Upgraded I-HAWK,Mechanised Igla,Giraffe (AMB) Radar&ERWD

CM06 SG

Realistically Speaking,

this is an entirely networked AA Dsys.

You cant just compare their best against our old stuff.

I already said while our in-land AA system aint that fantastic, combined with the overall picture, it's more than sufficient to handle incoming air threats.

Yes it's always better to have top of the line stuff but given current situation, this is the most value-for-money solution.

Fingolfin_Noldor SG

Well, certainly beats having the radar annihiliated. Rolling airframe systems have better interception capabilities if I recall at a distance.

coolant SG

Agree a theater air defense system is always better to have a layer of point defense system & some decoys if possible to protect essentially the radar units & command posts, the PAC-2/3 systems can deployed alongside with decoys carefully positioned to protect the main unit. The S-300 SAM post is always seen with SA-17 point defense system to intercept any LACM/PGM etc or even ARM.

Shotgun SG

Originally posted by coolant:

Instead the Jammer can kill an ARM, its the prey of the latter, remember ARM is passive guided and it [b] homes On Jammer

Radar being shot down is equal to your Radar being suppressed. And switch on again takes time and target re-acquisition is extremely slow for the old era mechanical scanning radar if compared to phase arrayed ones. If your SAMs are tasked to protect more important asserts like Airport, then once your radar is shot down. The hostile fighter jets will overcome your SAM post and deliver the fire-N-forget long ranger guided A2G missiles. Here, lower tier or point air defense systems wont work on the strikes like su30MK which fly fast and shoot at a height.

ARM decoy is essential a radar without receiver & signal processing. It never comes cheap, and because the ARM will always shoot at the emitter which illuminated its launching plane previously, so lure the ARM away from the old era radar by the decoy is not easy or just impossible if the radar never shots down at 1st place.
[/b]

IIRC most Harm's don't home on jam. Jammers emit noise, to drown out and disrupt radar returns, and ARMs don't home on this kinda noise. Rather than using jammers, there are tactics to use multiple radars from multiple locations , emitting at different intervals to confuse weasels.

Weaseling is not as simple as popping an ARM at the nearest emitting radar. There's an art and lots of planning to it. You can't be sure if that emitting radar you are targeting is not a bait, trying to draw you into a corridor of tracking radars.

tankfanatic SG

cant all the sensor and detection slaved to the airborn radar? will they know that?

coolant SG

Therere many types of Jammer, to be a broadband jammer only gives away noise is hardly effective. ARM is still capable to home on number of types of Jammer.

As long as the RWR alarms you SAM there and the pilot will shoot his ARM if his RWR happens to be ARM capable. Pilot doesnt do planning & thinking too much at a supersonic speed and under constantly high G conditions and has to face various threats from air or ground all in a while . Thats why you put expertise in your RWR, modern RWR will have a processor behind to process unfriendly or neutral signals and a radar database for comparison. If the fighter jets main antenna happens to be phase arrayed as well it can bring more details of signals it received to RWR suite. By analyzing such data, the RWR always can present the most likely & dangerous threat to the pilot, if not 100% sure.

As for multiple radars from multiple locations, if intervals happened, it could well be that the different radars also jam each other. To have multiple radars involved is over kill in cost and resource demanding when you can just upgrade to an one-panel radar like PAC-2s MPQ-53 to do all the tricky multi-radars job.

Thrall79 SG

maciam SPYDER SAM lor.

It is not the Spyder system. Wink The latter remains a possibility in the future though. As a matter of fact, one should really not limit themselves to altitudes closer to home ground but up and beyond.

coolant SG

Question Talking about RWR, now I recall last time I heard the su30MKM using the RWR originated from Israel?

Fairyland SG

Not PAC 3 in MEADS?!!! Wooo eee! Twisted Evil

spartan6 SG

Rememder? SAF looking for anti-missiles systems so e I-HAWK replacement r not far liao lets just wait a little while longer Wink Im betting on e Ester 30 or S-300

Shotgun SG

I think I still disagree. Never seen a jammer pop up on RWRs before honestly. I know you see jammers when u see them chevrons on the B-scope. I don't think jammers appear on the HTS interface either.

And i still disagree that weaseling is a supersonic - pop HARMs as soon as they light up affair. The only time you pop HARMs like that is when they got you locked and a missile is on its way. Weaseling is done in the subsonic regime and carefully planned approached. And there is a lot of thinking involved, and the reaction time from the thinking really depends on how well trained the pilots are. When the missile is launched, the pilot has to know the missile type, his position in relation to missile/guidance radar, and estimated distance. Without these information ready to be processed, he will not be able to get out of the missile's NEZ.

