How to disable S-300PMU system?

SOC , I had a question for you , this is for S-300PMU2
http://www.enemyforces.net/missiles/s300pmu2.htm

As you know its advertised at range of 200 km and capable of engaging targets with speed of Mach 9 ( 10,000 km/h ).

Are you aware of the average speed and top speed of S-300PMU2 ?
How challenging or what kind of countermeasure can one use to defeat this beast ? ( I ask this becuase China has these systems in good numbers ) and I already see MMRCA contenders like Rafale or EF talking about beating it via its jamming and stealth.

Austin wrote:SOC , I had a question for you , this is for S-300PMU2
http://www.enemyforces.net/missiles/s300pmu2.htm

As you know its advertised at range of 200 km and capable of engaging targets with speed of Mach 9 ( 10,000 km/h ).

Are you aware of the average speed and top speed of S-300PMU2 ?
How challenging or what kind of countermeasure can one use to defeat this beast ? ( I ask this becuase China has these systems in good numbers ) and I already see MMRCA contenders like Rafale or EF talking about beating it via its jamming and stealth.

Two sources I have list 2100 m/s as the top speed of the 48N6D/48N6E2, with 2800 m/s as the top speed of the target. The missile reaches peak velocity of between 1900 and 2100 m/s, depending on the flight profile, no more than 12 seconds after motor ignition. Roughly, that's an average acceleration of 175 m/s^2, but that's a very rough figure and does not take the impulse of the motor into account or overcoming gravity, etc.

One of them gives the minimum velocity of the target as 0 m/s. That's pretty damn significant, because it means they can track targets straight through the doppler notch. That makes it harder to confuse the radar, because a beam maneuver to reduce radial velocity down into the notch will no longer work as a counter-tactic. The maneuvering ability of the missile and the huge warhead make it almost impossible to avoid if it reaches endgame as well. All things considered, the radar systems and the missile guidance method (SAGG, not TVM as many places like to report) make it a hard target even in an ECM-heavy environment.

One way to deal with the system is to saturate it. It can handle six simultaneous engagements. So if there are seven targets, one is getting through initially. But the speed of the missiel and the 10 second response time means that seventh guy is probably going to get shot at as well. You'll need a lot of targets, or a smaller number of really damn fast targets, to try and really kill it in a SEAD mission. LO or VLO targets may or may not work well either, depending on the target RCS and the power output mode of the engagement radar. Those factors will influence how close they'll get before they get shot at, and then again, you have to deal with a ridiculously fast missile and a system with a very short response time to re-engage any leakers.

The ECM effectiveness against it and the corresponding ECCM characteristics of the system...that falls under the heading of stuff I can't post onto the internet!

SOC wrote:
All things considered, the radar systems and the missile guidance method (SAGG, not TVM as many places like to report) make it a hard target even in an ECM-heavy environment.

Wow.. what makes SAGG different with TVM ? ... i think they're same.

and from this Almaz video about S-300PMU-1 it uses TVM guidance .

The ECM effectiveness against it and the corresponding ECCM characteristics of the system...that falls under the heading of stuff I can't post onto the internet!

aaw.. you know i really wonder whether already established techniques like Velocity and Range Gate Stealing (RGPO and VGPO) will still work

Stealthflanker wrote:Wow.. what makes SAGG different with TVM ? ... i think they're same.

and from this Almaz video about S-300PMU-1 it uses TVM guidance .

OK, first off, SAGG is basically an evolved form of TVM.  A lot of Russian source material I have refers to "through-the-missile" guidance, which is then often translated as TVM, even though that isn't technically correct.  Plus, when you read the description of the guidance systems in some of the sources that go into more detail, they are describing SAGG and not TVM.

SAGG is Seeker-Aided Ground Guidance.  Here's the short version.  In TVM, which is sort of a cross-breed between Command and SARH guidance, the missile seeker antenna acts as a receiver, picking up reflected energy from the target.  Position data is then datalinked to the engagement radar, which crunches the numbers and decides where to point the missile to keep chasing the target. Guidance commands then get datalinked back to the missile, and off it goes.  SAGG is a bit more complicated, and potentially more accurate as a result.  In SAGG, the engagement radar paints the target, and both the missile and the radar receive target returns.  The missile actually computes a guidance command, and datalinks this to the radar.  The radar, having a different POV, computes its own guidance command.  Then the computers crunch the numbers, comparing the two sets of commands, and decides the best course to the target.  This final guidance command is then sent back to the missile.  In SAGG, you basically have smarter missiles.  This is also a sort of ECCM, in a way.  If a jamming pod is pointed at the engagement radar, confusing its perception of the engagement, the option exists to ignore that return, and rely solely on the missile seeker head's return to calculate the guidance command.  Why can this work?  If the jammer is obscured by the body of the aircraft, as podded systems usually are, then a missile like the 5V55R or 48N6 which approaches from above can still get a clear picture of the target in some cases.  Ergo, you think you're jamming it, but in reality you're still going to be dead.

