Even Russia doesn’t have massive quantities of S-300/400s. The majority of its SAMs are shorter range, and older systems.

That’s true and i suppose that after the end of the Cold War, the numbers may have been somewhat reduced (cutting costs and availability problems and all). The other problem is that Russia is vast. You need a LOT of systems to cover everything of value from every possible border. But, theoretically, if they needed to protect a narrow border or say Moscow, it would be a much more difficult task than attacking Saddam’s Baghdad.

My point was that in layered defence that is one huge network, mobility is great advantage. There can be a lot of “silent” units that are aware of the situation and can decide when to fire and will be gone in 10-20 minutes. I remember that in trials in Ashluk, S-300PM crews managed to get the whole unit in move in that time. Of course this is the case if mast assembly like 40V6M/40V6MD is not used. And about the mobility, i have some experience with civilian relative of the MAZ chassis, and i can tell you that the only thing that can stop it is deep swamp. Here is short quote from SOC’s blog(it was from The S-300 SAM System, Nevskiy Bastion book if i’m not mistaken):

“The firing exercise conducted for Colonel-General Khyupenen was to involve the deployment of a battery to a preselected firing location. The location was pre-selected so that the maximum amount of telemetry data on the test could be gathered. This did not sit well with Colonel-General Khyupenen, who viewed the use of a pre-selected launch site as an inaccurate method of gauging the system’s deployability. As it would turn out, an unexpected mishap ended up providing onlookers with a far more accurate demonstration. As the SAM battery was deploying to the launch site, the column of vehicles came to an unscheduled halt. The engine on one of the MAZ-543 vehicles had developed a mechanical problem and would not re-start. Seizing the opportunity, senior Almaz engineer Vyacheslav Volkov ordered the battery to deploy where it was. Geodesic tie-in was rapidly accomplished, and the target drone which had been fired was intercepted with a single missile. Deployment of the SAM battery and geodesic tie-in took 5 minutes, validating the mobility of the S-300PS.”

I agree in everything. This is the difference between being Russia and being… Iraq.

Yes, mobility and fast setup time and departure time are crucial elements. For starters, unless the enemy takes you by complete surprise, once you know you are in war, the first thing that an S300 battery will do, is “pack her bags and leave”. Meaning, leave the current “peace-time” position , which is most likely known to the enemy and move to one of the alternative firing positions and re-deploy there. The faster you can do that, the less the chances that even some GPS guided ammunition will catch you in your old position with your pants down.

At the same time, having concealed and silent firing units, is the ideal. In Russian enviroment, where you can have many firing units close by, cutting some trees down and making a “nest” to put some silent firing units that will come out only a bit before necessary is also an option. In something like Iraq, what kind of concealment options you have for so massive trucks?

But the general problem, is the most common one: Money. Most countries, especially those the US is likely to go after, don’t have the amount of money to buy a large number of batteries. If you do buy several batteries, the dilemma stays. How do you employ them?

1) Try to cover the most likely border of attack? What if your enemy can attack you from multiple borders? Then your batteries are simply outflanked.
2) Try to cover many important sites with 1 battery each? This leaves you open to more easily saturating attack on each site.
3) Try to cover better 1 or 2 sites concentrating there all your batteries? This protects more these sites, but leaves the rest of the your mainland vulnerable.

Now if you have the money to acquire a very large number of batteries things change. That’s the difference between attacking Russia and attacking Iraq. If Saddam had the same number of Russian SAMs as Russia does and the Russian airforce, the Allied Coalition would be mourning many dead now.

Fortunately for the Alliance, usually rogue states have a big number of outdated SAMs and a few number of relatively modern , which can be saturated. Because, the SAM is a defensive weapon. Most countries, when have to spend money, choose to spend it on aircrafts, because they are more flexible in attack and defense. Then they buy some SAMs, with the assumption, that they will assist their airforce in a combined action or their army in providing cover for armoured units.

And this is how you fail against a massive opponent… Your airforce doesn’t exist and your SAMs are too few to avoid saturation. And your SAM network is soft-killed for the biggest part of the mobile units and hard killed for the fixed ones.

