all depends on the radar if it can detect them. Although I would say if it could the F-117 would be the easiest to shoot down, B-2 would be the hardest to detect and F-22 hardest to shoot down due to also it’s low observability and speed.

On the radar…

Russia Fielding Metric-Wave Anti-Stealth Radar

In mid-January, Gen. Col. Vladimir Mikhailov, Commander of the Russian Air Force, announced that Russia will undertake an extensive modernization of its national air-defense system. The space-defense and air-defense networks will be integrated to higher degree and new concepts of operations will be also developed. From the equipment point of view, the new S-400 system will be fielded this year, along with modernization work on existing S-300PM and S-300PM1 systems. For the first time, it was also reported that the Pantsir S-1 system will be evaluated and considered for fielding for the role of close-in defense of medium- and long-range surface-to-air-missile (SAM) sites. Gen. Mikhailov said that there is a high interest in the system within Russian Air Force.

Along with the S-400, the 55Zh6-1 Nebo-U radar sets are also to be fielded this year. The radar was developed by NNIIRT [Nizhnonovgorod’s Rsearch and Development Institute of Radio Technology] (Nizhny Novgorod, Russia) and has the distinction of probably being the only radar in the world with a digital phased-array antenna that works in the metric-wave band. The radar has one horizontal and one vertical antenna of large size and deeply modified Yagi-type aerials. The radar’s range is up to 600 km for targets flying between 40-75,000 m, 400 km for targets at 20,000 m, 300 km for targets at 10,000 m, and at least 65 km for targets flying at 500 m. Despite its metric wavelength, the achieved resolution is high, reportedly 400 m in distance and 0.4 degress in azimuth. The radar can rotate at speeds of 10 rpm or 20 rpm to provide 360-degree coverage. Due to its large antennas and complexity, the radar requires seven heavy trucks and trailers to transport it, and its deployment time is 22 hours. The Nebo-U radar sets are being manufactured by AOA Nitel Company (Nizhny Novogrod, Russia), which already has produced of small batch of pre-series sets.

The radar’s ability to operate accurately in the metric band makes it capable of capable of detecting and tracking stealth-type targets without a major reduction in the radar’s range. Metric radar’s main shortcoming had been its low accuracy, making them unsuitable not only for weapon control but even for precise ground-controlled intercept. The Nebo-U enables precise ground control of interceptor aircraft, with an accuracy of 1-2 km. This is theoretically fair enough for an interceptor to make visual contact with a stealth aircraft, such as a US F-117A (shown here), and shoot it down with gunfire, at least in clear daylight or on moonlit nights. Historically, dark nights have been preferable for stealth operations. Nevertheless, the Nebo-U is an interesting technological achievement and is one of a kind among radar systems currently deployed. It will be interesting to see where this technology leads.

-ends-

This was e-mailed to me a while ago, but no link to a source.

Kopps F/A-22 fetish and Su-30MK fear-mongering aside, you must admit his articles demonstrate real technical/operational depth

To a point yes, which comes from years of reading, but NO military experince what so ever. His strategic arguments are laughable to say the least. Trust me Vympel, he is not too well liked by MANY of us in Australia that believe in a balanced armed forces capability for the ADF.

It depends on where they were fighting- defending the boomer bastions was a major Soviet mission- as such, they would never be too far from home ports

True. Breaching the GIUK gap and engaging NATO fleets and convoys mid-Atlantic during WW III was also a major Soviet naval mission (and not just the AV-MF). This would have found their surface ships many hundreds of miles from home.

I disagree, they are designed to form part of a surface taskforce and their missiles are very specifically designed to engage AEGIS cruisers. That is why a 4.5 ton missile is given a range of 120km because it will fly all the way to the target at low level with the terminal flight path below 7m above the water at mach 2.5.

Garry, I know what they intended to do with their supersonic missiles, but my point is that the Russian cruise missile launchers were more or less expendable.

Read on from the Moscow Times:

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/03/30/009.html

Last week the commander of the Russian Navy, Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov, made waves worldwide when he told journalists that the nuclear-powered flagship of the Northern Fleet, the Pyotr Veliky, was in such bad shape that it could explode “at any moment.” Kuroyedov added that the ship’s two nuclear reactors were at risk.

