How do I square this supposed prowess with the Ukrainian Air Force still operating? Even worse, drone footage (so flying things) of S-300 being destroyed? Or indeed NATO or Israel regularly making mincemeat out of Soviet-equipped opponents?
I’m not denying Russians can achieve technological brilliance, often bypassing budgetary constraints in novel ways, equally their military technology seems to regularly come up top trumps on paper and not in the battlefield.
I'll refrain from picking a side, but Air Power Australia and the credibility of its proprietor Carlo Kopp are... controversial [1,2]. He has extensive knowledge of many of the relevant topics, but is viewed as having an axe to grind about particular systems as they pertain to Australian procurement decisions. Russian SAMs have always been shrouded in a huge amount of marketing mystery. While they are obviously capable and advanced systems, evidence continues to accumulate that some of the magic is smoke and mirrors.
I read this article with great interest over technical details, but stop short of accepting conclusions along the lines of "Flap Lid is comparable to SPY-1". Only the folks who train and operate against those systems in the real world really know if that's true, and it's one of the things we are least likely to have accurate information about in the public domain.
Israel has a deconflicting mechanism with Russia in Syria as does the US and Turkey but it is very true that it could more or less do whatever it wants. Because it is the IAF.
The Ukrainian Air Force is still operating mostly because the Russian one is somewhat MIA. Possible/Partial explanation for their bad performance is corruption. Another one is much more alarming and that is that the Russian strategy does not require air superiority.
Either way it is not relevant to the S-300 which is deployed within the borders of Russia as it is a defensive system.
What you want to read about instead is the Krasukha:
The Russian air force seems to have been effectively smaller than expected in terms of their aircrews. Looking at the KIA/POW pilots in downed RU planes (100-ish?), initially it was surprising how many of them were very senior (like half of them being at e.g. lt cols/wing commander level) and afterwards it was surprising how junior they were (like right out of flight school).
A hypothesis was that this indicates that before the war only a limited number of aircrews got sufficient flight time (which, obviously, is quite expensive; especially if many of your planes - just as tanks - aren't properly maintained to save costs or due to corruption) and the same people were used in all the operations in the last decade; and once these air crews "ran out" there is a bottleneck in capable replacements.
But S-300 definitely was deployed not only within the borders of Russia but also by Russia in Ukraine, I recall seeing evidence of that - it's a defensive system that is also used to defend the deployed Russian ground forces from air attacks.
it is a bit unclear why, yet Russia has frequently been using much more expensive Su-30/35 fighters and Su-34 bombers for close air support instead of more traditional/suitable/cheap Su-25. As close air support naturally loses a lot of planes to MANPADS and air-defense guns, especially considering that Su-30/35/34 aren't armored like Su-25, Russia has lost a lot of those Su-30/35/34. Also using mostly unguided bombs (despite all the Russian propaganda claims of using only "high-precision weapons"- just look at that glorious state TV report on using "high-precision" where they show plane loaded only with FAB-250 unguided bombs at timestamp 24:55 of https://rutube.ru/video/4b400cbcfbbd6c1b730b5e80138fe598/ - and they even show supposed launch of a ground attack missile from that plane loaded only with those bombs :) Russian planes have had to go pretty low to achieve any resemblance of close hits - it is the city bombing that they do from 8-10 km altitude while bombing any specific target requires to go very low where they again lose to MANPADS and other air-defenses. As a result of high losses (close to 100 planes out of supposedly 1300 combat capable planes that the whole Russia has - that 1300 is an official number, divide by 2x at least to get real number :) Russia has significantly scaled back the close air support and decreased air superiority missions.
"Another one is much more alarming and that is that the Russian strategy does not require air superiority."
I think you'll agree that is bollocks. No sane modern invasion plan would consider air supremacy as only a nice to have. In this case we can clearly conclude that other assumptions made at the planning stage were badly, badly wrong.
Russia really fucked up in their assessment of their adversary in all areas. They assumed that a lightning strike would cause near instant capitulation. It wasn't a "blitzkrieg" because the entirety of the world's intelligence ignored the fuff and called it before kick off, publically. Also UKR were able to prepare somewhat.
The horrendous thing about this conflict is that Russia cannot expect to win on their original terms. They will still kill civilians wholesale and destroy infrastructure in a desperate attempt to claim a "win".
Civvies have and will die in greater numbers than soldiers in this conflict and that is something that needs to be considered by us all. At what point do we decide that a possible strategic nuclear escalation is a worse worry than a complete massacre of a sovereign nation?
> They assumed that a lightning strike would cause near instant capitulation.