Take for example Cyprus. They ordered a battery of S-300PMU1 with 2 firing units, 1 command vehicle, 1 radar, 1 low altitude radar and supposedly 96 missiles (that kind of money for one purchase was phenomenal for Cyprus standards). If memory serves me, the S300 can engage max 6 targets at the same time. Turkey said that they would organize an air raid against them and destroy them. Result: Cyprus sold the missiles to Greece. Why? Because even if we suppose that the entire thing would be limited to an air strike and not all out war, the S-300 wouldn’t survive. Yes, it could shoot down several aircrafts, but at the end, how many aircrafts can you shoot down by engaging 6 at a time before an enemy missile hits you? And mind you, once you expend the first batch of missiles in the tubes, the reload takes some minutes. Add, that the next best thing Cyprus had as SAMs , were Mistrals and SA-7 Grail manpads(which are ancient). So as you understand, there is no other layer to “help” the S300 and no airforce either. Later they got some Aspide and a few TOR-M1. So once a package of say 40 aircrafts flying low for as much as possible to delay detection is engaged and they climb back up and release their own weapons, what 2 firing units will do? Engage 6 aircrafts? Engage 6 incoming missiles out the 80 coming? Engage 8 aircrafts, move, reload, hope that in the meantime you ‘re still alive and then fire 8 more missiles? How long can you do that before you ‘re destroyed? One thing is sure, you won’t have the time to reload all 96 missiles you have. So at the end you will have shot down several aircrafts and your battery will also be destroyed…

Of course, in this forum, if such an air raid had occured, people would immediately jump and say “See? The S300 is overhyped and got destroyed by humble F16s”. While a more fair approach would be “give the money you spent on 40 F16s and their weapons to buy as many S300, BUK and TOR as you can. Then send in the F16s and let’s see how many of the F16s return home after destroying all SAMs”. 40 aircrafts against 2 vehicles with 8 ready to fire missiles, isn’t exactly fair.

This is what usually happens with most rogue states the US attacks. They have a few relatively modern systems (well, except for the Talibans), spread out thin, which when time comes, are easily saturated.

The wheeled vehicles, while they are perfect for Russian enviroment, they aren’t as good for every enviroment. The wheeled vehicles are faster on roads than tracked and also have no problem in relatively flat ground, even if it’s muddy or snow covered. They are also cheaper to operate. However, they do have serious trouble, when it comes to ground with high slopes, obstacles, reliablity and survivability against nearby blasts. That’s why all tanks are tracked. Also, tracked vehicles can virtually rotate around their horizontal axis by 180 degrees, while wheeled can’t. Tracked vehicles also have better speed in general in rugged terrain. For Russia it makes little difference. But in Greece, mountains are the rule and flat ground is the exception. The classic greek ground enviroment outside main cities, is a narrow mountain road going towards a mountain top, with a slope on your right and a cliff on the left edge of the road. If the road is blocked, either by a crater or rocks, a tracked vehicle, may be able to climb the slope or the crater or turn 180 degrees and go back and find another way up. A convoy of long, big wheeled vehicles, may very well end up trapped for several minuted and the only way out is to put reverse gear and slowly try to go down the same road you came up.

For example, in Russia, if you give the order “deploy where you are now”, you re most probably somewhere already flat, where you can have a decent horizon for the radar to scan. In Greece, if you get blocked in a mountain road on your way to your normal deployment position at a mountain top, you most probably won’t have a good field of view for the radar and the deployment must be done with 1 vehicle behind the other, just like they are on the road. If you ‘re lucky and the enemy is approaching from the side that you have the cliff, ok. If the enemy is approaching from your right side (where you have the slope), your radar is blind there and if they ‘ve spotted you while moving up the road, even a Mk82 will be enough to take you down.

Of course, always better than say the Patriots… Plus the S300 comes cheaper.