Kuroyedov announced that after personally inspecting the Pyotr Veliky he had ordered the ship docked for three weeks for repairs. The ship’s crew took a 30 percent pay cut and the ship was removed from the list of Russia’s “battle-ready” warships, the admiral said.

In Russia, the news aroused only limited interest. Too many nuclear submarines, important public buildings, schools and the like have sunk, burned or exploded in recent years, often with catastrophic loss of life.

In Russian, such disasters are referred to as “technogenic catastrophes,” a politically correct phrase that most often masks the real cause: negligence, mismanagement, greed or corruption. Such catastrophes are so frequent these days that even when the head of the Navy says that a 19,000-ton warship could blow up at any moment, the public is not overly concerned. If the ship were to explode, we would probably be horrified. But the mere possibility of disaster is not enough to create panic.

If the German or Swedish brass, for example, were to inspect most any Russian warship or submarine, they would almost surely find that it didn’t pass muster. The current Russian Navy was built up in a great rush in the 1970s and 1980s to take on NATO and the United States in an all-out nuclear war. The notion was that all of our surface ships would be knocked out within 15 minutes to one hour of the start of hostilities.

Our warships were therefore built to be used once. Their decks were covered with enormous tubes housing nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, but no adequate reloading facilities were built in since reloading wasn’t regarded as a feasible option. A mighty fleet was built for a single task: to fire a single volley and sink to the bottom as heroes.

The Third World War never happened, however, and now we are stuck with a huge inventory of low-quality warships that are supposed to serve the needs of a peacetime Navy. Onshore naval infrastructure is inadequate and maintenance is often nonexistent. Ships’ crews are poorly trained — not just the conscripts, but the officers as well.

Rather than receiving professional training, most sailors merely struggle to survive in hostile conditions. After more than a decade of utter neglect, many of the officers who remain on active duty are simply those who can’t get a better job anywhere else or who are marking time until they finally get a free apartment from the government.

The Pyotr Veliky, by all accounts, is a cut above the average. Navy insiders reckon that Kuroyedov singled out the Northern Fleet flagship to settle a score with retired Admiral Igor Kasatonov, whose nephew Vladimir Kasatonov just happens to be the ship’s commander.

Beyond Russia few realized that Kuroyedov was exaggerating the hazard posed by the Pyotr Veliky. In the West, when the head of the Navy announces that his largest warship could explode, this usually signals immediate danger. Britain and Scandinavia were particularly upset, probably bracing themselves for a sky full of nuclear fallout.

When Kuroyedov realized what a commotion he had created, he began to back off his original statement. The Navy announced that the admiral’s remarks were off the record, that the ship’s reactors were in good shape and that the only mess on the Pyotr Veliky was in the sailors’ living quarters. Kuroyedov told journalists of the explosion threat in a restroom at the Defense Ministry that doubles as a smoking lounge during high-level meetings. He apparently did not realize the impact his words would have.

Kuroyedov has been caught telling tales to the press in the past. After the Kursk sank in 2000, the admiral told reporters that the Navy had proof that a U.S. submarine had sunk the vessel. In the end it was established that Russian negligence, not a U.S. submarine, had sunk the Kursk.

In 2001 a number of admirals were fired because of the Kursk disaster, but not Kuroyedov. President Vladimir Putin seems to have a soft spot for the admiral and chooses not to call him to account for his public misstatements.

This is one of the biggest problems in Putin’s Russia. As long as an official is loyal to the president, he can lie and steal without fear of retribution.

-ends-

The Russian navy we still see today will be LONG gone by 2020, or even earlier. Replaced by one would hope, with a whole different philosophy, and new classes more suitable to the current need.

I don’t see what the purpose of extending the flight deck is. It appears that it can still only fit 1 helo.

Perhaps to allow clearance from the Khastan installations?

We are rapidly approaching the time where all ASCC/NATO/whatever designations for Soviet equipment are becoming outdated, not to mention extremely cumbersome and non-descriptive in many cases. Frankly, are they even assigning new codes to anything anymore?

Forget SA-N-12, if you’re going to call Kashtan by name (rather than GRISON CADS-N-1 or whatever) and Moskit etc, you might as well call SA-N-12 the proper name of ………………..

