Also, the S400 and practically all ground-based long range radar systems have electronic footprints that make them stand out on sensor platforms designed to detect radars like high powered flashlights in a dark room allowing them to be easily mapped (for avoidance) and targeted (for destruction, if necessary) from over the horizon and far beyond the range of the systems themselves.
Systems like the Sx00 are very useful if there are multiple rings of them surrounding a static high-value target and you want to defeat a fleet of B-52s (or certain types of ballistic missiles) that are approaching.
They are borderline useless against any adversary that has low observability aircraft and a modern suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) capability.
Israel has demonstrated this repeatedly, but Russian marketing is very good and (mainly Middle Eastern) countries are still pumping wasted dollars into buying air defense systems.
In years of conflict Israel has launched thousands (2,000 in 2018 alone) of missiles at Syrian targets, and a grand total of one (1) F-16I has been shot down, and that was because the pilots were cocky (both survived) and they were loitering at high altitude doing battle damage assessments.
In response to the shoot-down, the launchers that fired the missile were destroyed the same day. Not only do the Russian missiles keep missing, but Israel keeps using their anti-missile missiles to shoot down the Russian missiles before they can fall on populated areas after missing their targets.
Indeed! And form working with guys in the stealth/radar biz, there's a saying about trying to use radar to guide your missiles:
"He who lights up first gets smoked"
As in, once you turn on your tracking radar, you effectively shine a really bright beacon for anyone to see. If you are the ground station trying to get a lock on the thing that the long-range area radar saw, suddenly you are the brightest target in the area. You might have a few seconds before the plane you are trying to hit sends a missile right down your beam. Same for a pilot if he tries to scan for a target.
>As in, once you turn on your tracking radar, you effectively shine a really bright beacon for anyone to see. If you are the ground station trying to get a lock on the thing that the long-range area radar saw, suddenly you are the brightest target in the area. You might have a few seconds before the plane you are trying to hit sends a missile right down your beam.
" According to Lieutenant Colonel Đorđe Aničić, who was identified in 2009 as the soldier who fired the missiles, they detected the F-117 at a range of about 23 km operating their equipment for no more than 17 seconds to avoid being locked on to by NATO anti-air suppression."
Typically (at least in USSR/Russia) a couple of radar stations would take turns each staying on only for those few seconds.
Serbia in 1999 used modified microwave ovens as an Anti Radar missile honey pot. You light the sky with a decoy, the plane activates its defenses, and now the hunter is the hunted just having exhausted its defenses. Decoys are cheap.
There are passive ways to detect a tracking radar, it's the same principle is used in dashboard speed-radar detectors. The anti-aircraft batteries are going to have to send out the first ping otherwise they would never know the aircraft is there. Anti-Aircraft batteries are constantly searching the skies with powerful radar beacons and the moment it hits the aircraft the aircraft will know where it came from.
On airforce one, there is an active anti-missile laser-based system designed to send a high-intensity pulse into the optical/IR tracker on a missile warhead effectively disabling it. There's also one that uses an EMP pulse for missiles that use radar tracking instead of optical.
Modern US fighter bombers actually carry decoys that are themselves armed. The pilots literally push a button that deploys them and the decoys themselves can be armed. The "skyborg" project involves literal armed decoys that come out of an F35. The Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie is also no joke.
Suddenly, the hunter hunting the hunted becomes the prey :)
A couple of questions from a civvie: does one physically separate the radar from the (manned) station using it so you only get borked cheapish equipment rather than dead people and expensive ground-based station wrecked? And isn't faking a few radar 'lights' a good way to use up the opposition aircraft's missiles? Naive I know but it's not my area.
Excellent question, and it is standard operating procedure. We had ~100m cables for our actual dishes that we used to control the Shadow 200 and always kept them far away from where we were flying if at all feasible. Most nations do this, however some missiles are set to go towards the rf and then switch to visual identification of targets to say blow up the control station.
Russia's S-400 completely decouples radar from launchers. Both are highly mobile. Both work in networks.
A decoy RF source wouldn't make much sense. To be a viable decoy it would need to have a similar ERP to the real thing. And at that point it already costs almost as much as the real thing, so you might as well go all the way.