Yes, I'm well aware of this narrative. I happen to think their current plan, however we arrived here, is to play for time. The opposite of a blitz.
They are depopulating and starving Ukraine and flattening major cities with long range artillery. You aren't too far off. But it isn't to claim a "win", they aren't cartoon villains.
> At what point do we decide that a possible strategic nuclear escalation is a worse worry than a complete massacre of a sovereign nation?
Unfortunately at no point. That is part of their calculus.
They appear to have gained an edge over the US in both offensive and defensive nuclear capabilities as well as having caught the EU with their pants completely down. This is the likely reason why they wasted a few of their new hypersonic missiles as a demonstration. And why they flew into Swedish air space and flaunted hot nukes which has never happened before even during the Cold War.
> They appear to have gained an edge over the US in both offensive and defensive nuclear capabilities as well as having caught the EU with their pants completely down.
Citation needed. They appear to be a generation behind their adversary in just about every way.
I believe the hypersonic missile launched in Ukraine was a standard ballistic missile launched from an airplane and is really nothing that advanced (the article mentions this technology was invented in the 80s). Hypersonic glide vehicles are more of a question mark. Russia claims to have them, but their ability to reliably deploy them is unknown as they’ve never been used outside of tests. The U.S. is working on its own HGV, which should be superior in many ways. This attempt at achieving superiority is also what’s leading to the lag as more technical problems need to be worked through.
What you see here is a difference in doctrine, not better or worse systems.
US has heavily invested in their second strike capabilities, and is far ahead of Russia on that.
US has largely viewed investment in first strike capabilities as a waste, the DPRK is their only adversary that could possibly be decapitated with such weapons.
A first strike against Russia would result in an unstoppable second strike, what good are first strike weapons in this scenario?
The Mattis quote in your article provides a good tl;dr
>U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis stated Russia already has the capability to hit U.S. port cities with missiles, and said that Poseidon "does not change at all the strategic balance".
US is already incapable of stopping “regular” ICBMs, poseidon does not change the calculus at all.
You are very much on target. Just one correction. "Kinzhal" missile that Russia promotes as their hypersonic wonderwaffe is not in fact that.
"Kinzhal" is a slight modification of standard Russian "Iskander" ballistic missile allowing it to be launched from a plane (specifically an intercepter fighter jet MiG-31).
As with most ballistic missiles, the warhead flies a part of its trajectory at a hypersonic speed, but has to slow down at the final part of its trajectory. It is just as hard (or easy) to intercept as any other ballistic missile.
Mounting it on a plane gives it a longer range, and potentially makes it harder to be destroyed by a pre-emptive strike (although experts disagree on this).
Traditionally the term "hypersonic weapon" is used for very different class of weapons. Basically, a true "hypersonic weapon" is something able to maneuver while flying at hypersonic speeds, and able to maintain this speed all the way to the target. "Kinzhal" is nothing like it.
So it is not some fantastic wonderwaffe making NATO air defenses suddenly useless. It presents some additional challenges, but nothing drastic.
What makes possible nuclear war with Russia really dangerous is just the number of "conventional" ballistic missiles Russia has. In theory Russia may launch thousands of rockets carrying tens of thousands of warheads, and no air defense has any hope to intercept all or even most of them.
This is the same as it always was. The difference with Soviet Union is that Soviet leaders appeared to be afraid of a world suicide, and Russian leadership appears (or wants to appear) to be crazy and ready to destroy the world.
The way you describe, Russia’s military command were expecting weeks of buildup to happen in stealth and when the evidence that everything was being leaked emerged they ignored it. Do you think they are so stupid?
The rummoured narrative is that the Russian spies believed that they have enough higly positioned Ukrainian military officers on their payroll. Thus the Ukrainian president will either have to run away at the start of hostilities or get couped by his own people. After that they can place a new leadership structure on Ukraine.
I don’t know if it is true. I don’t have proof either way of course. It’s merely one of the possible narratives which could explain how the Russian’s military command could have hoped for a quick victory while not being stupid.
All else aside (since other commenters have covered every other thought I had and more) it's worth noting that Ukraine is also fielding S300 class kit and this has likely been a significant contributor to Russian aircraft losses.
It also appears that in the Russian case either the S300 itself or the training of the crews has not been particularly effective against the Bayraktar drones, which I'm not aware of Russia having an equivalent of to use against the Ukrainians.
Logistics, training, discipline, and morale/motivation are factors that often get treated as secondary to technology, but in most battlefield scenarios they are a big deal, and Russia has big problems with all of them.
I thought this was a good piece about the success of Turkish drones vs the Russian Pantsir AA system in Libya was pretty good. It goes pretty deep into the tactics used.
