Russian AShMs against AEGIS/Standard missiles equipped ships

Isos wrote:Yeah pantsir got destroyed by drones the size of missiles in Syria. Armenian S-300 got destroyed too. Does it mean russian radars suck ?

Iranian drones can't be destroyed in international airspace in peace time. Of course they detected it. And those radar are working in peace time mode with reduced power.

Because those pants it's were either spent ammunition, abandoned or sheltered and not used.

S-300 was also a sitting ducks and not supported, there wasn't a basic IADS.

A ship is like a mini IADS, especially when it is traveling with other vessels like a US ACC does. And they still didn't pick up a basic drone.

Yet an Iranian P-18 (Soviet radar) picked up an RQ-170.

I understand what you are saying, but the comparisons aren't correct.

Isos wrote:What makes you think they didn't detect the drone. They usually intercept iranian drones pretty far away to check on them when they are in the gulf.

Because they would have shot it down.

A drone doesn't follow same guidelines in international airspace than a fighter jet or a regular plane.  There is a difference between them and shooting down a drone costs little in money and costs nothing in politics for either side.  Both sides can actually gain a bit of victory over it rather than Iran getting all the PR victory.  US has no qualms in breaking even international law by flying drones within Iranian airspace (which prompts Iran to hack or destroy said drones) and has no problem also actually breaking more laws by going into their respective territory coast - Persian Gulf where US navy men were captured and pissed their pants, USS John McCain in Russian waters or Chinese waters. So if they have no problem breaking international law so brazenly like they do, then destroying an Iranian drone in the waters near Iran wouldn't even be an eye blink for the navy to make such a decision. They would do it without second or third thought.

So they would have downed that drone if they saw it.  The fact it also flew so damn close either gives reason that they may have saw it at least minute before it left (eye sight) or Iranian optics are actually good enough to get such close and decent shots form a relatively good altitude.

In this case, my best bet is that it flew low enough where the radar didn't pick it up and thus it was able to get good shots of it before it left.  But I wouldn't doubt for a moment that navy men saw it with their own eyes but before they could act it was already gone.

Isos wrote:Yeah pantsir got destroyed by drones the size of missiles in Syria. Armenian S-300 got destroyed too. Does it mean russian radars suck ?

Iranian drones can't be destroyed in international airspace in peace time. Of course they detected it. And those radar are working in peace time mode with reduced power.

Folded launcher with no actual missiles. Hitting that "S-300" is no different than hitting a mobile home.

Isos wrote:No you don't down drones in peace time. US drones fly non stop around Crimea, when was it the last time Russians destroyed one of them ? Never.

Terrible example given. Flying around a land mass but not over it's aerospace, versus flying above a ship within the immediate vicinity. If they actually flew over Crimea's air space then they would've got shot down. That's a night and day difference, like apples and oranges comparison.

Same the persian gulf is full of drones of both sides everyday and they are shot at only if they cross the borders.

They didn't hesitate to shoot down and Iranian airliner in the 80's, and there weren't any repercussions for it either. The Iranians shot down a US Global Hawk drone in 2019, worth hundreds of millions of Dollars, so why wouldn't they shoot down Iranian drones?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Iranian_shoot-down_of_American_drone

The Iranian aerial drone photo was taken in 2020, the following year after that incident. Uncle Sham doesn't hesitate to attack Quds units and Iranian generals so why would they hesitate to shoot down Iranian drones?  Absolutely ridiculous logic lol!    

Nearby AEGIS have S babd radar that van pick such drones easily. They are just as good as S-300 radars. They also have optics to spot them.

If they're just as good as S-300 radars then why is AEGIS Ashore fixed and not mobile like S-300 radars? The Iranians shot down an extremely expensive/valuable Global Hawk drone, which means in reality Iranian drones are not off limits either if Iranian military generals aren't.

Yeah pantsir got destroyed by drones the size of missiles in Syria. Armenian S-300 got destroyed too. Does it mean russian radars suck ?

They were made vulnerable because they were not used properly... Saudi Arabia has the best weapons money can buy from the US and Europe... not only did they not stop drones and cruise missiles they didn't even detect their presence... what it means is that Saudi Arabia sucks when it comes to setting up their air defence systems.

The concentrated efforts of the Israeli and US air forces managed to occasionally hit individual Pantsir vehicles on maybe two or three occasions over how many years... it is hardly anything to skite about... and S-300 is not supposed to be used to shoot down UAVs, it is a long range system for shooting down enemy aircraft before they launch their stand off weapons... lower level systems are supposed to defend them from attack... using an S-300 against any of the drones used in that conflict is just stupid.

Iranian drones can't be destroyed in international airspace in peace time.

The airspace over a US carrier group is not considered international, which an Iranian Airbus found to its cost.

Of course they detected it. And those radar are working in peace time mode with reduced power.

If they had detected it they would have sent up helicopters and aircraft to "escort" it away.

No you don't down drones in peace time. US drones fly non stop around Crimea, when was it the last time Russians destroyed one of them ? Never.

US drones do not enter Crimean airspace and if they did they would be brought down simply because they don't have overflight permission and are a danger to civilian and military air traffic in the area.

Drones flying over your carrier group are also deemed a threat to the safe operations of the air component and would be shot down to prevent an accident like a collision with an aircraft.

Same the persian gulf is full of drones of both sides everyday and they are shot at only if they cross the borders.

There is a border bubble over a US carrier group where they don't allow foreign air traffic... for safety reasons of course.

