Fair enough.

That’s fine with me.

Desperate? An AV-8 damaged that way near Belgrad will not return for a hover landing in the Adriatic but will do an emergency landing in Timisoara or Szeged near by. 😉
The 250th Air Defense Missile Brigade does claim a F-117A and a F-16C only.

More idle speculation….

P.S.

F-117 and F-16 are the ones they have undisputable proof for.

We’re discussing other possible losses / claims.

The Harrier claim is on the record but cannot be proven

“Here’s an exerpt from an old interview from a few years ago with some details…”
Where is it to read or who did it? A source is something which can be tracked down personally. 😎

It’s an article/interview from 2005

“Secrets of 1999 F-117 Shootdown Revealed” by Z. G. Laszlo

published in e-defense online (website no longer available)

Now go and track him down 😀

Lonevolk wrote
‘Now for the sake of argument, it’s more than likely that some of the damaged aircraft did crash on the way back to base.’

Again how are the aircraft losses being covered up?

Good god :rolleyes:

Are you saying it’s that difficult to explain the loss of a couple of aircraft??

Unlike you I don’t have hours and hours of free time to do research for you or dig up posts from years ago.

I seriously doubt that AFM, Benjamin Lambeth and Martin Andrew got their info from Venik with whom you seem to be obsessed…..you’re starting to see Veniks, Zampinis and Mig-23s all over the place.

—

To my knowledge, the F-16 was originally explained as an engine malfunction….the stuff you posted is from 2007.

And I’ve heard the audio years ago…

——-

Kapedani,

you can’t take a hint can you?

I’m not interested in your useless drivel so don’t bother replying to my posts!

Whats the name, ISBN and (more importantly for me) what language is the book written in? What were the modifications to the radar. Does he give the range the F-117 was detected at?

WAPJ admits to the F-117, F-16CG shot down. A couple of A-10 and possibly an F-15C damaged.

The book is not in English.

—-

The exact details of the modifications are classified. It’s thought that the UNV antenna and the UNK-M control cabin of the P-18 were modified, together with some fine tuning of the missile warheads.

The F-117 became detectable at a distance of about 20km and were engaged roughly at a distance of 15km.

Keep in mind that the F-117s were not equiped with ANY countermeasures and like I said earlier are vulnerable when detected (slow and not very maneuverable).

There was also a shortage of jammers and the F-117s often went in without jammer escort.

Add to that, the fact that they were forced to use predictable approaches and you have all the necessary elements in place.

….

Here’s an exerpt from an old interview from a few years ago with some details…

His unit, the 3rd battery of the 250th Missile Brigade, was responsible for
the air defense of the Beograd area, together with other
batteries of the same brigade. Equipped with the S-125M Neva (NATO: SA-3
Goa) command-guided SAM system.

Dani’s battery, however, had some key advantages over its
sister units. According to Dani, this advantage was based on their previous
research into the field of the detection, acquisition, and
destruction of targets with low radar cross-sections (RCSs) or those
employing low-observable technologies.

He said he and his
subordinate officers followed articles written about the F-117 since its
emergence from secrecy, calculating at the same time how
systems in service with the Yugoslav air-defense forces could possibly cope
with such a threat. Finally, during the NATO power
demonstrations in 1998 (held to ward off Serbia from its actions in Kosovo),
he proposed minor, in-field technical modifications to the
SAM system: one to the UNV antenna unit and the UNK-M control cabin
responsible for missile control (NATO: Low Blow), with another
modification to the P-18 (NATO: Dry Rack or Spoon Rest D) radar that
provides target acquisition for each battery.

His superiors declied to approve the modifications though, saying instead that “this system simply cannot handle the stealth.”

Tough challenges to the Yugoslavian integrated air-defense system were on
the horizon, but individiual initiatives were still not encouraged, even though they promised a chance to improve inferior systems.

Just a few weeks before the air war started, Dani tried
once more, but to no avail. At this time, however, he finally went ahead and
implemented his proposed modifications within his own unit without higher approval, taking full responsibility.

Altough he still declines to discuss particulars, it seems the alterations required little materiel, and the maintenance and servicing capabilities attached to his battery were up to the task of the “quick fix.” The only
specific Col. Dani would provide was that the modifications did not involve
the use of the auxilliary Karat TV target-tracking system.

In addition to technical modifications to increase the probability of
successful engagement of low-RCS targets, Col. Dani also trained
his unit to fight against the NATO air armada. Engagements using the
shortest possible radiation of the fire-control radar were
practiced over and over, and Col. Dani indicated that they focused on
engaging targets well within the possible launch zone to reduce
the time of flight of the missiles and, therefore, the reaction time
available to the target aircraft.

Dani’s unit also received reservists who boosted his unit’s manpower to approximately 200 personnel – in accordance with the standard wartime employment plan of a Neva battery. They also received two extra quad (4) missile launchers beyond the original four, and their stocks of V-601P missiles
were boosted as well, in anticipation of a low kill probability and high
missile consumption.

On the first night of Operation Allied Force, March 24, 1999, the task of
stopping the attackers fell to Yugoslav interceptors, and SAM
activity was held back. Later on, however, when the clear
beyond-visual-range (BVR) superiority of the NATO fighters became evident,
the Yugoslav SAM and anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) units took on sole
responsibility for air defense.