There are a lot of military experts saying that they see baffling examples of incompetence from the Russian army in this war, failing at really basic stuff.
I'm no military expert, but I've seen Russian infantry videos where they are basically running around like headless chickens as the saying goes, like they received no training at all.
Among other explanations that are just as true, corruption had to be mentioned. Russian officers are ridiculously badly paid and not respected on the society, and they certainly didn't anticipate a large war that would catch them with their pants down.
These are very advanced machines that require regular maintenance and a well-trained and crew to operate. Gaps in maintenance, training, and even poor communication with command will greatly reduce their efficacy.
As an electrical engineer I am curious how russians get their hands on the mil spec Western electronic components. I mean even in Western Europe I must fill few forms to obtain potentially dual use components. Mil spec Xilinx FPGAs or SiGe transistors aren’t available in every grocery store.
These are reflectarray radars, not AESA. No crazy specialist components are really required, just a lot of PIN diodes. I'm sure those can be made in Russia.
not sure where the proclivity to underestimate Russian military technology comes from. it certainly was a sterling hallmark of US leadership at the time of the cold war.
Russia has been making in-house AESA for a decade. they started with APAR radar in 1963, just a few years off from the US.
> not sure where the proclivity to underestimate Russian military technology comes from
They've been turned into bumbling idiots on Twitter and Reddit. It's a shame, but in my mind it is quite dangerous because sooner or later some president/general is going to make a very bad decision based on that meme. "How could their nukes possibly work?"
It’s enough to launch a retaliation. So the expected value of launching a hypersonic missile is still very negative because you will get inundated with nukes yourself. It’s the old MAD doctrine, not perfect, but better than nothing.
I didn't realise it was possible to detect a hypersonic. What I read is that the missle creates a ball of plasma before it, which is opaque to radar. I thought this was the main strength of hypersonics, over raw speed.
Very useful. Hypersonics shorten the window for defensive engagement but don't completely eliminate it. For example in surface naval warfare anti missile defense is layers of counter systems / munitions. The innermost layers of this "onion" of protection are fast reaction systems that function essentially at line of sight (SeaRAM and similar missiles, CIWS). That an incoming hypersonic is trying to shorten the detection window is all the more reason that detecting one quickly after it comes above the horizon is valuable.
I saw some articles implying that they thought so too but are actually using a lot more Chinese components even as substitutes for military grade components. Given that the portion of US companies make a military and commercial grade component with only thermal differences, I would wonder if they aren't getting a lot of commercial grade versions of US designs from China.
It would be interesting if someone goes through their wreckage strewn about and starts to catalog the finer details of some of the small components.
They did have some degree of connection with France up until 2014 so maybe they might have gotten some from there. Also, sanction busting is a thing and the FSB probably has some way to get some components in a shady manner
Elbrus chips were manufactured in Taiwan TSMC before the war and it has been stopped now due to the war, Russia has no domestic capability to manufacture them.
The process is not as advanced as the TSMC's one, but they seem to have progressed (or have been progressing?) to 28-45 nm technological process in 2018.
Probably possible to order one of these using automotive process in some foundry in Asia. Nobody will ask too much and it would be enough power for defense applications.
Take a look how easily highly illegal drugs are smuggled in large quantity, and then ponder how easy it is for civilians to acquire Xilinx FPGAs in the West regardless of forms. Then ponder that .ru may be using industrial spec instead of mil spec : life-critical isn't so important to russia.
This should probably have a (2012) added to the title, it's interesting but a bit dated. For example the criticism of Australia not buying F-22s, when the discussion the last few years has been all about F-35s.
The Australians might want to buy F-22s, but Congress banned exports. Much like the F-15, the previous air superiority fighter, for which external sales were very limited.
The F-15 was initially sold only to a relatively small set of foreign operators - Israel and Japan. Saudi Arabia was added in the early 80s, but it took 20 years after that before another foreign operator was introduced.
Now, the F-15 is flown by the Israel, Japan, South Korea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the USA - but SK, Qatar and Singapore were all sold the F-15 after the F-22 made its first flight.
Had F-22 production continued, it's quite possible we would have seen a similar pattern there.
EDIT: in comparison, the F-16 is operated by Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Greece, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Turkey, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Iraq, Jordan, Oman, the UAE, Morocco, Indonesia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Chile, Venezuela, and of course the USA. 26 countries vs 7.
It's interesting that there's a ground-mobile Russian successor to the AEGIS SPY-1 radar, the 64N6E. The SPY-1 is a very good radar, but it first came out in 1973. It requires a huge amount of support electronics, restricting its use to larger ships. There have been successor US systems, but none good enough to replace it. Squeezing that down to truck size is real progress.