Bottom line, is , that most countries, buy a few somes, as complement to their airforce, in order to harden more some high value targets. When they go against US airforce, their own airforce is cancelled from the equation and the SAMs on their own simply aren’t enough or well enough layered to do the job, as per Russian dogma.

Of course, the media have overblown the presence of SAMs in recent wars, so to the collective immagination, the US coalition always took down a very tough opponent. Even in the case of Iran, an average reader, might think that getting a dozen TOR M1, is making Iran a death trap for any enemy airforce. While the reality is that by its own the TOR M1 can be dealt with, either by use of stand off weapons or by flying above its max engagement altitude. The TOR M1s Iran has, if concentrated to the main facilities, can only serve to shoot down some incoming missiles and possibly take by ambush some aircraft foolish enough to go below the engagement altitude.

Theoretically speaking, a country could invest more to make an umprella with something like S400-BUK M2- TOR M2- Pantsyr in good numbers in the same cover area. But in practice most countries prefer to invest in aircrafts and the SAMs are there as part of the entire defence , assisting the airforce.

So if one wants to see a real SAM defence network in action, only Russia is the right place and provided especially in a relatively narrow front (like the Georgian one), where the Russians could deploy a dense frontier array of all kind of range SAMs. Now THAT would be the real test to beat.

Oh don’t try to use logic and facts here. As you saw there is the though that system like S-300 is static, radiating and “alone” target, blind and waiting to be hit by the wonder weapon SDB.

The S-300 isn’t static, but it isn’t designed to move all the time either. Theoretically, it has 5 minute setup time, but this involves an independent firing unit. The low level auxiliary radar (the one on the high mast), can take up to 1 hour to deploy. Then of course you have to coordinate properly the rest of the firing units of the battery with the command vehicle. In case of a saturating attack, if deemed impossible to counter, there will be no time to retreive the mast and carry away the low level radar. The firing units may have the time, but they will have to leave the low level radar behind. But even if they manage to “pack” and leave, this is one bulky convoy, which can’t hide easily to enemy sensors. We ‘re talking about a series of giant trucks (firing units, command vehicle, reload units), which, instead of defending themselves, they will be at the mercy of the attacker while moving, IF detected.

The strength of the S300 isn’t in its mobility. It’s in the performace of the radar, the efficiency-range-speed of its missiles. It’s not good for doing “shoot and scoot” all the time. It’s better than the Patriot in this aspect (which actually is impaired and vulnerable to surprise attacks since it has 120 deg radar coverage), but it’s not intended to hide all the time. Besides, the vehicles are very bulky, all of them are wheeled (not tracked) and this puts limitations to the terrain they can use as escape route. Also, to take full advantage of the S300’s range, you need to give it a good “horizon”. Meaning, that you need to deploy it at a good height. This reduces further the flexibility and “surprise-factor”. Also usually, there aren’t many routes bulky vehicles can choose on a mountain top to change their firing position. If someone has good intelligence of the current position, it is plausible to be able to predict the available escape routes of the system.

That’s why it is good practice to have some TOR-M1 nearby, because they have good antiballistic capability, to increase the survivability of the S300.

The TOR M1 is more “shoot and scoot” compliant. It can depart immediately and being tracked, it can go to very rough terrain and since range isn’t the primary virtue, it’s more suitable for “ambush” tactics, deploying it virtually anywhere.

At the end, all SAMs have the same issue: Number of available missiles ready to fire and max number of targets they can engage at the same time. If casualties aren’t a big concern, you can saturate them, especially if the opponent doesn’t have many such systems (which is usually the case with most “rogue” states the US has in her “to bomb” list).

The SDBs may not be the ideal weapon for SEAD, but the US has some advantages that can make it usable:

1) Good intelligence (satellite, UAV, LLRP reports from the ground).
2) Big number.

Here we argue about whether a vehicle will survive at 8m from the detonation of the SDB. The US Airforce command won’t have such headaches. They will GPS program a number of SDBs to cover the area of a football field and they won’t have to worry about the fragmentation pattern or the shock wave.

That’s why layered defence is recommended.