The radar is usually one of the most expensive components in the system. Yes, they're usually separate trailers from other components of the system, but losing a precious radar is still a big blow.
Similar to the logic of using artillery against a modern conventional army. Counter-battery radars can pinpoint a gun or ballistic launcher by tracking the shells/missiles, so you've got to either shoot and scoot with self-propelled guns or do like Hamas does and remotely fire missiles from an expendable launcher.
I don't agree with all the bashing of the S-400 here, but Russian performance has been "disappointing" in terms of demonstrating combat capability.
"The obvious question that remains unanswered is whether Russia chose not to engage S-400s, or was simply unable to, whether because of American nonkinetic capabilities impacting those system or some other reason. Given the pre-attack notice given by the Pentagon to Russian forces through a deconfliction line, as well as the fact that no strikes were targeted at the air defenses themselves, analysts lean toward the former."
In short, Russia has S400s in Syria. Russian government officials claimed Russia would shoot down the Tomawhawks. Russians knew the strikes were coming. Yet, they did not use the S400.
To me, there are no two ways about it - Russia did not have the capability to engage even the legacy Tomawhawk missiles.
Can't speak to the interaction with the Americans, but when it comes to Israel there is an agreement between Russia and Israel on spheres of influence in Syria; Israel doesn't interfere with Russian strikes on rebels in the north and east (which Israel doesn't care about), and Russia doesn't interfere with Israeli strikes on Hezbollah and Iranian forces in the south and west (which Russia doesn't care about).
The two countries just don't have a clear enough conflict of interest to want to get into a fight about it.
2. Russian government officials stated they would shoot them down.
3. Russia had NOTHING to lose by shooting down missiles in defense of an ally, e.g. no political risk.
4. Russia had everything to gain by demonstrating the capability to deter a NATO strike, especially given the context of using Syria to advertise its weapons.
Israel is a separate issue, if you want to discuss it. Very nice of Israel to get Russia's plane shot down by hiding behind it.
The point I was trying to get at is that everyone involved in Syria is perfectly capable of staying out of trouble when their core interests are not at stake. I would not read too much into the failure of the Russians to intercept well-telegraphed, highly-publicized attacks on non-Russian targets, just like I wouldn't read too much into the failure of Americans to intercept rare Russian airstrikes on their SDF allies.
The S400s were deployed in response to the downing of a Russian intel aircraft that got mixed up with Syrian aircraft and shot down by Israel. It was deployed to protect Russian aircraft, not Syrian bases. So the Russians had no incentive to expose the operational capabilities of the S400 systems to the West. Just as the US limits how it deploys the F-22 in the area.
"
Alexander Zasypkin, in comments broadcast on Tuesday evening, said he was referring to a statement by Russian president Vladimir Putin and the Russian chief-of-staff.
"If there is a strike by the Americans then... the missiles will be downed and even the sources from which the missiles were fired," he told Hezbollah's al-Manar TV.
"
I am aware of what the source is. This did happen though, and you can find more sources if you want. If Russia had no intent, it shouldn't have bragged.
The Arrow system has sufficient range to provide coverage over Syria it’s an expensive way to deal with the S400 threat but it can be used to provide additional protection.
Israel seems to be quite adept at beating Russian SAMs Russia doesn’t have enough assets in the region to risk engaging with the S400 because Israel would definitely target them if they are used as anything more than a scarecrow.
And last time Israel went on a mission to clear Russian SAM sites in Syria it didn’t end up well for the SAM site operators.
For the most part what Israel has been doing in Syria so far is a very limited engagement often not even from within Syrian airspace but rather using stand off munitions from Israeli or Lebanese airspace.
I’m pretty sure that Russia understands very well that other than a nuke on Tel Aviv they don’t have the logistics to have an engagement with Israel that does not end in total humiliation and the destruction of all Russian assets in the region.
At the end of the day if push comes to shove Israel can push 400 aircraft into Syria’s airspace and countless ground assets the numbers simply don’t favor Russia.
The Russian navy is also not in a shape to engage, other than their submarine fleet any naval assets they put in theater would be likely targeted and crippled if not destroyed this also includes their aircraft carrier.
"I’m pretty sure that Russia understands very well that other than a nuke on Tel Aviv they don’t have the logistics to have an engagement with Israel that does not end in total humiliation and the destruction of all Russian assets in the region.