As for multiple guidance radars, I am really not kidding when I said that. Its not just the weasels that kill SAMs, but SAMs can also well positioned enough to trap weasels and kill them. Fly a little too fast, and the weasel might cross into another radar's overlap, and bitching betty will start yelling. When that happens, the only best egress would usually happen to lead the weasel into YET another overlap, and perhaps a few shorads. Dead weasel.

That is how dangerous an Integrated Air Defense System can be, even to weasels that specialise in killing SAMs. If not, the US Air Force wouldn't invest so much into "First day of war" aircraft like the Raptor and JSF.

With improving network connectivity and computing power, the conventional way of killing SAMs is gonna be gone real soon.

tankee1981 SG

Patriots possible? But i think Aster 30 or the S-300/ S-400 better chance. Especially the Aster system since our frigates are already installed with a similar system.

coolant SG

Wrong thread, deleted

Fairyland SG

Aster 30....not likely in my view.

S-300 would be wild but if true alot of ppl must be working to integrate it to our AD system.
Especially if the Flap Lid radar is to be import substituted(tough technically I think).

Know of anyone travelling to Ukraine lately?

coolant SG

Taking the AGM-88 as the example, it will only be controlled by the RWR in SP mode. In principle, any ARM is capable to home on jammer which is just one kind of emitter. As long as the pilot detect the jamming via his sensor fusion, he can direct his ARM to home on the radiation source.

Same as Weasel, it probably will be support by networked Elint/sigint and airborne SAR etc to ID and isolate the ground emitting target.

You cant explain why so many Nato radars being destroyed by blue on blue ARM fire. Yes, Pilot will shoot as long as his RWR alarms.

whitenoise SG

Yeah, the Igla being a short range air defence system would probably engage only low level targets such as helicopters and close support aircraft. I think the SSKP factors in the entire system and not the missile alone (which has 0.3-0.4 SSKP).

I don't think the system has changed? See
http://img382.imageshack.us/img382/3909/igla17xu.jpg

Shotgun SG

In principle, yes. So why emit a jamming signal instead of a radar signal since its gonna invite an ARM anyway? I really have yet to hear of Jamming signals appearing on the HTS. Probably because nobody does that... Rolling Eyes

I'm not in a position to explain why NATO radars are destroyed by friendly ARMs. But a good clue to what causes this, could be a mis-identification by HTS? I DID hear some rumors regarding this, but not really validated.

Whether a pilot will shoot depends on his mission profile I believe. Definitely, if its an SA-6 going active, the shot will be taken. But if its just an ordinary search radar? It may blip on the RWR, but it may not Alarm. A SEAD strike mission might see the pilot taunting the battery to turn on their FCR to take a shot, while a SEAD Escort might want to shoot at the search radar anyway. Much of these also depend on restrictions applied in the operation.

There were so much restriction placed upon NATO pilots in Allied force, that they prevented planners from deploying desired ELINT,SIGINT assets at the optimal positions to detect the SAM batteries. Also, instances of Serbian battery commanders turning on radars for 20secs, before shutting off again, limited the pK of the HARMs. So will the pilots really shoot unless they have a real solid idea of where the SAM is?

coolant SG

Originally posted by Shotgun:
In principle, yes. So why emit a jamming signal instead of a radar signal since its gonna invite an ARM anyway? I really have yet to hear of Jamming signals appearing on the HTS. Probably because nobody does that... Rolling Eyes

Why? Probably you may wish to know many Jammers themselves are radar in principle but without receiver. Many types of radar are capable to be jammers by nature. Say, those AESA radars. If the jammer operates in the bandwidth which falls into the ARMs seeker ranger, why cant the ARM home on the Jammer?
Its possible that Jamming signals dont appear on RWR , but how you so sure it will not be captured by the ARM seeker itself? Harms seeker by design covers a much wider range of frequency. The pilot can choose AGM-88 ARMs other available operation modes if he doesnt want the ARM being cured by RWR. He can choose HARM As Sensor mode which let the AGM88s seeker to do its own search of emitting target or Position Known mode to pre-emptily fire at the jamming source provided he knows the jamming source from his own sensor fusion or other offboard ELINT/SIGNIT sensors. In Navy, HARM As Sensor mode is known as TOO mode, and Position Known mode is called Pre-brief mode.

]I'm not in a position to explain why NATO radars are destroyed by friendly ARMs. But a good clue to what causes this, could be a mis-identification by HTS? I DID hear some rumors regarding this, but not really validated.

The mis-ID by HTS incident shows that pilot trust his RWR and shoots once his RWR prompts. If his RWR mis-ID the target then he shoots wrongly.

Definitely, if its an SA-6 going active, the shot will be taken. But if its just an ordinary search radar? It may blip on the RWR, but it may not Alarm.

