S-400 and F-35

[madrat]

The S-125 fuse was magic. If not for Prowlers being idle and SOP getting lax, the event never happens. Without the Prowler the Yugoslavians were able to leave energy bleeding all over the sky without fear. The Yugoslavians had a mole feeding them information that allowed them a high level of confidence when to shoot. F-117A might pop up as a target of opportunity but engagement of a target requires detonation of the payload. We know the pilot ejected, so it was no direct hit or near hit as the missile was designed. If F-117A had been even a near hit the pilot would have been dead. The radar was limited to under 25km against an F-117A, which meant they had a very limited window of opportunity. They also had to figure out how to fuse their missile as they had a low probability of it working without setting strict parameters. Two missiles were fired and both missiles had different manual fusing. One passed by and one detonated close enough to destabilize the flight controls. This wasn't much different than how shockwaves - not hits from missiles - took down Gary Powers.

[hornetfinn]

The S-125 fuse was magic. If not for Prowlers being idle and SOP getting lax, the event never happens. Without the Prowler the Yugoslavians were able to leave energy bleeding all over the sky without fear. The Yugoslavians had a mole feeding them information that allowed them a high level of confidence when to shoot. F-117A might pop up as a target of opportunity but engagement of a target requires detonation of the payload. We know the pilot ejected, so it was no direct hit or near hit as the missile was designed. If F-117A had been even a near hit the pilot would have been dead. The radar was limited to under 25km against an F-117A, which meant they had a very limited window of opportunity. They also had to figure out how to fuse their missile as they had a low probability of it working without setting strict parameters. Two missiles were fired and both missiles had different manual fusing. One passed by and one detonated close enough to destabilize the flight controls. This wasn't much different than how shockwaves - not hits from missiles - took down Gary Powers.

I don't think this is correct. S-125 like other early CLOS guided SAMs were never really designed to hit anything directly. The guidance method and technology level resulted in relatively big guidance errors even at shorter ranges. All these missiles (like S-75/SA-2 and S-125 for example) had big warheads and long distance radar fuse to kill targets fairly reliably. For example in many cases where an aircraft (including B-52, F-16, F-15, F-14) has been shot down by these missiles, the aircraft crew has survived (of course there are unfortunate exceptions too). In S-125 the fuse is set (activation distance and delay) based on target altitude and flight path. In this case it was pretty straightforward as the F-117 was flying at medium altitude and engagement geometry was easy even for an old system like S-125. I think there was an enormous amount of luck involved in this shoot down, but it also involved a lot of skill, experience and determination too. Remember that this battery also shot down F-16C which was far from helpless.

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your ... -goldfein/

The four-ship took off from Aviano in the middle of the night, flying eastward under a clear, bright moon. But what the Viper pilots didn’t realize was that the Serbs had moved some batteries north from where they expected they’d be. A wave of six missiles streaked up from the surface.

“You could see them on your [night vision] goggles, pretty clear,” Goldfein said.

The F-16s began sweeping the area with their sensors to find the “hot spots” launching the enemy missiles, and firing AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles, or HARMs, to take them out.

But another battery lurking right below Goldfein fired a missile practically straight up at him, and about four seconds later it slammed into the aft of his F-16.

“It’s the standard story everybody tells you,” Goldfein said in a May 7 interview at his Pentagon office. “The one I didn’t see was the one that hit me.”

Goldfein said the same Serb who shot down Lt. Col. Dale Zelko’s F-117A Nighthawk the fourth night of the campaign also shot him down, with the same skillfully jury-rigged SAM battery.

“He had done some creative modifying of his surface-to-air missiles,” Goldfein said. “We started nicknaming him the MacGuyver of Serbia. He was good.”

[madrat]

The proximity fuse of S-125 is next to useless against F-117A. The first missile passed as close as the second and it was exploded way too late. They realized the problem immediately. It was a manual detonation that got lucky.

[hornetfinn]

The proximity fuse of S-125 is next to useless against F-117A. The first missile passed as close as the second and it was exploded way too late. They realized the problem immediately. It was a manual detonation that got lucky.

Well, S-125 predates F-117 by two decades, so it would not be surprising. Besides, have you any sources saying that they detonated it manually? I've not seen anything confirming either prox fuze or command detonation. But it would not be just luck as that's how the system was designed and the operators operated it very well. Command detonation has been used with other similar missiles successfully. It's actually pretty simple when target range is known as the guidance system continually tracks both target and missiles in flight. It knows well when the missile is closest to the target. Having big powerful warhead helps here a lot to compensate the inherently inaccurate guidance system.