At the end of the day if push comes to shove Israel can push 400 aircraft into Syria’s airspace and countless ground assets the numbers simply don’t favor Russia.
The Russian navy is also not in a shape to engage, other than their submarine fleet any naval assets they put in theater would be likely targeted and crippled if not destroyed this also includes their aircraft carrier."
This discussion has nothing to do with Israel. It has to do with Russia not engaging US and ally Tomawhawk missiles, in which Israel is not involved.
"I’m pretty sure that Russia understands very well that other than a nuke on Tel Aviv they don’t have the logistics to have an engagement with Israel that does not end in total humiliation and the destruction of all Russian assets in the region."
Yea, but it can nuke Tel Aviv. And Israel can't nuke anything of consequence back, even with its illegal nukes.
It can also saturate all of Israel with conventional artillery. Even a fraction of its forces would overhwhelm the system immediately, and that's assuming it works against anything but SCUDs and slow moving toy rockets.
"and countless ground assets the numbers simply don’t favor Russia."
The last time Israel pushed "countless ground assets" into Lebanon to bomb their hospitals and destroy their tourist industry, Russian RPGs destroyed a number of Merkavas. Cry more about how those were "mobility kills."
In what magical world does an Israel vs Russia ground war "simply don’t favor Russia."?
"The Russian navy is also not in a shape to engage, other than their submarine fleet any naval assets they put in theater would be likely targeted and crippled if not destroyed this also includes their aircraft carrier."
Russia has the best ASMs in the world. This is widely accepted.
Your post is comical even before you consider that most of the technology Israel has is thanks to the USSR diaspora.
>This discussion has nothing to do with Israel. It has to do with Russia not engaging US and ally Tomahawks missiles, in which Israel is not involved.
The US is the only nation to fire Tomahawks at targets in Syria, or anywhere else other than the US only the UK uses the system and it has never been use in combat.
Israel fires cruise missiles all the time at Syria from it's aircraft and the Syrians claim that their and their "allies" air defense systems shot down all the missiles however it seems that all those warehouses are still getting blown up so it doesn't seem that Russian air defenses are very effective at combating these threats.
>Yea, but it can nuke Tel Aviv. And Israel can't nuke anything of consequence back, even with its illegal nukes.
It can, it will however get a retaliatory strike; and ironically Tel Aviv is likely better defended against ballistic missiles than Moscow is.
>It can also saturate all of Israel with conventional artillery. Even a fraction of its forces would overhwhelm the system immediately, and that's assuming it works against anything but SCUDs and slow moving toy rockets.
From where? Syria? Syrian artillery would be defeated in hours, if Lebanon/Hezbollah would get into the conflict it would take days but Russia has no assets in the area to provide protection.
20 aircraft isn't enough.
>The last time Israel pushed "countless ground assets" into Lebanon to bomb their hospitals and destroy their tourist industry, Russian RPGs destroyed a number of Merkavas. Cry more about how those were "mobility kills."
What does this have to do with anything? Trophy was implemented due to the lessons Israel has learned in the 2006 war and according to Wikipedia out of 45 tanks hit; 5 were deemed destroyed/unsalvageable including 2 tanks that were blown up by IEDs large enough to demolish a building.
Are you really going to argue that outside of diplomatic pressure that would end hostilities Lebanon/Hezbollah are going to stand their ground against the IDF? I'm not saying that Israel isn't going to suffer losses but they can bomb Lebanon back to the stone age the same can't be said in reverse.
>Your post is comical even before you consider that most of the technology Israel has is thanks to the USSR diaspora.
You are conflating s400 with significantly older systems. Even with stealth, it's impossible to take down s400 without suffering heavy casualties. The system is decentralized, and highly mobile. You take down one command node, another one takes its place.
The L- and X-band radars used by the S400 are exceedingly easy to jam, and no matter what Russia says they have not figured out a way around the laws of physics that enables them to reliably target low-observable aircraft.
So yeah, if an F-15 blindly stumbles within the effective range of an S400 it will be shot down.
The fingerprint of the S400's radar are detectable from thousands of kilometers away and a nice little icon will be plopped onto the pre-mission overlays before the F-15 takes off.