SAGG isn't really all that different from TVM, but it's sufficiently different enough that when I was in the USAF, we always differentiated it from pure TVM.  SAGG, GAS/GAI (ground-aided seeker/inertial, this is employed in midcourse by the S-300V) and TVM were all considered to be forms of what we referred to as combined guidance, as they combine elements of command and SARH guidance methods.  A further advantage of SAGG is that if you can get a 64N6 or 36D6 to paint the target using a waveform recognizeable by the missile seeker, you might be able to still blow stuff up if you lose your engagement radar.

Thanks SOC , What would it take to potentially Jam the S-300PMU2 engagement radar or its datalink or even using Hard Kill stuff like HARM ?

IS it true that Israel has developed some sort of jammer/decoy against S-300 series that is known to be effective as some news reports where claiming.

Austin wrote:Thanks SOC , What would it take to potentially Jam the S-300PMU2 engagement radar or its datalink or even using Hard Kill stuff like HARM ?

IS it true that Israel has developed some sort of jammer/decoy against S-300 series that is known to be effective as some news reports where claiming.

I don't put much stock into Israel's claims. If they were so certain they had the system beat, they wouldn't object to Iran buying the system. Then again, they do have a lot of EW experience, so who really knows? A HARM or JDAM shot is possible, but then you have to take into account the fact that there will be SHORAD systems around in wartime like the Tor-M1 that are perfectly capable of intercepting either weapon.

GarryB wrote:Strawberry.

No no, it was raspberry

GarryB wrote:It is in the "Russias Arms 2004" catalogue. In the Air Defence section the entry for the BUK-M1-2 system it has separate performance listings for the 9M38M1 and the 9M317 missiles.

OK, I'm looking at the same thing.

SOC wrote:I don't put much stock into Israel's claims. If they were so certain they had the system beat, they wouldn't object to Iran buying the system. Then again, they do have a lot of EW experience, so who really knows?

Knowing the Israels and their level of expertise with EW , You can bet S-300 is on top of their radar when it comes to real threat

BTW why dont the Russian simply go for a ARH seeker for S-300 series rather then developing what looks like complex SAGG mode of engagement , is it due to cost factor of ARH seeker or SAGG mode have benefit over ARH mode of engagement ?

Austin wrote:BTW why dont the Russian simply go for a ARH seeker for S-300 series rather then developing what looks like complex SAGG mode of engagement , is it due to cost factor of ARH seeker or SAGG mode have benefit over ARH mode of engagement ?

Because using SAGG puts a lot of the focus on the engagement radar, which can be made far more ECM resistant than an ARH seeker head. ARH missiles would probably end up being cheaper in the long run because the guidance package in the missile would be less complicated. With ARH, you have to defeat the missile. With SAGG, GAS/GAI, or TVM, you have to defeat the engagement radar. From a purely EW perspective, i.e. discounting a hard kill using SEAD, dealing with the guidance radar is far more complicated.

Also, although ARH means pretty much fire and forget which is good for multiple engagements, in reality the missile seekers have a specific range so they still need the target to be tracked and course corrections sent so you are limited to how many you can engage at one time till their missile seekers go live and the missile can be left to finish the engagement.

Another aspect is of course cost... missiles are the expendibles in a SAM system... even if things go perfectly the missile will be destroyed and having very expensive missiles means limited stores, whereas a cheap missile means you can make tens of thousands and actually use them during training and exercises.

Sending 1,000 cheap drones during the course of a war could be dealt with using missiles that don't cost much more, but with expensive multi million dollar missiles against simple drones is silly.

Sure, having a few very capable and expensive missiles is OK, but cheap simple missiles with a sophisticated guidance.... like Pantsir-S1 makes a lot of sense to the bottom line.

SOC wrote:Because using SAGG puts a lot of the focus on the engagement radar, which can be made far more ECM resistant than an ARH seeker head. ARH missiles would probably end up being cheaper in the long run because the guidance package in the missile would be less complicated. With ARH, you have to defeat the missile. With SAGG, GAS/GAI, or TVM, you have to defeat the engagement radar. From a purely EW perspective, i.e. discounting a hard kill using SEAD, dealing with the guidance radar is far more complicated.

If that was to be the case and jamming/spoofing Engagement Radar is so much difficult then jamming says a missile ARH seeker , then why is modern SAM and ABM systems depends on ARH seeker ? For eg 9M96 , S-400 Big Missile , PAC-3 , THAAD (IIR seeker) ,Aster-15/30/45 etc

For SAGG all you have to do is to jam the datalink between the Missile and Engagement radar and that solves your problem , so much easier then jamming ARH.

Not to mention for SAGG or TVM kind of engagement you need to keep you target constantly in your LOS of Engagement radar and that gives you so much less autonomy to your missile and affects your firing rate.( Track/Lock capability )

So the whole thing which says SAGG is so much better because you have to deal with the big guy called engagement radar is not convincing , TVM or SAGG is much better then says command guidance or SARH stuff but still inferior to ARH or IIR systems.

For SAGG all you have to do is to jam the datalink between the Missile and Engagement radar and that solves your problem , so much easier then jamming ARH.

Jamming data links is incredibly difficult to near impossible... especially with directional data links.

The level of power would be enormous and not the sort of thing you could put in a fighter sized aircraft... and anything bigger will need to operate very close to the SAM it was jamming... and the problem there is pretty obvious isn't it?