With a low kill probability projected,
due to their admittedly inferior technology, the realistic aim of the
Yugoslav SAM and AAA units was to stay alive as long as possible to
distract the NATO strike packages from their objective. Forcing the NATO
aircraft into evasive maneuvers that required them to jettison
stores and tanks seemed more likely than actually shooting down aircraft.

However, on day four, the 3rd battery of the 250th brigade
succeeded in downing an F-117 – an act that clearly helped the Serbs in
escalating the propaganda war to win public support, while at
the same time, dealing a blow to the West. Dani said his unit shot two
missiles with the target flying head-on at the battery at an
altitude of 8 km at a range of 13 km. The whole engagement took only 18
seconds. Following standard operating procedure, he was
sitting in the UNK-M cabin in front of the remote display of the P-18 radar,
supervising his crew’s combat work.

Although Dani acknowledged that they received information updates from the
central command and control (always through landlines –
no radio and no cellular communications), he said they wandered almost
randomly around the sector they were assigned to protect.

While on the move, Col. Dani’s unit had to avoid detection by NATO forces
and the attacks that would be sure to follow, then find
places from which they had the highest probability of disrupting enemy air
operations. Most of the time the actual firing unit, held
closely together by Dani, included only those elements required for a short
engagement: the missile-guidance radar, two (instead of
four) quad launchers, acquisition radar, and generators. Setting up in just
60 minutes from transport configuration to firing position
(preferably near vegetation offering natural concealment), this “core” of
the battery usually stayed in one place no longer than a few
hours. According to Dani, his battery covered approximately 100,000 km
during the 78 days of the war, mostly at night in blackout
conditions and without a single road accident.

Beyond frequent relocation, RF discipline contributed to the 3rd battery’s
eventual survival, and the unit suffered no human or materiel
losses at all. Radiation time of the fire-control radar was kept to a
minimum, although with the P-18 they could be more liberal, as this
VHF radar – according to their experiences – could not be targeted by NATO’s
High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARMs). Even with
this precaution, though, they were forced to cease radiation and/or missile
control 23 times when it became evident from the target-
return fluctuations or other indications that a HARM had been launched at
them. False transmitters in the vicinity of the battery’s
location were also used to spoof the anti-radiation missiles.

Dani added that the survivability of the VHF P-18 is the single biggest
reason for the command-guided Neva system’s success compared to the
semi-active Kub (SA-6) system.

The Kub’s radar complex, the SURN (NATO: Straight Flush), which operates on a different wavelength from the P-18, was more vulnerable to NATO HARMs. While the Neva battery was not vulnerable to HARMs during the detection/acquisition phase of the engagement, the Kub exposed itself from the beginning of its search for targets.

——

On the second (damaged) F-117…

birdstrike? ….just like the F-16 was “engine malfunction” 🙂

What’s the source for the birdstrike story?

The original claim here was AFM in 1999. The claim was later discredited as false…Nothing more to add to this. They wrote what they heard in the media…but there was never any confirmation or any detail or anything to indicate such an event ever happened.

It was a false claim…that was retracted.

So to repeat, no second F-117 was hit. All those other “sources” are just repeats of the one and only original source…one line in AFM in 1999…which in itself has been discredited as false long ago.

WOW!!…..The expert has spoken

How can ignore such earth shattering opinion…..now I’m really convinced :rolleyes:

At the very least do us a favor…and try not to be insulting 😉 We might just know something you don’t.

The above just confirmed what I said previously….

You are a certified dipstick!…..back to the sand pit.

TEEJ,

don’t get carried away with Zampini and various conspiracy theories when you yourself CANNOT know for sure about various claims until official documents are released.

The ones I posted are credible claims with dates, names and place…..they don’t sound like wild exagerations to me. On the contrary to my eyes, the claims that there were no air-air kills sound like propaganda if you take in consideration that there were some large scale battles taking place.

On the Serbian claims in 1999….

Recently, the commander of the Serbian AF in his book has presented official figures about losses. He clearly states that there is clear evidence for only 2 Nato aircraft that fell on Serbian territory but believes it likely that more were hit……not some wild figure of 60 or 200 aircraft but a single digit number. The book also has interesting figures on the losses of Serbian radars.

Zoltan Dani to this day still claims that his unit shot down 3 aircraft instead of the official 2. The 3rd one he says fell over the border in Croatia.

BTW, a second F-117 was damaged by a Neva (SA-3) which has been confirmed by US sources (this is on top of the 3 he claims as shot down)

Sens,

The MiG-25 report is from Vladimir Babich.
MiG-23 In the Near East from Vladimir Ilyin

Not a single source is shown there:

They are articles from old editions of the Ukranian journal “Aviation and Time”

http://www.aviation-time.kiev.ua/eng/thejournal.php?IDJ=70

———

On the Tornado shoot down I mentioned earlier…

It was a Tornado GR1 shot down by an Iraqi Mig-29 on the 19th January 1991

Details (pilot names and units) on the following pdf. file
http://aces.safarikovi.org/victories/victories-iraq-gulf.war.pdf

from
http://aces.safarikovi.org/victories/iraq-gulf.html