Anyway, in general these systems could work even against F-117 in close to perfect situations like the engagement in 1999 was. It's not realistically possible to make aircraft that's VLO in all directions and there are always vulnerable angles present. With F-117 not having any kind of real SA, the pilot didn't get any warning of being tracked and had no means to do anything about it. I'm sure that F-117 would be very difficult target to this day in most situations and scenarios. But this is all irrelevant as F-35 is now in service in large numbers and it does have everything F-117 lacked while having at least as good stealth features.

[madrat]

Look at your sources again because the S-125 has a couple of radio fusing options for proximity detonation, the command vehicle could automate the detonation using its range information, and can be manually detonated. Only the last option could have had a reasonable opportunity. The missile was poorly guided by tracking radar because it only had faint and intermittent returns. The group of F-117A did not evade because it was seen as unnecessary. The pilot was operating his weapons which pretty much occupied his time at the moment but he was not unaware of the missiles. F-117A is a delivery system that largely flies for the pilot so that they can concentrate on delivery. The pilot did not fly defensively because he either didn't feel it necessary or was overwhelmed with his weapon system.

[hocum]

No, and I told you why.
Firstly, no stealth aircraft is designed to be equally stealthy in all direction
Secondly, to stay outside of the stealthy cone of stealth aircraft, your radars stations needed to be too far apart.

You just repeated again the same image. Do you have lack of arguments? Or is it one more neglect for opponent?
I told about multi-static location, you tended yours wishful thinking again. Why did you put plane outside of air defence missile range? Is it stealth, or not?

Why do you consider that plane has 60 degree cone of saving? Does mr. Esper showed you personally a true radiation patterns for every stealth plane? I suppose that it is just 10 degrees. Why does yours guess-works must be better?

Having several radars at 5-10 km apart is easy, but to have them far enough from each other so that they can always view the stealth aircraft from outside of its stealthy cone is much easier said than done. As shown in the illustration picture above.

For closer ranges and narrover cone it may be very possible. You shown just yours sweet dreams, based on nothing.

That a big number of command post that you will need to link the two radar.

No. It will need just special radiorelay tower like FL-95 "Sosna" in S-300PS/S-300PM, or special mobile retranslators like 15Ya6, 66Ya6 in modern variants. So, range less than 150km isn't something unusual.

[hocum]

Massive plane/missile attack from different directions is much easier to do than arranging ground attack from different directions. The key advantage of airforce over ground force is force concentration and saturation attack because airforce has the ability to move around quickly on the battlefield. An aircraft at Mach 0.9 will only need 16 minutes to cross 300 km distance. On the other hand, a TEL or radar vehicle the off-road speed about 30 km/h, they will need 10 hours to cross the same distance.

You just need to have AIRBASES for it. And "different angles" means angle more than 120 degrees, or all this directions fit into one radar antenna array zone.
Where do you find this directions against continue A2/AD front about 500-600km length or more?

Airborne side of course have advantange in operational mobility, but every air defence complex design for that. For even in worst case take with it as many attacking planes as he has missiles on launchers. Just loock at its capabuilites and organization. Sure, you can destroy some position defence areas covering them with plane debris, but after some such operations all yours planes will end.
And when you do this - enemy aviation acts freely, allied ground forces haven't any close air support and loosing. They all wait while you are wasting most expensive resource on every war - a time.

The same reason why you think a stealth aircraft emitting will be detected. Secondly, to find stealth aircraft, your ground radar must emit very high power, that make it even easier to detect by ESM system.

I meant another thing. Why you consider that technical levels of radars for airborne and air defence is the same? All advantages firstly come into AIR DEFENSE, and only after that it adopts for airborne, usually after many years.
For example. Look on the "Protivnik-G" radar (59N6). It has DIGITAL ANTENNA ARRAY. It is next generation above AESA radars. Can you show me fighter plane with such antenna array? No? May be just every plane?
This radar even offers for export, so russian military don't cosider it super advanced, or top secret. But nobody can buy F-22, even frendliest allies by spesial asks.

[ricnunes]

Do you have lack of arguments? Or is it one more neglect for opponent?

Again, the only one lacking arguments here is you.

I told about multi-static location, you tended yours wishful thinking again. Why did you put plane outside of air defence missile range? Is it stealth, or not?