1) Saturation becomes harder with the increase of available systems. Also, the more firing units, the easier for some of them to allow themselves the pause to reload.
2) Shorads (and lower range) can shoot down incoming missiles at more acceptable costs, rather than wasting the precious S300 missiles on self-defence instead of shooting down aircrafts.
3) Medium range SAMs can do a bit of both and they are the immediate answer to the main shorads’ problem : max missile ceiling.
4) AAA with AHEAD should be the last line of defence.

IMHO, SDBs are good, if you have excellent intel about enemy position, if the enemy is not mobile, or if you have enough available ammunition to cover a very wide area (US has this luxury). For the rest of poor *******s out there, the HARM will probably remain the most reliable solution.

Note: I am not saying that taking out S-300 is a piece of cake. It will require casualties. But it can happen, if casualties become acceptable part of the mission.

Yes 0:34, 0:35, 0:38 and 0:39 are inert. That particular bombing range is located at Eglin AFB and HE is prohibited as it is used exclusively for PGM accuracy testing. I’ve been there – very humid and lots of flies.
Explosive filled SDBs are shown at 0:19 and 0:29. If you compare the hits, you will see a distinct difference between HE and inert.

I don’t know about the protocol of Eglin AFB, but i agree. There is no way that these are normal SDBs. Either they are inert or with special, very low yield for trainning purposes. Especially the trucks case is indicative. A hand grenade would probably do more damage.

When i saw those explosions, they reminded me more about anti-tank missiles, which have around 3 kg warhead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEsgQU56tOM

Besides, for a warhead that is supposed to penetrate 5 feet of reinforced concrete, there is something very wrong with the trucks just being “pushed down”. 😀

Too many things have been written to comment separately, so i will just sum up my thoughts in general.

1) Whoever underestimates US air power is an idiot.
2) Whoever , based on US experience, tries to extrapolate a safe conclusion about the real capability of a US weapon against ANY enemy, is making a big mistake. It’s like a reasoning that says “Since an unarmed Bruce Lee beats so easily a man with a knife, then anyone can beat easily a man with a knife”.

What i mean, is, that neither Iraq nor Serbia were even close to be on par with the opponent. When this happens, you can’t follow a sound defence tactic, even if you have the means. Unfortunately, many people don’t understand this and they come up all the time with statistics about X or Y aircraft or weapon, drawn from US wars.

3) A SAM network, on its own, can’t stop anyone. Any SAM network can be saturated locally. When the opponent has complete air superiority and massive jamming capability, then, the SAM network can’t count on friendly airforce to take off some heat and becomes a continuous survival game. For example, put yourself in the position of an Iraqi SAM battery crew. You know that your airforce is either destroyed or doesn’t dare to take off. You ‘re in an enviroment, where concealing yourself isn’t easy. The enemy has packs of aircrafts jamming the hell out of you and the enemy land forces are advancing. You know that SEAD aircrafts fly 24h a day. You have 4 options: 1) Stay put, try to survive, 2) Try to become a hero, after a heroic death by switching on your radar and try to make your 6-8 ready to fire missiles count against a bigger air formation coming your way, 3) Stay put and hope you will get a chance at an easy, isolated target, 4) Hope that your 6-8 missiles will shoot down 4 of the 20 HARMs that will be coming your way from the 10 aircrafts ahead of you and then die as a martyr.

Well, most people wouldn’t choose option no.2 and 4. Not against US… This doesn’t mean that against a more equal opponent the options would have the same weight.

4) The ideal SAM coverage is long range-medium range-short range-very short range-AAA artillery. Probably only Russia could field such a defense layer dense enough to perform as the dogma dictates. Also ideally, data links allow for part of the systems to maintain their own radar off and receive data from the others, up until the moment they will need to fire. Also, most recent systems have IR and TV camera for closer distances.

5) Theoretically speaking, from the medium range and below, systems should be fairly mobile and have alternative firing positions. Knowing the GPS position of a such a SAM, doesn’t help much, if the SAM plays the game properly. The concept is “move to a new firing position, scan, track, fire, move to new position or to concealment position and repeat”. Of course, in the case of Iraq, in the middle of the desert, finding “concealment” isn’t so easy. On the contrary, the Serbs had plenty of forests to hide.