Make the fact straight here, old generation SA-6 search radar will surely trigger the modern RWR if it detects the target fighter. Do remember, if the SA-6 search radar sees the fighter, the fighters own antenna should have received the non agile and single waveform beam from SA-6 radar and modern RWR will alarm it rather than filter it away. If the fighters RWR filters the signal, then will be SA-6s receiver. If its blip on modern RWR, then its blip on SA-6s search radars own receiver as well. However, a modern phased array radar doing search may cheat the RWR due to its electronically steered beam can be low power in designated search direction and the phase array radar can use multiple waveform & frequency agile beams to detect the same air target thus without trigger its RWR.

A SEAD strike mission might see the pilot taunting the battery to turn on their FCR to take a shot, while a SEAD Escort might want to shoot at the search radar anyway. Much of these also depend on restrictions applied in the operation.

Volume search radar being suppressed is just as grove as the FCR being suppressed, How much difference will be to fire one ARM from several ones? A SEAD Su30Mk can carry 6 KH-31P ARM, How difficult is for different SEAD units to brief each other in order to do a coordinated attack?

There were so much restriction placed upon NATO pilots in Allied force, that they prevented planners from deploying desired ELINT,SIGINT assets at the optimal positions to detect the SAM batteries. Also, instances of Serbian battery commanders turning on radars for 20secs, before shutting off again, limited the pK of the HARMs. So will the pilots really shoot unless they have a real solid idea of where the SAM is?

You can have no restrictions in your multiple-radar in multiple-locations scenario but does matter a NATOs joint SEAD mission to take out Integrated Air Defense System(IADS)? Actually its quite standard practice for the US force to bring in ELINT/SIGINT asserts in a major SEAD mission. Check here, how a SEAD joint with ELINT/SIGINT took out the Iraqs IADS in 1991 gulf war. Do take note, the then Iraqi IADS were mainly consisted of 2G SAMs lacking of 3G elements like S-300/PAC-2/3

The Allied assault on Iraq saw the collapse of a formidable integrated air defence system, probably the most lethal outside the Warsaw pact. The Iraqi system had much in common with the Soviet system, including equipment, deployments, operational doctrine and diversity of types. The ease with which the Allies crippled and then demolished this system testifies to fundamental flaws in Warpac air battle doctrine, which would have had a decisive influence in any NATO-Warpac conflict. What follows is how it was done.

coolant SG

Continued from last post

Planning and Preparation

The Allies had monitored the Iraqi IADS closely throughout the buildup period of Desert Shield, deploying a range of Elint (Electronic Intelligence gathering) assets to the theatre. These assets served the principal purpose of mapping out the Iraqi Electronic Order of Battle (EOoB), ie pinpointing the deployments and composition of Iraq's air defence batteries and supporting radar systems, and mapping out the stations and frequencies used for command and control of the network.

Key systems employed were various subtypes of the EC/RC-135 Rivet Joint, the high flying TR-1 (U-2), the US Navy's EP-3 and EKA-3B aircraft and the RAF's Nimrod R.1. These aircraft were strategically positioned to cover particular sectors of IADS coverage when Allied aircraft, in the period preceding hostilities, feigned penetrations of Iraqi airspace. This is the oldest trick in the electronic warfare book and the Iraqis fell for it repeatedly, lighting up their radars to engage the would be inbounds, in doing so they provided the monitoring Elint platforms with their positions and the identities of their radars, in turn betraying the composition of their batteries. It is also very likely that the Iraqis indulged in the luxury of live testing and calibration of their radars, further assisting the Allied effort.

The most capable SIGINT/ELINT system in service is the US Air Force RC-135V/W Rivet Joint, equipped with the highly capable Raytheon 55000 Electronic Support Measures (ESM) and 85000 signals intelligence (SIGINT) receiver systems. The Rivet Joint played a pivotal role in the Desert Storm campaign, and more recently in the OAF, OEF and OIF campaigns (U.S. Air Force).

With Elint equipment of appropriate capability it is possible to determine not only the type of emitter, but also often which model or subtype and its standard of calibration, all from the monitored and recorded emissions.

The Iraqis violated a fundamental principle of electronic combat by lighting up radars outside of actual engagements, and then not moving or reshuffling their assets to invalidate Allied reconnaissance. Were they to have done the proper thing, they would have moved batteries to dummy SAM sites, lit up in the presence of Allied Elint aircraft, and then shifted the batteries to implement a scheme of tactical or strategic deception. If this is implemented properly, and appropriate emission control discipline enforced, it becomes very difficult for the attacking party to map out what the real structure of the target IADS is. This in turn makes the planning of a pre-emptive strike very difficult, as with the increasing complexity of the deception the risk of not taking out all key assets in the initial hit increases vastly.

