networks before in Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) operations. Early SAM suppression missions undertaken by American and Israeli “Wild Weasel” aircraft in the Vietnam and Yom Kippur Wars sometimes delivered results, but also incurred substantial losses. In 1982, Israel launched Operation Mole Cricket 19 targeting Syrian SAM sites using nearly a hundred F-15 and F-4 Phantom fighters supported by E-2 radar planes. In a matter of hours, they succeeded in knocking out thirty Syrian SAM sites without losing a single airplane, demonstrating how a combination of electronic warfare and standoff antiradiation missiles could be used to methodically take apart even an integrated air-defense network.                 http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/syria-the-s-400-the-most-dangerous-game-cat-mouse-earth-20200?page=show                                                                                                       To begin with, U.S. warplanes can launch several types of air-launched antiradiation missiles designed to locate active radar stations, notably the AGM-88 HARM which has a ninety-mile range, and the AGM-158, which can traverse up to six hundred miles on the extended-range variant. These could target the radars an S-400 depends on from beyond its optimal range against fighter-type targets. RC-135W Rivet Joint electronic-warfare planes could also assist in detecting the electromagnetic activity around hostile radar sites, making them easier to eliminate one by one from a distance. A common SEAD tactic is to use forward aircraft to bait the defenders into turning on their radars and opening fire—thereby allowing the antiradar missiles to locate their targets.

Actually, there is an entire Pantsir-S1/S2 battery protecting the S-400 system, with a mission to shoot down anything threatening the S-400 division/battalion.

Right after the "Morfey" (Morpheus) SHORAD missile system is accepted to service, it will likely to be issued to S-400 units, so after that, the defenses of the S-400 regiments and brigades will be an even tougher nut to crack.

Speaking about enemy electronic warfare, I'm pretty convinced that the engineers of Almaz-Antey designed the "Big Bird" target aquisition and "Grave Stone" engagement/fire control radars to withstand enemy ECM well.

Talking about the defeating of the S-400, I have two scenarios in my mind

1.) To at least supress the S-400 regiments or brigades (in this case, the mission type is SEAD – as you said, Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses), individual battalions (divisions) or companies (batteries) must be stripped from their radars and/or command posts. Anti-Radiation missiles would be needed to complete this.

2.) To completely destroy the whole S-400 unit (here, the mission type is DEAD – Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses). Here, even the launchers must be destroyed. You need both Anti-Radiation (for the radars) and Air-to-Surface missiles (to take good care of anything left (launchers, command posts, communications and crew accomodation vehicles).

What weapons to use?

AGM-88 HARM is pretty much outdated against such a high-end SAM system. Using AGM-88E AARGM (Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile), or as you said AGM-158 JASSM-ER cruise missile would be much more logical.

If you, as a NATO air forces officer*, really want to carry out a SEAD mission against an S-400 formation, pick a whole squadron of EA-18G "Growler" EW/SEAD/DEAD aircraft based on the famous F/A-18C/D "Super Hornet", or if you are desperate enough to go on a DEAD mission, take an entire wing of them.

EDIT: As far as I know, only the US has access to most of these weapons, although Israel has its own tricks up in its sleeve.

*Hypothetically speaking

The US and Israel are very good at taking on IADS systems, they have a lot of practise.

Their main problem is that the current range of SAMs developed by the Russians and their tactics are based on previous US and Israeli efforts to defeat previous systems.

Their real problem is that unlike Arab networks a Russian system is not passive and can actually strike back.

Those Israel attacks on their neighbours would not have been nearly as successful if those neighbours had modern air forces and tactical weapons to strike back at Israel during their attacks.

Current Russian SAMs are all design to defeat ARMs, and the long range systems are designed to defeat the launch platforms of weapons to make attacks too costly to consider in the first place.

Unlike the Arab forces the Russians have an air force that can actually cooperate with the IADS and add protection to ground forces in a mutual way so that any attempt to attack will become rather costly... and not just in terms of missiles and UAVs destroyed, but in aircraft and air fields destroyed... and capital cities attacked.

In Air Forces Monthly, Thomas Newdick summarized a report from Georges Malbrunot at the French newspaper Le Figaro that said Israel took its F-35s out on a combat mission one month after getting them from the US.
Malbrunot reported that on January 12, Israeli F-35s took out a Russian-made S-300 air defense system around Syrian President Bashar Assad's palace in Damascus and a Russian-made Pantsir-S1 mobile surface-to-air missile system set for delivery to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Is this true?? http://finance.yahoo.com/news/israels-f-35s-may-already-184545408.html

And of course the Russians responded by sending in the PAK FA which destroyed five Patriot batteries in Israel and also took out their Arrow defence systems and was back home so that no one noticed it was gone.

General Military subjects is not a fantasy thread.