MarcellogoIn the case you are a small/poor/landlocked nation (except Kazahstan or Ethiopia) Mig-35, if you are one with a great sea surface to patrol,Su-30, anything in between (Ethiopia also there )Su-27/35, Kasakhstan MiG-31.
Look also at what Russia do: Central area and all the northernmost Bases have Mig-31, Eastern Su-27 and -30, Mig-29 are mostly in Southern one and in Kaliningrad, Western one a fancy mix, Sevastopol being a Navy location going Su-30.
MarcellogoYou know this exactly how? The entire permissive environment ISR investment and capability the USAF has built up debunks this argument of yours. Then factor in that virtually all USAF strike platforms can now do Precision strike, and have been upgraded to do so with an eye out on CAS. Even the B-1 a global strike platform was given a targeting pod to do CAS. That money came out of USAF investment and wasn’t loaned to it by the Army or the Navy. Then we can look into the munition investment and how air-air munitions and uniquely air-force/strike centric munition programs have either been cancelled or moved significantly to the right to pay for PGM’s and particularly ones that can be used effectively for CAS (SDBI and II, plus WMD investment).
Dear Bring on it, I think the problem there is about what we consider CAS. My country air force as an example, having used such an asset in real operation is also convinced as you said that CAS is a mission, just that such a mission has relatively little to do with precision targeting at all.
Because if the problem was only in better killing enemy we would have solved with guided artillery or mortar shell decades ago, if it was just a problem of targeting we would have used improved gunner sights, if about recon, drone would have been sufficient,etc, etc…
We found instead that even a not so perfect asset (using an understatement) like our AMX would not just cover all those facets of the CAS mission by itself but most important thing of all it have the added, and in our eyes absolutely needed, advantage of being able to smoothly shift from one to the other in the course of the same engagement.
There is no bickering.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAH:D:D
All services are investing and prioritizing as per their own internal modernization plan to be better able to perform Close Air Support going forward. Whether that is the Army’s guided mortar or long range precision artillery programs or the new very long range LRPF’s effort. Whether those are EMRG’s for the navy and Army, or PCAS, new munitions, targeting pods, and networks for cooperative targeting for the USAF. All these things collectively improve future ability to do CAS. There is no danger of the mission or capability being orphaned only the argument being clouded by clinging on to a ‘set’ and rigid way to do the mission as opposed to re-aligning your capability with future doctrine, funding and resources just as you are doing for virtually all other mission areas, even those unique to the USAF or USN.
Again, precision targeting is not Close Aerial SUPPORT at all, and for this same reason it is something that ought to be sought by all the armed forces and their respective specialities in this world for their own main mission, not as a substitute for something other’s one.
And the existence of a separated aerial mission called CAS was just about flexibility i.e. being able to give to the troops on terrain the varioustype of support they would ask for according to their tactical situation, being it bombing an enemy position, gave a look behind the hill so to not fall into an ambush, perform a strafing run so to get the enemy to squat down instead of trying to assault your position etc.etc. and possibly using a single asset able to do all those thing in the same time.
This doesn’t mean that this asset have to be some super-specialized thing like the A-10 is, there is a whole array of option, helicopters, UCAV, turboprops or instead jet powered planes and so on that have been put forward to take up the role, all of them having their respective advantages and disadvantages.
Said so, IMHO the discriminant is still that whatever the asset or the combination of them that would to be selected, it/they would have CAS for their primary mission or there would always be the risk of ending up having dozens of different items in all the different branch, services and armed forces all of them being used for anything other mission than that.
MarcellogoYes, having the possibility of perform CAS missionwithout using planes would be a solution, in the sense that USAF would not spend the most of its own time in trying to sabotage it.
Because saying together with that general (let me guess, maybe he was from the air force, right) that “CAS is a mission, not an airplane” wouldn’t resolve nothing: Usaf doesn’t hate just the A-10 but the CAS mission in itself i.e. using their own assets in support of other services or better said the army as the other are doing for themselves.