GarryB wrote:Jamming data links is incredibly difficult to near impossible... especially with directional data links.

The level of power would be enormous and not the sort of thing you could put in a fighter sized aircraft... and anything bigger will need to operate very close to the SAM it was jamming... and the problem there is pretty obvious isn't it?

That argument is hardly convincing , If Directional Data links are hard to jam , so is the argument that modern BVR ARH ( by its extension SAM ARH ) are harder to Jam since its has nifty ECCM and in worst case the seeker has Lock on Jam function.

Now all the target has to do with TVM and SAGG missile is to fall below the LOS of these big radars and you can tame these but with ARH or IIR it would be difficult specially when the Seeker goes active.

Austin wrote:If that was to be the case and jamming/spoofing Engagement Radar is so much difficult then jamming says a missile ARH seeker , then why is modern SAM and ABM systems depends on ARH seeker ? For eg 9M96 , S-400 Big Missile , PAC-3 , THAAD (IIR seeker) ,Aster-15/30/45 etc

Easy. 9M96: small. PAC-3 ERINT: small. Aster series: small. You won't want to waste a lot of space in a small weapon by fitting the guidance package for a SAGG or TVM system. There's a reason that the missiles using TVM, GAS/GAI, or SAGG are all rather large weapons. THAAD: ATBM, totally different criteria. S-400's 40N6: not expected to deal with non-cooperative targets (a U-2 or RC-135 is not a threat to maneuver outside the range of the seeker head, and it'll likely carry a home-on-jam package as well).

Austin wrote:For SAGG all you have to do is to jam the datalink between the Missile and Engagement radar and that solves your problem , so much easier then jamming ARH.

Except that if you jam the datalink, the missile may still be able to default to a SARH guidance mode. The seeker is still receiving returns, and the guidance system onboard the missile is still figuring things out. Cutting the engagement radar out of the loop just turns it into a SARH system, at least on paper. And then you still may have home-on-jam capability anyway. Plus, as Garry correctly states, jamming missile data links is not a simple proposition, or it'd likely be the default method used against both BVR AAMs (denying them midcourse updates) and SAMs (denying them guidance signals).

Austin wrote:Not to mention for SAGG or TVM kind of engagement you need to keep you target constantly in your LOS of Engagement radar and that gives you so much less autonomy to your missile and affects your firing rate.( Track/Lock capability )

You need to keep the target within engagement radar LOS for ANY radar-guided SAM system, at least until endgame. Otherwise how in the world do you expect to receive midcourse corrections?

Austin wrote:That argument is hardly convincing , If Directional Data links are hard to jam , so is the argument that modern BVR ARH ( by its extension SAM ARH ) are harder to Jam since its has nifty ECCM and in worst case the seeker has Lock on Jam function.

Who said BVR ARH AAMs aren't necessarily hard to jam? You try and jam the hostile air intercept radar to deny information for accurate midcourse guidance, and you try to maneuver outside the seeker's FOV when it reaches endgame.

Austin wrote:Now all the target has to do with TVM and SAGG missile is to fall below the LOS of these big radars and you can tame these but with ARH or IIR it would be difficult specially when the Seeker goes active.

Except how many targets are going to be defended by a single, say, S-300PM battery? Evade one site and you may find yourself right inside the heart of the engagement zone for another. Plus, cross-range engagement capability expands the farther you are from the launcher. You also have to know you've been fired at. If the radar can fool your ESM/RWR into not thinking it's being tracked, or deny a signal using various waveforms, etc., you may not know there is a missile incoming until too late. And since the seeker isn't active, you may not realize anything nefarious is going on until your wing falls off. Also consider that simply turning around and jetting out of there at Mach 2+ is rarely going to be an option in combat, given the warload on the aircraft. And if you do drop your ordnance and evacuate with all possible speed, guess what, the SAM still wins. That's a mission kill, just not a hard kill. The IADS has still done its job of defending the target by making you run off with your tail between your legs. For modern air defense planners this is a perfectly acceptable option.

Back to evading the LOS of the radar, yes, direct terrain masking can work. But a competent air defense network is arranged with an attempt to alleviate these concerns. A good example: Russia, around Moscow. The 40V6 masts were developed to allow the S-300P series engagement radars to see whatever they wanted without being obscured by the forests around the city. A bad example: China, north of Beijing. Many HQ-2 batteries were sited near smaller towns and resided inside of valleys between various hills and mountains. Far easier to try and fool around with that kind of setup.

SOC wrote:Easy. 9M96: small. PAC-3 ERINT: small. Aster series: small. You won't want to waste a lot of space in a small weapon by fitting the guidance package for a SAGG or TVM system. There's a reason that the missiles using TVM, GAS/GAI, or SAGG are all rather large weapons. THAAD: ATBM, totally different criteria. S-400's 40N6: not expected to deal with non-cooperative targets (a U-2 or RC-135 is not a threat to maneuver outside the range of the seeker head, and it'll likely carry a home-on-jam package as well).

