So it’s something which would have needed to be incorporated into the original design.
Is this one of the reasons that the French went with the Rafale, as they wanted something they could operate from a carrier ?

Yes it is one of the main reasons that made France go for it alone instead of staying in the consortium.

I think PAK FA isn’t necessarily an unlikely and much less a politically risky choice.

There will be a time in a not too distant future when the US won’t be able to do whatever it wants in south east Asia. China will be the new kid on the block, and it will blackmail the US into giving up Taiwan for starters. And if China doesn’t want the US to help SK, it won’t.

China can pull the plug on the US by just stopping to buy dollars, and the US know it. If PAKFA allows SK to defend itself more autonomously, then it should go for it.

Nic

Pardon me if I’m wrong but I think the article means that they have been married for 65 years.

Nic

Well vanilla Rafale isn’t performant enough and they want to buy F16s?

Go for it dudes.

Nic

We already have a A2G ramjet missile with the ASMP-A.
I don’t get why they don’t envisage to derivate a anti-S300 and like version with classical amunissions (they did for anti-ship though but dropped for unknown reasons)

It would be hazardous to have something that looks like ASMPA. If you were to use it in anger, and your foe witness your planes taking off with it, they might mistake it for an ASMPA and launch an (un)appropriate response.

Nic

I still think a stealthy cruise missile is the best possible way to kill a S300 batterie. Someone mentionned the Apache with cluster munitions instead of anti runway munition. I guess that would work.

Say you have 2 flights of 2 Rafales, one with 4 AASM and one with 1 or 2 Cluster Apaches. Pop up to make the radar reveal its position and triangulate the origin of the signal. Launch 1 or 2 Apache from two opposite direction and saturate the area with cluster ammo.

Probably not as nice as the original idea of IIR submunitions to tackle every piece of the sam site, but should be quite efficient nonetheless.

Nic

I think those batteries would be able to shoot down ARM missiles, especially if it isn’t stealthy like the Apache or Scalp. Meteor with its ramjet intakes probably isn’t stealthy at enough to avoid detection and could be shot down by tunguska or the S300 itself. It would need very high end game avoiding manoeuvers to hope hitting anything. Or be part of a saturation attack.

I think attacking such batteries would be a dedicated task, and you wouldn’t manage to do that just by expending a couple of your multimode missiles from standoff range.

A stealth cruise missile dispending several brimstone-like missiles would be expensive, but I don’t think it would be more expensive than saturating the S300 batteries with several ARMs (meteor costs about a million, a dual mode meteor would cost even more). IIR seekers could be programmed to recognise the various components of S300/HQ9/Whatever batteries, and distribute the targets between the submunitions to eradicate the whole batterie.

Nic