You don't even have to detect the radar beam, you can detect the data link.
As for casualties, what casualties?
The only casualties a drone launching a glide bomb results in are those on the receiving end.
I am with computerex. Your explanations are extremely simplistic and biased. S400s can toggle on and off, share data, have Pantsir systems around them, etc.
You ignore the same problems with air platforms emitting.
Your claim about detecting the data link is absurd.
Everything he said makes sense to me, and I'm just a lowly software engineer with a single unit of RF background back at uni.
What part are you confused about?
There is no such thing as a perfectly directional antenna. Radiation profiles consist of multiple lobes which generally point towards a single direction on 3 axes, but there are always side lobes, like so: [1]. You can't hide these, therefore they can be detected and targeted.
There's a whole class of missiles that simply look for RF sources and head that way. The only way to avoid such missiles is to stop being an RF source. But if you do that, you're also unable to target the attackers or defend against those missiles. You also have to turn off your data link and lose situational awareness.
The S-400 is the best air defence currently fielded, but it is by no means magical or invulnerable.
All this makes the assumption that S400 is a sitting duck with no countermeasures. Which is far from reality. The entire point of a decentralized and mobile/distributed system like s400 is to make it difficult to target. It is ground based, therefore has much better detection capability than anything in the air. Its long range missiles have a greater flight envelope than any surface to air missile.
You don't think the s400 has any jamming capability and protection of its own? You don't think the system can detect when it's being targeted and locked on?
It can definitely be defeated but not without suffering heavy casualties. That's _why_ it's called anti-access/area denial technology.
Read up on SEAD tactics, it's pretty interesting. The nature radar propagation and reflection means that a plane will know a radar is active long before the radar can detect the plane. Planes can then fire anti radiation missiles that home in on the radar emissions source. Also, most radars are limited by the horizon. Low level flying can let planes get close without detection.
Now this doesn't mean destroying air defenses is easy. Factor in smaller SAM sites dispersed around th larger ones, as well as enemy air superiority fighter operating in the area and SEAD gets more complicated. SAM sites also sometimes turn their radars off until planes are close and ambush them. But SAM sites alone are not an impervious defense against air power.
>a plane will know a radar is active long before the radar can detect the plane.
The other bit of information that might be perhaps missing from some (other!) explanations is that this arises entirely because the ground station has to receive a radar reflection _of the original beam_ from the target. Given that power goes as 1/r^2, this means that in practice range drops off sharply for the ground-based station as 1/r^4. Meanwhile, the aircraft can just _detect_ some sort of blip-over-thermal power spectral density coming from somewhere. Given identical amplifier performance (which, with good designs, should be limited by physics) and you end up with the attacking aircraft "winning" from a back-of-the-envelope point of view.
This ignores the fact that it can be traditionally quite easy to confuse radar by "just" transmitting the "right" signals at the right time. There's a good 1960s video that explains a lot of the basic ideas here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyFqaaqqph0
Detected by Radar Warning Receivers (RWR). These are passive sensors, they're listening to the radar emissions that other planes and Radar stations are emitting. Because the radar needs to send a signal that bounces off the plane and have enough energy for those bounces to travel back to the radar, whereas th RWR only needs to detect the emissions traveling from the radar to the plane the radar will be detected by RWR from much further away. Most modern aircraft carry RWR, not just AWACS.
1. Let's stop re-explaining how radar works as an argument, everyone gets it. For those who don't - radar works like turning on a flashlight, end of story.
2. Non-SEAD RWR is generally limited to "There is light shining on me." Not where it's coming from, let alone providing targeting information.
All modern (1980s and later) RWRs can determine the bearing of emissions. Heck, even the RWR in the Mig-21 (1950s plane) could determine bearing. With bearings known, all you need is two planes to determine location by taking the intersection of the two bearings. Most RWRs can also identify the type of radar, as well as whether it is searching or locked into a target. Planes can also equip targeting pods that have even more advanced passive sensors: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/ASQ-213
The S400s you're referrint to are the ones that Turkey just bought from Russia (and which caused all the mess with Trump not being happy about it), right?