Well Small or Big has not been the key factor for choosing guidance for missile else 40N6 or Aster-30 would not have chosen ARH ( or for that matter IIR guidance you see in THAAD , Arrow or SM-2/3 )

Now if Russian have chosen SAGG i am fairly certain it has the least to do with size of the missile and S-400 has to deal with more than IRBM or U-2 , infact intercepting a MaRV type warhead will be far more challenging to its guidance compared to intercepting the best manouvering fighter. ( so your argument of non-cooperative targets does not hold much ground )

And Small Weapons with smaller radar aperture does not mean they are easy to jam,else you would have seen all small missile like PAC-3 or AMRAAM or 9M96 being ineffective against larger target or say a R-37M will never bring a AWACS or JSTARS down becuase they can any time support a higher capable jammer because of its sheer size.

The only reason why i think the Russians are opting for TVM or SAGG guidance is purely cost , Missile Radars and Electronics take around 60 % of the cost of missile and going for a SAGG or TVM guidance ( which by the way requires far less computing power or electronic capability in terms of ECCM etc when compared to ARH seeker ) , and SAGG is just a better TVM.

Now if you see the latest trend even the newer Russian SAM being developed will have ARH seeker e.g BUK-M3 , 40N6 , Vityaz etc most likely because they would have mass produced the electronics and seeker to make it cheaper compared to what they could do a decade back , S-300PMU2 btw is a baby whose design and electronics belongs to those last decade generation.

Except that if you jam the datalink, the missile may still be able to default to a SARH guidance mode. The seeker is still receiving returns, and the guidance system onboard the missile is still figuring things out. Cutting the engagement radar out of the loop just turns it into a SARH system, at least on paper.

Doesnt a SARH mode too needs some kind of radio or data link to provide course correction to the missile ? But if you say on paper then it may just not be the case you are probably thinking more on logical terms which might not necessarily be true.

And then you still may have home-on-jam capability anyway. Plus, as Garry correctly states, jamming missile data links is not a simple proposition, or it'd likely be the default method used against both BVR AAMs (denying them midcourse updates) and SAMs (denying them guidance signals).

I have so far heard of HOJ capability for only active seekers for SARH or TVM never came across HOJ feature.

Jamming datalink may not be easy but neither jamming ARH is an easy affair you might agree. Missiles have their own ECCM capability to deal with jamming environment and with J band or Ka band have burn through capability , in worst case it will just change to HOJ mode.

BTW i have recently came across publication where Russian have displayed some sort of airborne jammers which they claim is capable of Jamming link 16.

You need to keep the target within engagement radar LOS for ANY radar-guided SAM system, at least until endgame. Otherwise how in the world do you expect to receive midcourse corrections?

Partly True , once the missile seeker goes active and acquires the target its completely autonomous so it does not need midcourse corrections or inertial updates in case of BVR.

BTW the R-37M seeker is advertised as capable of working both in SARH and ARH mode so i would assure they would resort to ARH mode if the source radar like aircraft face intense jamming or vice verse ,which is to say just adding redundancy.

Who said BVR ARH AAMs aren't necessarily hard to jam? You try and jam the hostile air intercept radar to deny information for accurate midcourse guidance, and you try to maneuver outside the seeker's FOV when it reaches endgame.

Is there any evidence that in any recent conflict the AMRAAM seeker was effectively jammed , I am just equally curious to know.

Austin wrote:Now all the target has to do with TVM and SAGG missile is to fall below the LOS of these big radars and you can tame these but with ARH or IIR it would be difficult specially when the Seeker goes active.

Except how many targets are going to be defended by a single, say, S-300PM battery? Evade one site and you may find yourself right inside the heart of the engagement zone for another. Plus, cross-range engagement capability expands the farther you are from the launcher. You also have to know you've been fired at. If the radar can fool your ESM/RWR into not thinking it's being tracked, or deny a signal using various waveforms, etc., you may not know there is a missile incoming until too late. And since the seeker isn't active, you may not realize anything nefarious is going on until your wing falls off. Also consider that simply turning around and jetting out of there at Mach 2+ is rarely going to be an option in combat, given the warload on the aircraft. And if you do drop your ordnance and evacuate with all possible speed, guess what, the SAM still wins. That's a mission kill, just not a hard kill. The IADS has still done its job of defending the target by making you run off with your tail between your legs. For modern air defense planners this is a perfectly acceptable option.

Ok thats something nifty that your SARH/TVM/SAGG mode could try , which is to not alert your enemy , ifcourse you can try that trick with ARH seeker and let it go active at last moment or something like IIR seeker which wont alert you at all like what you describe.

Ofcourse if your fighter has something like DAS or MAWS or if Aircraft Radar detects something closing in at high speed you will find out you are under attack , I would also argue that big missile like S-300PMU will have much bigger IR signature hence a DAS would be able to see early and warn early.

But what you describe is something i know our Indian Mirage-2000 pilots do with SARH BVR R530 missile. Where the radar mode does not change till the end which gives the target under paint the impression that its just being tracked or scanned but is not aware is already under attack but I think MAWS will change all that.