It’s Yezh, isn’t it? 😀

Understand Vympel, but I think most average joe posters don’t have a complete understanding of all the pure Russian names for various weapons, and so on. And I still see the old NATO/ASCC names used in a LOT of literature today. As for assigning codes to new Russian weapons, I think they still so.

Yes I can see your point. But I don’t think reloading is a problem for a bigger ship, or for that matter, I don’t think reloading was even part of the plan. Remember, we’re talking of a cruiser here. The ship is not intended to go deep water, but to support operations in the East China sea. I don’t expect it to operate far from port.

I do expect to see the new Chinese DDGs far from port. I seriously doubt they would spend billions developing and building a large cruiser-sized vessel just to use it off their own coastline, or territorial seas. Especially for the sake of JUST employing large long-range supersonic anti-ship missiles. Like I said, if the MISSILE is the plan, mass produce corvettes, and employ them on long-range fighters.

(The DDG 170 do not appear to be able to reload at sea either).

Pure conjecture at this stage. The Chinese are building a new fleet of at-sea support ships which appear for now to be very capable. They are clearly moving toward a greater sustained ocean-going capability in the PLAN, in my opinion of course.

I don’t think the Chinese would fund the development of such a missile like the 3M80MVE just in order to use it on only two ships. Either they got bigger ships in mind and/or, they also plan to use it on small FACs. Either the Sunburns will be adapted to a domestic stealthy FAC (like ship 2280) or the PLAN might procure Tarantulas.

I would bet money it will be used on FACs.

“Brown water” off the China coasts and into the East China sea are ideal territory for FACs to operate.

Exactly. And my point entirely.

There is also a version of the 9M96 used as a target drone… called 96M9M designed to simulate various high speed ballisitic targets with various RCS at speeds of up to 1.3km/s. It can climb to over 46km and lands about 100km from its launch site.

Interesting Garry. I think the Russians may have even tested the S-400 against this drone when simulating ballistic missile interceptions.

It is puzzling why they would acquire the enhanced Moskit and the Kashtan, but won’t use it on their own ships, using the local AKS730 and the new YJ-12 missiles instead on the new DDG170/171. But then, they appeared to have purchased two SAM RIF-Ms, then went ahead and used a domestic VLS HHQ-9 system instead.

Keeping the domestic industry ticking along would have to be more important in the long run. So to see Chinese missiles on the their own new destroyers doesn’t surprise me. It is still not confirmed, as far as I know, if the new Type 052C is indeed fitted with those Rif systems or not. Unless of course there has been an official press release I am not aware of.

I still have a hunch that the PLA is still planning, or maybe even currently building at least two larger vessels, one which can use the RIF-Ms, the 3M80MVEs, the Kashtans and maybe the VLS SA-N-12, in one package. You can imagine the size of this vessel, which will no doubt be cruiser sized.

There are rumours of a larger vessel in the works, but I would VERY surpirsed to see it have SA-N-12 and the Rif as well. And again I would be surprised to see 3M80MVE on them too. These massive missiles do not make for a good blue water vessel, as the Chinese can not reload them at sea. The Soviet philosophy behind the SS-N-22 Sunburn-armed Sovremenny was to deploy fast, fire off the weapons, usually at the biggest NATO ship they could find, and then probably die before getting back to port. They did not expect them to survive once deployed far from home ports engaging NATO ships and subs. The Chinese on the other hand would use them on their own Sovremenny class close to home, and target Taiwanese ships or US CVBGs. They would have home water sanctuary, or be near enough to home to be able to return to port and reload. The Sov+3M80 buy for the Chinese was IMO to be used purely in this fashion. Obviously the more of them they have the better off that capability will be come crunch time, especially if the missiles have twice the range!

If they want to deploy more 3M80 class weapons for use near home waters then they would be better off arming smaller, faster, and cheaper corvettes with them. The new Stealthy FAC(M) that we have seen recently will apprently be armed with either YJ-83 or even Yakhont according to one source.

I believe the Chinese will continue to arm their new vessels with more the more typical kind of AShM (YJ-83 etc.) that can will make them more servicable at sea and able to maintain an effective ocean going capability when it counts.