Dude,
aviation always had, always have and always will have advantage over air defense systems (just look at the history of aerial warfare!). And one of the reasons is because aviation travels at much faster speeds and higher altitudes which means that they can choose where and when to remain "outside of air defense missile range" not to mentions that they have the higher advantage point!
And stealth means that stealth aircraft can get much, much closer to the enemy air defense systems and can fly between the enemy air defenses "multi-static location" that you so much brag about, all of this without the enemy air defense ever notice the incoming stealth aircraft or otherwise without being able to effectively engage incoming stealth aircraft!
Will we see a stealth aircraft being shot down by enemy air defenses in the future? Yes, perhaps or even likely yes. In war things like this do happen but it will be much, much harder for any future air defense system to shot down any stealth aircraft compare to the past and present air defense systems against past and present non-stealth aircraft. And another thing: How many air defense systems will be destroyed before a single stealth aircraft - a F-35 for instance - will be shot down in return? I would say a Sh*tload of them!

As such it seems to me that you're deliberately ignoring other member's arguments here (namely from eloise but not only) while at the same time having 'the nerve' to accuse eloise of not posting arguments! This is called trolling! And so:
- Are you a troll?? Or, are you one of "Putin's keyboard commandos"??

From what I see, it seems that you are both

[eloise]

You just repeated again the same image. Do you have lack of arguments? Or is it one more neglect for opponent?
I told about multi-static location, you tended yours wishful thinking again. Why did you put plane outside of air defence missile range? Is it stealth, or not?

I don't have a lack of argument, but I don't have to write a different answer every time you repeated the same argument especially when my first explanation is already sufficient.
I put aircraft outside air defense missile range because neither the air defense or the aircraft have the ability to teleport, so they can't just suddenly appear at short range. They have to start from long distance then get closer.

Why do you consider that plane has 60 degree cone of saving? Does mr. Esper showed you personaly a true radiation patterns for every stealth plane? I suppose that it is just 10 degrees. Why does yours guess-works must be better?
For closer ranges and narrover cone it may be very possible. You shown just yours sweet dreams, based on nothing.

Unlike you, I don't make random guess work. I made an educated estimate based on available reliable information.
I estimate the low RCS cone of stealth aircraft is based on the computer simulated radar scattering chart . While the additional radar absorbing material and radar absorbing structure will reduce the radar cross section further that mostly reduce the radar return magnitude so it is very possible to make fairy accurate guess on the high and low RCS region

No. It will need just special radiorelay FL-95 in S-300PS/S-300PM, or special mobile retranslators like 15Ya6, 66Ya6 in modern variants. So, range less than 150km isn't something unusual.

That relay tower is limited by radar horizon, even more because it is on the ground with low antenna height. So you will need many of them. Secondly, that relay tower need to transmit so it is very likely become a juicy target for SEAD

[eloise]

You just need to have AIRBASES for it. And "different angles" means angle more than 120 degrees, or all this directions fit into one radar antenna array zone.
Where do you find this directions against continue A2/AD front about 500-600km length or more?

Airborne side of course have advantange in operational mobility, but every air defence complex design for that. For even in worst case take with it as many attacking planes as he has missiles on launchers. Just loock at its capabuilites and organization. Sure, you can destroy some position defence areas covering them with plane debris, but after some such operations all yours planes will end.
And when you do this - enemy aviation acts freely, allied ground forces haven't any close air support and loosing. They all wait while you are wasting most expensive resource on every war - a time.

Firstly, A2G combat radius of F-35 is 1200 km, JSM/JSOW-ER range is 550 km, SPEAR-EW range is 420 km, MALD range is 920 km, so it is very plausible for them to circle around the defense bubble of air defense.
Secondly, ground air defense is heavily affected by radar horizon , so even with maximum SAM kinematic range of 400 km, that doesn't mean the dead zone around your SAM launcher is a circle with 400 km radius, for a missile skimming at low altitude, this death radius is easily reduced to 30-40 km. So even when all air to ground missile are released from the same direction, they can still be guided to circle around your SAM site to attack from multiple directions.
Thirdly, they don't overwhelmed air defense with planes, they overwhelm air defense with decoys such as SPEAR-EW, MALD-J/N, a single F-35 can carry about 24 SPEAR-EW, that a huge number of random targets.
Finally, the biggest advantage of air force is force concentration. Let say you have 100 locations to protect and X number of SAM batteries, you need to divide the X number of SAM batteries/number of location. For air force in attack, you don't need to do that. You can have your whole force attack each location one by one.

I meant another thing. Why you consider that technical levels of radars for airborne and air defence is the same? All advantages firstly come into AIR DEFENSE, and only after that it adopts for airborne, usually after many years.
For example. Look on the "Protivnik-G" radar (59N6). It has DIGITAL ANTENNA ARRAY. It is next generation above AESA radars. Can you show me fighter plane with such antenna array? No? May be just every plane?
This radar even offers for export, so russian military don't cosider it super advanced, or top secret. But nobody can buy F-22, even frendliest allies by spesial asks.