Back to evading the LOS of the radar, yes, direct terrain masking can work. But a competent air defense network is arranged with an attempt to alleviate these concerns. A good example: Russia, around Moscow. The 40V6 masts were developed to allow the S-300P series engagement radars to see whatever they wanted without being obscured by the forests around the city. A bad example: China, north of Beijing. Many HQ-2 batteries were sited near smaller towns and resided inside of valleys between various hills and mountains. Far easier to try and fool around with that kind of setup.

Now a bad planning on placement of SAM can really be blamed for Missile performance. I hope the Chinese might be aware of this shortcoming when dealing with LOS missile.

Austin wrote:Well Small or Big has not been the key factor for choosing guidance for missile else 40N6 or Aster-30 would not have chosen ARH ( or for that matter IIR guidance you see in THAAD , Arrow or SM-2/3 )

The point is that a small missile like PAC-3 or Aster is not a suitable candidate for a bulkier TVM/SAGG guidance package. And again, Arrow or THAAD are irrelevant as they are designed for something else entirely.

Austin wrote:S-400 has to deal with more than IRBM or U-2

You're right. Which is probably why the SAGG 48N6DM is the 250-km range weapon for the system.

Austin wrote:Now if you see the latest trend even the newer Russian SAM being developed will have ARH seeker e.g BUK-M3 , 40N6 , Vityaz etc most likely because they would have mass produced the electronics and seeker to make it cheaper compared to what they could do a decade back

Buk-M3 is getting rid of the archaic SARH seeker. And it's a smaller weapon. Same with Vityaz, smaller weapon. And 40N6 may well be an ARH weapon simply because they can loft it to a point in space and let the seeker take over, without having to worry about whether or not the datalinks work to that range, or if the missile seeker can acquire enough reflected energy at that range to work. Again, they retained SAGG for the S-400's primary weapon, the 48N6DM, for a reason.

Austin wrote:Doesnt a SARH mode too needs some kind of radio or data link to provide course correction to the missile ?

No. You can use a midcourse data link, or you can lock the seeker on prior to launch. Depends on the weapon, but SARH does not require a data link necessarily. It's far better to use one, because then you aren't transmitting CW illuminator signals that will alert an enemy that you want to kill him until endgame. This is how the S-300V works using GAS/GAI for midcourse, and then SARH for terminal homing.

Austin wrote:I have so far heard of HOJ capability for only active seekers for SARH or TVM never came across HOJ feature.

Various SARH SAMs have HOJ capability, like the SA-11.

Austin wrote:Missiles have their own ECCM capability to deal with jamming environment

The point is that ECCM is more effective with more computing power behind it. What has more computing power, the missile or the ground-based engagement radar? Again, that's part of the reason behind TVM and SAGG. You can exploit the capability of your engagement radar to a much greater degree than if you were just relying on it to provide midcourse direction.

Austin wrote:Is there any evidence that in any recent conflict the AMRAAM seeker was effectively jammed , I am just equally curious to know.

I have no idea.

Austin wrote:Ofcourse if your fighter has something like DAS or MAWS or if Aircraft Radar detects something closing in at high speed you will find out you are under attack , I would also argue that big missile like S-300PMU will have much bigger IR signature hence a DAS would be able to see early and warn early.

Depends on where your sensors are located. To detect something like a 48N6 they have to be looking up. The missile boosts to something like 90 or 100,000 feet and then dives towards the target.

Austin wrote:I hope the Chinese might be aware of this shortcoming when dealing with LOS missile.

The deployment of modern SAMs like the S-300P series and the HQ-9 seems to indicate that they have gotten far more competent in this regard.

SOC wrote:
OK, first off, SAGG is basically an evolved form of TVM. A lot of Russian source material I have refers to "through-the-missile" guidance, which is then often translated as TVM, even though that isn't technically correct. Plus, when you read the description of the guidance systems in some of the sources that go into more detail, they are describing SAGG and not TVM.

SAGG is Seeker-Aided Ground Guidance. Here's the short version. In TVM, which is sort of a cross-breed between Command and SARH guidance, the missile seeker antenna acts as a receiver, picking up reflected energy from the target. Position data is then datalinked to the engagement radar, which crunches the numbers and decides where to point the missile to keep chasing the target. Guidance commands then get datalinked back to the missile, and off it goes. SAGG is a bit more complicated, and potentially more accurate as a result. In SAGG, the engagement radar paints the target, and both the missile and the radar receive target returns. The missile actually computes a guidance command, and datalinks this to the radar. The radar, having a different POV, computes its own guidance command. Then the computers crunch the numbers, comparing the two sets of commands, and decides the best course to the target. This final guidance command is then sent back to the missile. In SAGG, you basically have smarter missiles. This is also a sort of ECCM, in a way. If a jamming pod is pointed at the engagement radar, confusing its perception of the engagement, the option exists to ignore that return, and rely solely on the missile seeker head's return to calculate the guidance command. Why can this work? If the jammer is obscured by the body of the aircraft, as podded systems usually are, then a missile like the 5V55R or 48N6 which approaches from above can still get a clear picture of the target in some cases. Ergo, you think you're jamming it, but in reality you're still going to be dead.