6) While LM’s videos show wonderfully visible tanks in IR spectrum and while there are wonderful IR guided weapons, the sad reality, is that against a more cautious opponent, their performance is limited. For example the Serbs were using simple tank dummies with a barrel on fire in them and they were “Identified” as proper tanks.

Then, there are also the cases where the enemy isn’t so nicely visible as per LM’s videos.

ex. (navigate to Targets–> Mobile).
http://www.intermatstealth.com/en/targets/mobile-targets.html

I have the suspicion that against such coatings and in a more mountainous enviroment, LM’s videos won’t work so well. Or at least, not from safe distances. Newer SAMS, in a “proper” network which can warn them about flight routes, can wait close to treeline, only with the IR camera on, waiting for your jet engine to glow against the clear sky, just like in LM’s video that tanks do!

7) HARMs theoretically, can also be fooled by dummy emitters simulating the radar frequency of a real target.

8) If all other SAMs fail, as last resort, against not so fast incoming ammunition, one can use AAA with AHEAD ammunition. SDBs are candidates for AHEAD ammunition. Again, much here has to do with the opponent. If you have a massive opponent like US airforce, which saturates everything in each attack, some AAA batteries, won’t simply be enough, because of the sheer number of incoming projectiles. Besides, will your AAA radar even work in the jamming by a nice pack of Prowlers flying undisturbed above you?

9) While past US wars may be an indicator about future US problems, it doesn’t reflect the real difficulty of suppressing air defence against a more equal opponent. Someone mentioned Moscow’s SAMs. The point is, not just the SAMs. The combination of Russian airforce and SAMs is more like it.

10) If an SDB lands at 5m from a mobile SAM, i am pretty certain that the SAM will be killed. Unless it has shrapnel armor (like IFVs do), maybe… The problem is, that if the enemy SAM is doing its job properly, it should’t be there. Ironically, the most in danger are the bigger SAMs (like S300-400, Patriots),because while mobile, their operational use is reduced. They need something over 15 minutes to move to a firing position and be ready to fire. So they can’t disengage as quickly as a TOR or a BUK. They actually rely on them to protect them, because they don’t have unlimited ready to fire missiles. By saturation attack, they can’t escape.

Basically, if you are US airforce, of course you will win! And soft kill is so easier when you have complete air superiority and huge numbers. SAM operators don’t have a deathwish. When you see that even if you were to turn on your radar you ‘d have to face a few dozens of HARMS immediately coming your way, why even try? All you have is 8 missiles ready to fire at best (older sams had 6).So is Iraq or Serbia a proof of how effective SEAD tactics are? Personally i take this as a joke. If anything else, the sectors where even the US airforce had trouble to deal with, show that for another airforce, against a more equal opponent, the difficulty would be multiplied. For starters, in both cases, the enemy air activity was virtually zero. That’s not how a normal air defence works. Under normal circumstances, airforce and SAMs, cooperate and complement each other. When you fight against US, the SAMs, basically remain on their own. And then you have simply too many threats, too much jamming and too low morale to operate…

For the US airforce, will the use of SDBs, Mavericks and HARMs be enough for SEAD? Definitely yes! Does it make much sense wondering about it? No. Does it mean that other airforces would have the same easy life? No. Bruce Lee is the exception, not your average Joe. Just because Bruce can do it, not everyone can. And when Bruce bleeds a bit, most likely the average Joe would die from hemorrhage.

Don’t confuse the shaky symbology displayed by the JHMCS with the missile seeker breaking lock. Once the target was acquired, the seeker was rock solid on target.

I am not a pilot, but i ‘ve seen several HAF videos with audio. The “shakey” thing means nothing, as long as the rhombus is placed on the enemy aircraft (which is what the missile seeker is homing at). When the rhombus is there, you also get the “buzz”. No rhombus, lock is broken and instead you get a rotating small circle, which represents the new attempt of tracking and preceds a new lock. By “coincidence” the break of lock always occurs (in all videos) when the enemy makes high speed turns. Then you lose the rhombus and the buzz and the tracking circle reappears.