Firstly, not all technology come to air defense before they come to air borne, it is really depend on the specific case. For example: AESA radar came to fighter and bomber long before they came to ground based air defense. Second example is the cognitive jamming technology on F-35 which no ground based jammer currently have.

Additionally, you talked about the DIGITAL ANTENNA ARRAY technology on Protivnik-G but you didn't mention that it is a L/UHF band radar

The fundamental physical challenge with Digital antenna array is the element spacing because it is a function of wavelength, which reduces as the operating frequency increases. Common AESA and PESA put the element spacing at half the wavelength or less to avoid grating lobes in the antenna pattern. At L band it is easy to fit the electronics in an every-element spacing. As frequency increases to X-band (10 GHz), it is much more challenging and expensive because the wave length is shorter so the electronic must be smaller that drive cost up. So normally low frequency radar will get DBF earlier. With that said, Japan currently developing the digital beam forming array for their F-3 fighter.

[marauder2048]

I'm just of the considered view that in a post-INF world full of fast, responsive
surface-to-surface fires that an IADS with largish mainlobes and sidelobes and not the quickest displacement
time is going to be an early casualty.

[boogieman]

I'm just of the considered view that in a post-INF world full of fast, responsive
surface-to-surface fires that an IADS with largish mainlobes and sidelobes and not the quickest displacement
time is going to be an early casualty.

Agree. PrSM alone strikes me as likely to make life... difficult... for contemporary strategic SAM systems. The extent of the difficulty being a function of how many HIMARS/MLRS units can be brought to bear of course.

[michaelemouse]

The proximity fuse of S-125 is next to useless against F-117A. The first missile passed as close as the second and it was exploded way too late. They realized the problem immediately. It was a manual detonation that got lucky.

When you say "manual detonation", was there someone with his finger just above the button, waiting for the precise time to lower the finger? That seems like asking a lot of a human considering how fast the target and missile are moving.

[hocum]

AARGM-ER is quite a different animal from basic HARMs used in yugoslavian.Firstly, AARGM-ER is two time faster than HARM and has twice the range. Secondly, AARGM-ER has terminal MMW seeker that allowed it to view the shape of target instead of rely only on whether target radio emission.

This seeker see nothing through Gasetchik's special aerosol cloud as well as SDB-2, and Scalps/Tomahawks. (And for air defence radars this aerosols stays clear).
Or see just decoys like that -

Even ECM/decoy forces stuff modernization seems unnecessary.
Unfortunately, till the duplex radiolink between launched anti-radar missile and ally radio surveillance forces haven't applied, efficiency of every self-guided and hasn't cluster warhead airborne ammunition stays low. Especially very low against well equiped air defence position area. Just by passive measures, even without missiles launching for shoots it down. But every modern complex can shoot down even AARGM. All another existing airborne ammunition is nothing more than exercise targets - subsonic or very subsonic, no maneuverable, no countermeasures... Even against Iran NAVSTAR's will jam - some number of munitions just flies far-far away.

Already its "ER" range is insufficient for staying safe of long-range air defence complexes. And of course, this rocket is some far even from initial operation capability.

So, we discuss about existing models/modifications, or about plans and wishes? Or for airborne side plans and wishes, and for air defense side only well tested and widely deployed models, as it always to be?

[hocum]

Secondly, for ground target, long range complex such as S-400 can't fire on the move and it will take them anywhere from 10-20 minutes to fully pack up all their radars and start to move. AARGM-ER top speed is Mach 4, so it can cross 300 km in about 4.2 minutes. No need to lead target. A miniature cruise missile such as SPEAR with top speed of Mach 0.9 can cross 140 km in 7.6 minutes => No need to lead target.

You are totally wrong. Therritorial air defence complexes like S-400/S-350 has 5 minuites official requirement for full packing and to start moving. And most of this time needs to dig out its high voltage grounding. If don't do this - it can lower antennas/rockets and start to move less than 1 minute.

Land troops air defence complexes like S-300VM/Buk can move without lowering its antennas. Not on full speed and on level ground, because it has crawler vehicles. 20 minites was 40-60 years ago, for wery old and only therritorial complexes, like S-200/S-75/S-125 and S-300PT. Old land troops complexes like Krug and Kub/Kvadrat had totally another timings, Shilka could fire on move too.

And 6-7 mach speed air defence missiles can shoot down every plane after about 2 minutes - and have enough time to move something for evading even from AARGM. If it isn't lost positioning, can select true target and haven't shooted down by subordinate forces.
So, you don't know time requirements and capabilities of air defence and thought very bad. Think again.