SAGG isn't really all that different from TVM, but it's sufficiently different enough that when I was in the USAF, we always differentiated it from pure TVM. SAGG, GAS/GAI (ground-aided seeker/inertial, this is employed in midcourse by the S-300V) and TVM were all considered to be forms of what we referred to as combined guidance, as they combine elements of command and SARH guidance methods. A further advantage of SAGG is that if you can get a 64N6 or 36D6 to paint the target using a waveform recognizeable by the missile seeker, you might be able to still blow stuff up if you lose your engagement radar.

What variant? Rosoboronexport claimed an ATBM capability for the Buk-M1-2 in a 2003 catalog.

Ah yeah.. many thanks ,you're right . Hmm my literartures.. like "Missile Guidance and Control System " by George M Siouris .. described SAGG but called it as TVM.

I have so far heard of HOJ capability for only active seekers for SARH or TVM never came across HOJ feature.

Mind if i ask why HOJ is only for "active seeker" ?.

as far as i know as long as the antenna can receive signal and can determine where it come from (either from "Conical Scan" or Monopulse be it Amplitude or Phase comparison) HOJ capability is inherent .

Even Command Guided S-75 Dvina in 1960's have such modes as well as SARH S-200 ..

SOC wrote:The point is that a small missile like PAC-3 or Aster is not a suitable candidate for a bulkier TVM/SAGG guidance package. And again, Arrow or THAAD are irrelevant as they are designed for something else entirely.

This is the point I would disagree , You say Bulkier because traditionally Soviets/Russian missile tend to be heavier and largely because of their weakness in electronics which made their system heavier and bulkier and because of other properties of missile , but with the use/proliferation of COTS and/or Availability of such electronics more liberally globally and perhaps with the advancement of their own electronic industry due to the above two reason their electronics got smaller perhaps closer to western standards in many aspects.

But TVM/SAGG need not be any bulkier then ARH , An ARH still needs its own RF seeker the electronics ,power supply , cooling system in case of IIR seeker and good computing ability to make it autonomous , it wont be any lighter then say TVM/SAGG.
{ I am ready to proven wrong here if you can prove TVM/SAGG used on the same missile would have been heavier compared to ARH seeker of similar generation available to Russian industry nearly 15 years back }

The whole theory of TVM/SAGG being heavier steams from the fact that they are used on heavier/bulkier missile which itself could be heavy for many reason including as i mentioned weakness in electronics and requirenment ( longer range , higher speed etc )

Wouldnt Arrow and Thaad do the same job as S-400 would do yet all these have their own autonomous guidance mechanism beyond a certain point. I mean if SAGG and TVM were that great and ground radar could discriminate a decoy better then a on board seeker due to their sheer power and computing ability then it would have been cheaper for them to have a SAGG type guidance in all these missile , yet they have their own ARH or IIR seeker.

Which is probably why the SAGG 48N6DM is the 250-km range weapon for the system.

May be they wanted a cheaper way to get the same job done untill the more expensive but more capable 40N6 became available with ARH seeker.

And 40N6 may well be an ARH weapon simply because they can loft it to a point in space and let the seeker take over, without having to worry about whether or not the datalinks work to that range, or if the missile seeker can acquire enough reflected energy at that range to work. Again, they retained SAGG for the S-400's primary weapon, the 48N6DM, for a reason.

Strange both long range weapon but both have different solutions yet they are part of the same S-400 system , it tells me one thing cost is a key factor , some times a good enough solution works great if it comes at 60 % cost of the best solution , so you might want to have both and use it according to your needs which ever fits well for the occasion.

No. You can use a midcourse data link, or you can lock the seeker on prior to launch. Depends on the weapon, but SARH does not require a data link necessarily. It's far better to use one, because then you aren't transmitting CW illuminator signals that will alert an enemy that you want to kill him until endgame. This is how the S-300V works using GAS/GAI for midcourse, and then SARH for terminal homing.

See no reason why you cant do that with something like PAC-3 and uncage the seeker at the last moment , ofcourse one can argue when the Ka band of Patriot goes active it will alert the enemy , but then it would be too late for him.

The point is that ECCM is more effective with more computing power behind it. What has more computing power, the missile or the ground-based engagement radar? Again, that's part of the reason behind TVM and SAGG. You can exploit the capability of your engagement radar to a much greater degree than if you were just relying on it to provide midcourse direction.

One can argue perhaps F-22 has more computing power over any S-300 system or may be even S-400 so it would jam by default any of these SAM. You would need a combination of many factors to jam a radar and good computing would be one of them.

I dont think any thing is wrong with SAGG , it has its own pluses and minues , its basicly a poor mans choice till such time the poor man can afford a good ARH or some exotic IIR seeker.

BTW i have recently came across publication where Russian have displayed some sort of airborne jammers which they claim is capable of Jamming link 16.

I am not saying it is impossible, just very difficult.

Directional Datalinks are hard to jam because you need to get between the missile and the launch platform before the receivers in each will take notice of you.

Second datalinks can operate over a range of frequencies and have codes embedded in them that can make them impossible to jam except by brute force... and to achieve brute force you need an Il-76 sized aircraft jammer... not something small enough to fit in an underwing pod on a fighter.