Nearby AEGIS have S babd radar that van pick such drones easily. They are just as good as S-300 radars. They also have optics to spot them.

The same radars we were told in the 1980s could identify an air target by counting the number of turbine blades in the target aircrafts engine/s... of course they stopped saying that after they shot down an Iranian Airbus thinking it was an F-14 fighter.

The airspace above a carrier is international airspace. You can fly above them as much as you want.

The iranian civil plane was downed during military tensions around the Iran-Iraq war.

The Iranian airbus the USN shot down was still in Iranian Airspace.... and they shot it down with a missile fired from a US ship while inside Iranian territorial waters.

US drones fly at the limits of Crimean waters and take picture all day

But never in Crimean airspace.

US won't shoot randomly at iranian drones. That can give Iran the right to attack US assets and escalate the conflict.

We are not talking about the USN hunting Iranian drones, we are talking about drones that overfly US ships and groups of ships.

For all the Americans know this drone might be packed with HE and is going to be used as a suicide bomb... in revenge for that Iranian General the Americans murdered last year.

Aegis radar is just as good as a S-300 radar. You are talking about the fixed plateform vs the mobile plateform which has nothing to do with aegis being able to spot a drone or not.

The S-300 radar is designed for all sorts of air threats including enemy standoff weapons and low RCS stealthy platforms and is likely rather better than AEGIS systems that will spend most of their time turned off or just listening to prevent giving away the position of the ship all the time.

The Global Hawk situation is funny one because both sides claim something different. But when the rules were created regarding flying in international waters, it only accounted for planes that were manned. Nothing about unmanned planes and I do believe they do not fit the same requirements thus there is always that grey area. US has and will continue to abuse their right everywhere and shooting down drones they wont have problems with. As Garry said, they had no qualms shooting down an Airliner and then giving the admiral in charge a medal too.

miketheterrible wrote:The Global Hawk situation is funny one because both sides claim something different.  But when the rules were created regarding flying in international waters, it only accounted for planes that were manned.  Nothing about unmanned planes and I do believe they do not fit the same requirements thus there is always that grey area.  

This is something that came up for discussion recently as well regarding a Global Hawk flight over the Sea of Okhotsk. I recall some commentators arguing that Russia should not have allowed such a precedent to be be set and should have taken the initiative to shoot it down, since being unmanned meant the drone ought not be granted the same legitimate recognition as manned aircraft.

This supports the argument that countries are hesitant to pull the trigger on drones for fear of escalation, but their presence hardly goes undetected. It is a calculated decision not to engage, as for example in Syria, where for political reasons Russia does not engage (nor support Syrian gov't forces) foreign drones of all types flying over northern Syria.

Rob Lee
@RALee85

Remarkable how busy the airspace over Idlib is. 489/
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1359934623736877058?s=20

It seems countries prefer playing it cautious when it comes to engaging each other's drones for the time being, perhaps for fear of an equivocal response which would be counter-productive, as @Isos is proposing.

P.S. I apologize that this might be stretching into another topic beyond this thread.

Few months ago Iranian Tor destroyed a civilian plane thinking it was a cruise missile.

Do we conclude that Tor is a shitty system too ?

We can say that in both cases both crews were scared shitless and did not use their equipment properly or correctly...

For the highly trained US Navy Sailors identifying an enormous airbus that is steadily climbing to cruise altitude as being an F-14 fighter aircraft diving to attack them they must have been pissing their pants scared, but that is no surprise because they had just been firing on Iranian navy ships which they had just chased into Iranian waters and were probably feeling vulnerable because them firing on Iranian ships inside Iranian waters is all the justification the Iranians really needed to actually open fire on the US ship illegally in their waters. It is therefore no surprise they were trigger happy.

In the case of the Iranian crew, they were expecting an imminent US attack and those tricky Americans will use any sneaky trick to openly ignore international law at attack countries like Iran... they saw something they thought should not be there and they shot it down.

Pretty sure they didn't get medals for that though.

This supports the argument that countries are hesitant to pull the trigger on drones for fear of escalation, but their presence hardly goes undetected. It is a calculated decision not to engage, as for example in Syria, where for political reasons Russia does not engage (nor support Syrian gov't forces) foreign drones of all types flying over northern Syria.

Yeah, fair enough with a small country, but does that apply to the US Navy sailing through the Persian Gulf in a carrier group... it is not like they don't have plenty of helicopters they could launch to escort these drones.... except if they don't detect them.

We hear all sorts of shit about L band AESA radar... but Russia has spent money and time on upgrading their radars to detect stealthy and small targets... their SAMs from the early 1980s have been optimised to shoot down the smart weapons the west was using to try to kill them like ALARM and HARM and Shrike etc etc, so when Russia talks about tracking drones and detecting stealth aircraft it does make sense... but when drones fly over US carrier groups and take nice clear close up photos, or diesel electric subs surface amongst a group of US ships in a carrier group and that carrier group is surprised you kinda get the feeling that they are really not well equipped to deal with a peer enemy and that their attack strategies of stealth and drones have not been matched by their own ability to defeat such tactics and methods and that perhaps they might end up strung up on their rope noose...

It seems countries prefer playing it cautious when it comes to engaging each other's drones for the time being, perhaps for fear of an equivocal response which would be counter-productive, as @Isos is proposing.

You can't really compare the airspace over Syria with the airspace over Crimea or a US carrier group at sea.