On the technical side, the concept of using different means can even work but this is not in the end just split up what is a niche mission in itself like CAS into further sub-niches?
What endanger the CAS most IMHO is not the necessity of a specific asset for it but at the contrary the risk that the different ones that could share the burden in this visual would actually get used for something other instead and leave it unguarded, hence the continuous bickering between the services about it.
Joint services cannot so solve the problem as they are the problem in this case(as in several many others) .
MarcellogoIn a sensible world the US Army would have control (in all senses) of their own CAS and COIN
And I don’t say that to be listerine: we go one stage further in the UK by not letting the British Army have control of Utility and Transport helos
Huh? Doesn’t seems me that any other CAS plane is under army control in any country of the world.
About AMX i’m sure.
Same with the most of Su-25 equipped nations, maybe I have lost track of someone.
So only one force that could claim to have them would be USMC, if we can consider the AV-8 a Cas plane…
MarcellogoWhat about when processing technology becomes powerful enough to link a dozen fighter radars several miles apart and create a virtual array, something that’s already been done outside of real-time with telescopes.
You are referring to what the MiG-31 are actually doing for decades? Or are you instead describing the way any ESA radar work, combining the emissions of a whole array of transceiver in a single wave front?
Seems me you make confusion between the overall number of emission point and the overall emission power.
Twelve radar emitting together would cover a way greater area but there would not be a single beam twelve time more powerful…
MarcellogoThere is someone there advocating not to build Su-34 and keep Fencer instead?
Seems me no one going that far, as being happy for them still kicking butts doesn’t count like so in my eyes.
Complexity and cost have to be related to the alternative it would have when it was introduced and now.
Certainly it is a complex and costly airplane if compared to the Su-17 but it is not in any way worst than F-111 and Tornado on this regard.
Also because it was also gone through simplification early in its own production run with removing variable intakes.
Retaining it was justified by the fact that it could perform a series of missions that other attack aircraft in the inventory after the Cold War and economic downfall could simply not afford.
RuAf kept Su-25 for low end mission anyway, so not any capability gap there.
MarcellogoWouldn’t a Tor M2 or Pantsir system be able to counter a gliding bomb if they were say, embeded in a BUK or S-350 polk?
Not just on AD polks but on every level of russian ground units you would found a quantity of embedded AD system without any counterpart in Western Armies.
I’m actually reading something about the battle formations of actual russian army and I’m actually appalled of how much different is the relative proportion between their relatively meagre basic arm formations and their own absolutely oversized embedded fire&support (both artillery than AA). systems.
As for now, the weapon you cited are the ground equivalents if not the same of the Shorad/Ciws system you would found on VMF ships and like them are specifically designed to engage incoming weapons more than to try to nail planes at 35000 yards (assault helos are instead a target of choice).
On this, they have also great advantage about their naval counterparts, as the units they are defending can scatter and anyway absorbing a level of damage before losing their own operational capacity much superior that any ship can.
Now, IMHO such systems for how they are conceived couldn’t hope on an easier target of a gliding or even toss up bomb coming from tens on kilometer distance and high quote like the ones described above.
MarcellogoWhile there are pop-up type SAMS, the oft touted “anti-stealth” type systems are very large, not very mobile, etc.
If the target is thought to be protected by these kinds of systems, there will be an active campaign to track their locations for target prioritization.
They are those long Range AEW Radars I was talking about and yes, they are probably the most vulnerable part of all the actual system. On the other hands there are hundreds of them, legacy ones that was recently renovated, and a lot of new ones were developed just to forego those limitations.
So, it’s a work on progress from both parts and it would be IMHO difficult both for the attackers and the defenders, so everyone involved have to do a lot of homework and not sit on their respective achievements, no matter how remarkable they seems at first.
Now, let allow me to call myself out of this whole discussion as I fear that keeping it on would end up to make me and all other persons involved much more chauvinistic and biased that they actually are, just for polemical spirit.