Regarding your comments about Soviet and Russian electronics and radars... certainly they are bigger and bulkier and often have a lot less modes or features because their electronics was often hard wired rather than software driven.

Where you are way off base is the fact that they were often more powerful than western radars (in terms of raw power and ECCM performance rather than range and the number of targets they could track).

Comparing the tiny seeker in an AMRAAM with the tracking radar of S-300 or S-400 for that matter is amusing.

HOJ capability is nice but what if a jamming beam is directed at the ground between the target and the missile and the jamming signal is reflected off the surface of the earth at the missile?

Or more practically, a Plane that is no where near the target starts jamming the AMRAAM and tracks it with IR sensors via the heat plume surrounding the Mach 4 missile... when it gets close to the jammer... it turns off and the original target for the missile starts jamming... and when the missile turns to engage that as it gets close the original jammer starts up and the second jammer shuts down... that AMRAAM will hit nothing but the ground... and then of course there are towed jammers/decoys... and even expendable decoys that can be fired from 122mm calibre unguided rocket pods (S-13).

Dealing with SAMs is much harder because a ground based system can have all sorts of sensors and enormous antennas and other equipment spread over several kms of territory.

When their missiles can hit large aircraft at 400km how do you sneak up and jam their datalinks with anything more powerful than a fighter sized aircraft?

Any platform blasting out the required energy to jam a datalink will be hard to disguise and protect from such a system.

Some signals are hard to jam...

For instance MMW radar is very hard to jam or use an ARM against... otherwise you wouldn't bother with an IR guided missile against an Apache... you'd just fire a Kh-25MPU... a 40km range 300kg missile that detonates a 90kg HE warhead a few metres above the main rotor of an Apache would ruin any attack helos day.

Equally a MMW radar jammer for tanks to protect them from the fire and forget missile of the Apache... why haven't they bothered? They have SHTORA to jam the IR missile tracking components of ATGMs... why no MMW radar jammer?

There is a lot of talk about how the 35 GHz transmitter for the ATAKA and Shturm can be jammed yet I have never heard of any successful attempt to do so.

Garry you are assuming too many thing , first you assume that S-300PMU2 has directional data links can you show any reference that it does have this ? Another thing that you assume these datalinks are impossible to jam or its much harder to do.

ECM its a game of wits as much its a game of technology , we never know if US or say Israel have figured out a way to jam these datalinks , its an assumption but its also possible.

An AMRAAM seeker may be small , but there are other factors like Antenna Gain , Power Output and ECCM features that would decide how effective it would be against a jamming environment , small does not mean its easy to jam thats a wrong notion people have. Else every small thing like RVV-SD or PAC-3 would just fall from sky under jamming environment.

HOJ works on the source of Radiating Frequency , possibly the closer you are to source the stronger the signal so they would simply try to find the strongest source of originating signal and lock on to it.

Like I said a good system today be it SAM or BVR missile will have its own seeker preferable operating in Ka or J band thats harder to jam and has burn through capability , at the least it would provide a great autonomy to the missile and can be effective beyond LOS target , even a good IIR seeker would be nice to have.

Garry you are assuming too many thing , first you assume that S-300PMU2 has directional data links can you show any reference that it does have this ? Another thing that you assume these datalinks are impossible to jam or its much harder to do.

Datalinks on their own are hard to jam because any signal of non directional datalink is a cube square of distance.

Think of a spherical bomb blast... as it spreads in 3 dimensions the energy is spread in the form of an expanding sphere. As it expands the surface area rapidly increases... at 1m a 1m ball is very concentrated energy... at 1km the ball is enormous and that energy is spread over a very wide area.

Even with a non directional signal you can position the antenna in the rear of the missile facing back to the launch area, so any signal that is not correctly coded from the front of the missile can be ignored... and remember what these datalinks provide... the missile can still simply home in on radar waves reflected from the target.

The R-27ER doesn't even use a datalink, so even successful jamming is not critical.

With a directional signal the jammer would need to get between the missile and launcher to successfully jam it.

It would be very similar to trying to jam a beam riding missile like Kornet-EM.

On paper you could jam a SALH Hellfire by lasing targets around the real target with even more powerful lasers.

On paper you can transmit datalink signals that confuse the SAMs... the problem is that the signals are coded and transmitted by the radar antenna of the SAM system so when it gets signals from other directions it wouldn't be hard to make it ignore them.

The TOR and the Pantsir and even the ATAKA use a radar command guidance datalink... not much talk of jamming those either.

ECM its a game of wits as much its a game of technology , we never know if US or say Israel have figured out a way to jam these datalinks , its an assumption but its also possible.

Anything is possible, but whether it is likely or not is another thing.

They could pack a C-17 with high power jamming equipment and fly it 50km from a double digit Russian SAM site and jam the heck out of it... but how long can an aircraft that size operate that close to an operational SAM system that is part of an Air Defence network?

The Russians tested a Tu-22M3 in the jamming role but found that an Il-76 could carry a much more powerful jammer... I don't think they will be flying it through NATO countries jamming everything though.