By the middle of January the Allies had a comprehensive picture of Iraq's IADS and were well positioned for a knock-out blow against the system, with substantial hard kill defence suppression assets in the theatre. Key systems were the F-4G Wild Weasel, a Phantom airframe fitted with a potent radar homing and warning receiver system (APR-47 RHAWS), which was supplemented by the HARM firing F-16C and F/A-18C. These aircraft were further supported by Alarm firing Tornado GR.1s of the RAF and HARM capable EA-6B Prowlers, A-7Es and A-6Es of the USN.

Jamming assets assembled in the theatre included USAF EC-130 Compass Call standoff communications jammers, Naval EA-6B Prowlers and the USAF's EF-111A Ravens. The protracted buildup was a major benefit to the Allies, who used the time to upgrade both hardware and software in many of the jamming systems, to precisely match the Iraqi inventory. Unlike the Israelis in 1973, who carried the wrong jammers and warning receivers for the threat at hand, the Allies had the best of intelligence and used it to the fullest.

The Allied planners envisaged a three pronged strategy for winning the electronic battle, concentrating on the simultaneous implementation of the following objectives:
suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD) via jamming, anti-radiation missiles, decoys and precision guided weapons delivered by penetrating aircraft and standoff platforms.
crippling the C3 network by jamming with EC-130 Compass Call aircraft, until key nodes could be destroyed by strike aircraft.
the use of onboard Defensive ECM by penetrating aircraft to defeat any SAMs which would get airborne in spite of the preceding activity.
The coup was meticulously planned, with the principal objective of the first phase of the SEAD campaign being the earliest possible paralysis of the GCI/EW network via the killing of key radar and C3 sites, this to be achieved by a series of simultaneous attacks by a range of different aircraft types.

Once the network was paralysed, individual area defences and point defences would have to light up their local radars to acquire inbound Allied aircraft and thus expose themselves. The local area defences would then be attacked by SEAD aircraft attached to inbound strike packages, with the twofold objectives of preventing attrition of strike aircraft and inflicting attrition upon elements of the IADS, thus implementing the second phase of the SEAD campaign.

Shotgun SG

The RWR is smarter than that. It has audio cues to inform the pilot what stage the SAM is in. Different SAMs, different radars, different sounds as well. There is no single tone that says it all. Its ALMOST idiot proof, that if a SAM was launched AT you or is tracking someone, you WILL know and recognise the different audio cue.

What i meant is, an SA-6 search radar, may not be what the weasel wants to kill or suppress. Search radars on the RWR or HTS may be spoofs or hoaxes used to draw away the 2 precious HARMs carried on the F-16s. Whereas, a fire control radar, or a radar that is locked is the real deal and truly deserves a shot.

So now, im not longer arguing whether a Harm can home in on a jammer. I think you made enough sense that theoretically it can do so. But now what I'm saying is, maybe a pilot won't want to shoot unknown emissions since he cannot be sure its an enemy radar or anything worth shooting at all.

As learnt from Allied Force, not Gulf War 1, the classic SAM kill just doesn't happen anymore. The entire KARI IADS was fooled into radiating and was killed by a massive SEAD strike operation using drones pretending to be BUFFs. But in Allied Force, Serbian SAMS did not shoot or make unecessary emissions unless the target was under 10k ft IIRC. Did that pose a problem? Well, yes and no. While only 2 aircraft were supposedly shot down by the Serbs (1 being an F117), only 3 out 25 batteries of SAMs were destroyed as well, NATO aircraft were still able to carry out their strike sorties.

Did the SAMs accomplish what they had to by simply surviving? Yes! Because the Serbian SAMs were never quite neutralised, every strike package had to have an accompanying SEAD Escort package. Even that was not enough, certain aircraft of the strike package itself had to carry Harms JUST in case the SEAD Escorts were unable to respond in time. Which actually happened too frequently for comfort.

The Serbian SAMs inflicted what we call, "virtual attrition" upon NATO aircraft. They forced NATO to fly more sorties, use more fuel, carry less strike munitions and more jamming gear.

So even if you "Suppress" my SAMs, forcing me to take only shots that am confident of hitting, I am still dealing you virtual damage with the fact that my batteries are STILL operational. Just quiet.

Restrictions not referring to just political restrictions. But also to environmental. Again, lessons learnt from Allied Force, the SIGINT and ELINT aircraft had difficulties looking into mountainous and hilly terrains. The terrain itself masked the presence of such equipment.

Yes, fully agreed. Even in Allied Force, the Russians commented that if the Serbs had just a SINGLE battalion of SA-10s, the NATO campaign would have been gravely complicated.

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