Discussion and actually the whole thread seems me until now quite equilibrate and serious so better not overdue some argument to exhaustion and reduce ourself into a trollfest as the precedent thread sometimes ended up.
Marcellogoit was obligatory but alright
Even the most mobile pop up SAM are still ground assets. Their speed/mobility is no where comparable to an airplane. In other words, they have to get in their location before the strike platforms come. Once the strike mission starts, let say if stealth aircraft are in the front, non stealth in the back. Your mobile SAM cannot move behind the aircraft formation to flank them.Moreover, once discovered the SAM battery have to fight back, they can’t out run a missile or bomb.
In terms of tactical flexibility, aircraft really take the cake here
Post like this make me seriously worry about the sort of mental images that people have about the how war is conducted.
It seems me that you have still this decades old idea of SAM system like something that have to be in the open before the attack so to allow the attacking aircraft to organize themselves in order to attack them in a timely, ordinate and fashionably manners.
Do you have an idea about what “pop up” mean?
It’s almost from the end of the first gulf war but for what SU/Russia is concerned almost from the eighties, that the AD system are organized to stay mostly covered and deploy only after the enemy attack is begun so to be able to engage them at the moment they seem best to inflict damages.
Attack formation would not so know from what direction and in what moment the SAM systems would enter battle, the only system that would operate continuosly would be some very long range AEW radar systems like the NEBO, situated hundreds of kilometers inside enemy territory (P.S.and a lot of passive systems also) while also very long range system like S-400 and S-300 V would start hidden and pop up during the attack.
Now, we have had the proof of how a similar tactics work with even updates versions of of missiles from the sixties, let’s imagine with actual systems developed ab initio with this tactics in mind
So, excuse me, don’t just get angry with me but reading back what you, in all intellectual honesty i’m sure, have written is for certain verses even funny.
That idea of a SAM system that not only sit happily in the open waiting for the enemy to organize itself into the best manner to bomb it but that once the attack starts try to manoeuvre to outflank the enemy aircraft is just soo absurd… :highly_amused:
MarcellogoDesert storm is over 27 years ago, various systems that were used in desert storm either been heavily upgraded or will not be used in future. If you want to judge the capabilities of future cruise missiles from Desert storm statistics, then it would only be fair to judge capabilities of SAM through previous conflicts.
If F-35 working as escort for 4th gen, it would either work as a stand in support jamming assets or a SEAD/DEAD assets that fly much closer to the threat compared to the strike formation.
Desert storm statistic? I? What? Who?Where? When? Why?
About the second leg of your post, again: we were talking about highly mobile pop up systems, not SA-2 like system you know the position days in advance.
If you put the SEAD/DEAD escort forward they would strike in the rear, if you put them all around they would concentrate them on just a side to overload it.
In any case, for those missions, Growlers/Tornado ECR all the time!
MarcellogoYour scenario assumes the SAM can launch all its missiles while undergoing a coordinated electronic attack from four F-35s. Good luck with that.
And have you an idea of the jammers, concealment measures (chaffs, flares and IR resistant smoke generators) and the Shorad/Ciws systems that any russian battery of modern medium to long range SAM carry with them just by default?
You would need much more than luck to engage them with weapons that would take between five and ten minutes to reach them.
Now, I declare here myself to completely agree with the above mentioned, realistic and unbiased, post of Bring_on_it and let the rest to the one that are just interested in a zero sum male reproductive organ measurement contest and so expect all of you, respected and serious debaters as all of you are, to do the same.
MarcellogoJSM , SPEAR both have engine
Anyways , even if SDB II move at Mach 0.6 only, it doesnot change my point that much.AFAIK, SAM and AA cannon have rotten accuracy too, Ex: in Vietnam war , SAM accuracy was something like 3%
You are keeping to put into equation systems that are actually still in development and compare it against system like Sa-2…
Comparison were between system actually existing and in operational use.
In any case the system that you cites are also them missiles , at this point it would take much less time and effort to integrate existing ARM missiles on the F-35.