An AMRAAM seeker may be small , but there are other factors like Antenna Gain , Power Output and ECCM features that would decide how effective it would be against a jamming environment , small does not mean its easy to jam thats a wrong notion people have. Else every small thing like RVV-SD or PAC-3 would just fall from sky under jamming environment.

The nose of a missile is very small and needs to hold rocket fuel, power supplies for control surfaces, motors to move those control surfaces, a radar antenna and computer guidance module, and datalink. How powerful do you think the computer and radar are that are fitted to missiles like that?

The Radar in the Granit was the size of the radar in a Mig-21, but the radar in an AMRAAM is much smaller and lighter and not even as powerful as a Mig-21s radar... that could be jammed.

It is much easier to jam the tiny radar and computer in a missile than to jam the much larger and much more powerful AND MUCH MORE SOPHISTICATED radar in the nose of any aircraft.

The radar and computer in a missile are designed to work once only. They have neither the power of sophistication or complexity of a fighter mounted radar.

HOJ works on the source of Radiating Frequency , possibly the closer you are to source the stronger the signal so they would simply try to find the strongest source of originating signal and lock on to it.

And a directional beam bounced off a large surface like a mountain or the sea surface could appear to be that strong source.

Also jamming signals can be alternated between different aircraft in different flights to fool incoming threats.

Like I said a good system today be it SAM or BVR missile will have its own seeker preferable operating in Ka or J band thats harder to jam and has burn through capability , at the least it would provide a great autonomy to the missile and can be effective beyond LOS target , even a good IIR seeker would be nice to have.

You want the missile seeker optimised to suite the intended targets for terminal homing... the antenna needs to be small enough to fit in the seeker head of the missile.

A good IIR seeker would likely be better than a radar homing missile as it is passive, but it will be so expensive that you will only be able to afford a few hundred... and when the first few hundred targets the enemy directs your way are UCAVs and cruise missiles you might think that perhaps a few cheap SARH missiles might have been a good idea too.

The Russians have had the R-77 design available since the early 1990s yet not all their radar guided AAMs and SAMs use ARH.

It is not by accident that the Soviet Union had more SAMs (and likely more ATGMs) than the rest of the world combined.

Not every threat requires a gold plated solution.

BTW Austin... you do realise that the HOJ capability of the AMRAAM has nothing to do with datalinks?

The AMRAAM has non directional datalinks so a signal trying to jam the datalink ...if successful will merely prevent the launch aircraft sending the missile updates on the targets position.

The AMRAAM cannot home in on a datalink jammer because the datalinks operate in L band and the seeker of the AMRAAM does not so it can't even detect an L band signal let alone home in on it.

If the wing mounted L band AESAs on an Su-35 were used to detect the datalink between an aircraft launching an AMRAAM and that AMRAAM and could transmit an overwhelming amount of noise in the datalinks precise frequency and make that missile lose any signals transmitted from its launch aircraft, as far as the AMRAAM is concerned it can't see any signal to home in on till it gets near the point of interception and turns on its radar... the Su-35 pilot could turn towards the missile and rapidly accelerate and climb so that without updates from its launch aircraft the missile will continue past and below the Flanker and start looking for the Flanker well behind where the real aircraft actually is... meanwhile the Flanker should be getting much closer to the aircraft that launched the AMRAAM and can launch an IIR guided missile that is looking for targets through its entire flight so it wont blast past its target with its eyes shut like the AMRAAM just did.

Obviously a very risky tactic as the Flanker pilot really can't be sure they effectively blocked the datalink transmission till the AMRAAM blows past without turning on its seeker.

Around one year ago the stat of the art's nato airforce undetook exercises in order to evaluate Sam 10.
Sam 10 belonged to Slovakia against other nato's airfleets. In order I think to prepare a syria -and next Iran-'s attack -but canceled now-. Sam 10 underwent several nato jammers, aerial attacks
The result of this exercise, demonstrated how hard it is Sa-10. Without huge losses -as there was during Vietnam's war, and Korea's war- it is nearly impossible to bypass the radar's Sa-10. With personnal highly trained, and very comptetent Sa-10 has great chances to inflict sever blows to nato's airforces.

This was a blow to the israelis's propaganda that claimed they -supposed- bypassed the Sa-10 complex in a so-called exercises where they would successufly jammed S-300.

http://www.kamov.net/general-aviation/trial-mace-xiii-exercise-in-slovakia/

Wait, Slovaks inherited S-300s? I though that the most WP nations got was a Kub or S-125.

Wait, Slovaks inherited S-300s? I though that the most WP nations got was a Kub or S-125.

Yaah I also want to know how Slovakia got S-300.
I dont think they have s-300PMU. I dont know how they managed to buy it or Russia gave it to them?

gaurav wrote:

Wait, Slovaks inherited S-300s? I though that the most WP nations got was a Kub or S-125.

Yaah I also want to know how Slovakia got S-300.
I dont think they have s-300PMU. I dont know how they managed to buy it or Russia gave it to them?

Russia owed Slovakia $1.6 billion after the Cold War. They repaid part of it with MiG-29s and S-300PMU. They signed the deal in 1999 and received delivery a year or two later. It was an attempt by the Yeltsin government to keep Slovaks out of NATO, but it was a failure.