At bigger distance the lock was stable enough to make a shoot (with what pk i don’t know). On the very close distance, the lock was very unstable to non existant.

THIS is a “rock solid” lock:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0AAICe6-fA&feature=related

Because after the scissors, he took position at six o clock.

Or here at 0:57, you can see that while the enemy is in the HUD in front of him with the exhaust on sight, the lock is breaking because he is manouvering fast. Rhombus gone, buzz gone after half a second. Would you shoot? I wouldn’t.On 1:36 is a perfect example of how closing in and getting perpendicular to the others course is breaking the lock. The rhombus is a goner. You may hit some bird , but certainly not the enemy. Or in 1:53, yes he has a lock for 1 second, perpendicular to the enemy. If you had limited missiles, would you risk wasting one to such a shot? I am not a pilot, but doesn’t inspire me much confidence about the pk. Sure, if i had 4 missiles aboard, i wouldn’t care much and try a shot. Even if it missed and prefered a flare instead, i ‘d have still 3 to go hopefully from a better position. But what if you are with 2 missiles and you want to make them count…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsKT9j8yjgo

In all cases, if you want a good lock, you have to put some distance between you and the opponent and preferably have him in his rear quadrants. That’s when you get the best buzz and most long lasting locks.

There is one thing that never changes in IR missiles. They prefer heat. So, they prefer seeing the engine exhaust. And that’s also when you have the most chances of the missile going to the target instead of preferring a flare. JHMCS gives you more options and chances. But getting near his rear quadrant, is still the best option.

In the HAF JHMCS video, sure you get several occasions where the shot seems decent, but it’s not all that simple that one is “100% of the time locked” as long as he is in the 180 deg arch in front of you. And i am not so sure about how “realistic” the video is, since i think that the enemy is keeping to a bit too much distance most of the time(maybe to facilitate the demonstration to show to the tv). I think that the part about the “5 extra seconds at max g”, that the HAF pilot mentions, has to do exactly with giving you a better firing solution for longer than without. Exactly, without JHMCS, you arrive to situations with a “half-second” lock (which afterwards breaks) or with no lock at all or “dubious firing solutions”. With JHMCS, you gain some more seconds with a stable lock or maybe you get a dubious lock in conditions where you wouldn’t get it at all. For example, the 0:57, with JHMCS, would become a stable lock much earlier and the 1:53 a 2-3 sec lock.

But i don’t see it as the “silver bullet solution”. If that was the case, all Rafales would have to lose almost 100% of engagements against any US aircraft equipped with JHMCS.

I think the Mirage 2000-9 is very close to the -5Mk2.

Yes, in deed. There was an article in greek magazine some time ago with the differences but i don’t remember them. The magazine was concluding that although similar, still the differences were making it “annoying” to have them,considering that the french spare parts are always expensive and it’s better to ask 1 spare part for everything, rather than 2 because of a minor difference. Most greek enthusiasts agree, that in such case, we should ask for a short “homogenization” program. Unless, of course, the UAE have still some huge stock of spare parts that are willing to sell together. This changes things, as HAF wouldn’t have to think about the “extra” costs for some time.

The upgrade of the M2000 although costs much, makes sense, exactly in that the 2000 from -5 has much technological distance and it’s costly to keep them both in small numbers. Apart of course the difference in capabilities.

341 Squadron (specializing in SEAD) celebrated 45.000 flight hours of F16 operational use and here’s the anniversary paint theme:

I had written a longer reply about HAF’s needs, but, at the end, better not to. I know how it’s going to end.

I will only say this. Fear not about HAF. HAF is by far the best of the 3 branches of the greek armed forces (the Army being the worst). They know why they require things and when to require them (for example they know that if they wait for 2020 to ask for 100 aircrafts, they will never get them).

Fear more about greek politicians, who are the ones who are completely clueless in what they ‘re doing.