It doesn't have a thing to do with Trump being unhappy, it is the Pentagon that is hopping mad. It will give the Russians access to S400 telemetry of F22 and F35 planes, something we've been very coy in giving them a chance to get. It lets them figure out how to use their radars against any nation with F22 / F35 planes.
Didn't they already acquire them in Syria/Iraq? I bet Russians brought their latest radar tech with them when F22s were operating in the area, and now there is Israel with F35. They might be just observing and would be stupid to talk about it anyway and I doubt Turkey will get the same S400s, likely a dumbed-down export version. It's more like Turkey can't have all their tech obliterated instantly if they switched sides and US manufacturers will miss some projected profit.
There's likely a big difference between "we tested them out in an active combat zone against uncooperative planes" and "we tested them out in controlled circumstances with friendly subjects", though.
Yes Russia has been using Syria as a testing ground for detection of a variety of airplanes that Israel uses. If Turkey has the S400 and F35s it means they will have much much much more data for detection. Turkey would also have a platform for offense and defense in a bid for regional military supremacy which they almost have.
Depends on if the F-22 was operating in full stealth mode. Also depends on how their (the F-22's) radar was employed, what ECCM was used, etc etc. I doubt the USAF showed the Russians the full monty...
Not sure about F-22; however recently Israel attacked some targets in Iraq using F-35s in stealth mode, and those were likely monitored by Russians in Syria (or I would be very surprised if they weren't...)
That's the official Pentagon line, but it's not it. What are they saying, the S-400 are backdoored with a network connection to Russia? And Russia already has S-400s in Syria, with Israel and the US operating F-35s in the region...
The real reason is the US doesn't want to set the precedent for NATO countries buying weapons outside of NATO, and you can be sure the military industrial complex has a huge hand in that.
Well the concern has more to do with the purchasing of S400 coming with Russian technical advisors for the system, who you might say are backdoored with a network connection to Russia.
> It will give the Russians access to S400 telemetry of F22 and F35 planes...
Thx a lot - I now think that I understand the issue => it's once more a reminder for myself that often nothing is as simple as it is presented. Unluckily none of the news I read/watched about it mentioned this and I did not think about it.
Of course it's not. The news of today is facile, designed for ratings and clicks not actual analysis. Trump=bad is much easier than explaining about the F35 radar signatures to the layman.
Being cynical is easy, but there is plenty of fairly high quality reporting on this issue in the mainstream media.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-turkey-trump/trump-sa... - “Turkish operation of the two systems together — and more specifically, when it is in stealth mode — would allow the S-400 to acquire intimate knowledge of the F-35’s radar signature,” Karako wrote.
“Such insights would almost immediately find (their) way back to Russia, and the capability of F-35s around the world could thereby be degraded.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/world/europe/us-turkey-ru... - Ellen M. Lord, the Defense Department’s under secretary for acquisition and sustainment, said the S-400 and its radar systems could compromise the F-35’s stealth capabilities and jeopardize the fighter jet’s long-term security.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/16/politics/trump-turkey-s40... - 'The S-400 poses a real threat to US national security, analysts said. The Russian system is built to defeat US stealth technology, leading officials in Washington to worry that if Turkey took delivery of F35s, the Russian system could be used to collect valuable information about the fifth-generation fighter jet.'
Can't Russia already fairly easily eavesdrop on F22s and F35s during military exercises from ships or by just renting a room / camping van somewhere nearby?
Systems like the Sx00 are very useful if there are multiple rings of them surrounding a static high-value target and you want to defeat a fleet of B-52s (or certain types of ballistic missiles) that are approaching.
They are borderline useless against any adversary that has low observability aircraft and a modern suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) capability.
Israel has demonstrated this repeatedly, but Russian marketing is very good and (mainly Middle Eastern) countries are still pumping wasted dollars into buying air defense systems.
In years of conflict Israel has launched thousands (2,000 in 2018 alone) of missiles at Syrian targets, and a grand total of one (1) F-16I has been shot down, and that was because the pilots were cocky (both survived) and they were loitering at high altitude doing battle damage assessments.
In response to the shoot-down, the launchers that fired the missile were destroyed the same day. Not only do the Russian missiles keep missing, but Israel keeps using their anti-missile missiles to shoot down the Russian missiles before they can fall on populated areas after missing their targets.