Neither my point is changed, we are discussing there about F-35 used like an escort for 4gen strike pack, so before the two bombs from the first F-35 (because they would be in different places in the case given, not in a single pack launching them all together) came halfway, half the escorted ones have received their own present.
I would stick to the post of Bring on it this time, it seems me the most equilibrate of all…
MarcellogoAs soon as the pop-up SAM started radiating, the F-35 four-ship flight’s ASQ-239s would coordinate via MADL and pinpoint the RF source, initiate jamming and upload TER coordinates to GBUs. If the SAM launches missile(s), F-35 has several layers of defense using electronic attack from APG-81, jamming from ASQ-239 and the ALE-70 towed decoy. Yes, the GBU-53 has a longer time-of-flight than the missile but has an IIR seeker to hit moving targets, including fleeing SAM TELs. Meanwhile, the F-35 flight relies on stealth to increase jamming effectiveness and hopefully avoid shootdown.
Seriously, the more you try to demonstrate me the feasibility of the concept, the more I’m happy about the decision of my own air force to keep the Tornado ECR…
If, it launch you say? By in the time the first bomb has made two kilometers a SAM would have just emptied all its canisters…
Marcellogo50km flyout with a GBU-31 is about 5 minutes. Double that time for a glide bomb such as GBU-53. But the target coordinates are very precise and those weapons have 1 meter accuracy with GPS enabled.
HARM is point and shoot, but requires a small CEP due to its small warhead to be effective against a TER. A skilled SAM operator could neutralize even the latest HARM versions with AARGM and PNG by shutting down early (causes a dramatic increase in CEP) and use of decoy emitters (think of the decoy emitters being used like an aircraft’s towed decoys). Yes, the TER is temporarily shut down, but starts transmitting again once the HARM threat has passed. And HARMs are useless against IR guided SAMs where there is no tale-tale RF signal.
In five minutes a modern Sam launcher with a 50 km range has launched its missiles and is on the move, so not any GPS only weapon would do the trick, let’s add the fact that they actually are often surrounded by Shorad/CIWS and the task became quite forbidding.
Repeat: this is not a tentative to trash the F-35, just a caveat about not taking anything for granted and always exert out critical sense about anything is said.
The Red Flags and all the other exercises are there just for that: finding a way to adapt to ever changing threats.
So, looking at what I have read about this one, I’m very happy the F-35 seems to be delivering its promises but I’m also happy about other choices my own air force have made, like keeping a specialized ECR asset and implementing Storm Shadows on our Eurofighters, giving us a set of different ways to skin the cat.
MarcellogoWouldn’t the jet attacking ground targets use a sniper pod to verify or at least ID the target.
Cause as you say, just flipping HARM’s away, what happens if the targets go dark again.. what can guide the Harm then and where?If so, what are the optical ranges of the latest sniperpods.
BUK M3 will have max range of 70km.
Harm are not just launched flipping away, like not any other weapon, they are pointed against a recognized radar emission and direct automatically against them.
It’s about twenty years that different countermeasures have been implemented against the tactics to turn off the radar, actual AARGM (a joint development between my own nation and US btw)have both GPS/INS than millimeter wave homing active guidance: it means that they would autonomously direct against the last position their sensor has determined and even autonomously search for the target if it would move, and this while moving at a way superior velocity than an incoming SAM missile.
Repeat: the discriminant there is being able to take it out before its own missiles strike.
Now, in how much time a glided bomb would reach the radar instead?
And above all which radar: the long search one, the battery one or the one of the launchers?
No one of this would emit for more than some tens of second before to pass the targets at another link of the chain and haul the you know what off.
So, i’m not saying that its not possible, just quite difficult task IMHO, so i’m not surprised at all that both USN than my own aviation, future F-35 users, plan to leave this mission to a specialized asset.
This almost until a suitable ARM missile for the F-35 would be ready, after it i’m sure that the F-35 would be an excellent, if not fantastic, wild weasel plane.
Sign In