Define larger ship? There's a version in service for frigate sized ships (5kton). There was even a version designed for corvette sized ships.
The problem isn't the size. It's the cost. It's expensive enough that making the ship a bit bigger gets you a bunch more capability for not much more cost.
The direct comparison for ground mobile would probably be the TPY-2 radar.
>For instance the JSF's forward sector stealth is likely to be adequate, but its aft and beam sector stealth performance will not be, especially considering the wavelengths of many of the radars in question
I was under the impression that the JSF was overall stealthier than the Raptor. Searching for more details on Google has led me down quite the delicious rabbit hole of Quora posts filled with wild speculation and half-sourced rumors. Here[1] is one of the better ones.
When they shoot the missile they point those canisters up in the air. There is a cold gas system that ejects the missile up into the air, it then ignites, then it takes off in some direction like
Sometimes the fuse goes off when the missile hits the launcher and usually blows up the other missiles in the launcher. Other times the fuse doesn't go off but then you've got an awful unexploded ordinance problem. (Who knows when it will go off?)
Soviet cold-launch approach was to increase the chances that a failed missile would fall to the side instead of exploding the launcher, which is why naval soviet-style launchers are angled - a failure to launch will drop into water.
Most accounts are that those failures are "rare"; the missile is sealed in a canister so it's likely to be a defective missile from the factory, not some mistake on the part of the operators.
It happens enough that there are a handful of videos on Youtube. Similar failures happen with vertically launched missiles from ships
I would love to understand the circumstances of the second video (the one on the Commandos455 channel).
Not the technical failure, that is clear enough but the role and reaction of the crowd the camera is in. They seem to be wearing green fatigues so one would think they are soldiers… but they are all so unorganised? I understand that when a missile falls back one would swear or shout as an involuntary reaction, but they seem more like a partying higschool group than professionals at work.
The cherry on top is the redheaded girl who seems to have started to leave without her coat and someone brings it after her. Sadly I don’t speak the language.
I’m wondering is this maybe a high school group on a military themed day trip? Or I’m just massively overestimating the professionalism of soldiers? I would be curious if anyone has any insight into that video.
Ukraine has S-300, Buk, Tor and other Soviet-era anti aircraft missile systems, those are dangerous to Russian air assets. (Many of the USSR's most famous weapon systems were built in Ukraine, the Ukraine has pretty much the same tanks, missiles, etc. as Russia -- that is why Russia has to paint a Z on their vehicles otherwise they couldn't tell them apart.)
The S-400 is an improved version of the S-300, they upgraded all the parts (radar, missile, launcher) but it is the same architecture (which is basically the same as the US Patriot but in most respects better)
The S-500 has insane range, can hit low earth orbit satellites and more relevant it can hit this kind of aircraft hundreds of miles away
An aircraft like that can light up the battlefield with radar from far away and let stealth aircraft operate close to the enemy without switching their own radar.
Anyhow, Russians don't believe in "air superiority" (control the airspace with their own plane) but instead they have anti-aircraft missiles to defend the anti-aircraft missiles that defend their anti-aircraft missiles. They might not control the battlespace completely but it will be a dangerous place to fly.
“Big” air defense system are good to destroy targets at middle or high altitude. Since both sides have such systems, the only “safe” place to fly is very low altitude (below 500 feet, or 150m) where you're practically hidden from air defenses' radar, but you end up being in the range of MANPADS (though shooting at a fighter jet with a MANPADS is way harder than doing the same on an helicopter)
It's really hard, it only works if the guy is ready to shoot when the plane comes by. The only thing that makes it a little easier than shooting down an helicopter with the same weapon is that jets fly much higher than choppers (which, according to modern doctrine are supposed to fly much lower than what Russians do: ten meters of less above the ground, hiding them as much as possible from MANPADS).
And Serbia downed a F-117. If something flies it can be downed, if something floats it be sunk and if something can be seen it can be hit.
Initially the UH-1 of Vietnam fame was a single engine helicopter because the expected service life was deemed to be too short to justify the expenses of a second one. Stuff that gets used gets damaged, and in war and combat destroyed. Par of the course.
No amount of SAM system can gain air supremacy alone: such systems are pretty much useless against planes flying very low (below 500 feet, or 150m) just because the plane is hidden by the terrain.
To get air supremacy, you need to have planes flying in the enemy's sky, but to do so you need to destroy the enemy's own air defence, with what is called a SEAD campaign (which stands for “Supression of Ennemy Air Defense”) and from what is happening in Ukraine it's pretty clear that the VKS doesn't know how to do SEAD (pretty much like the US in the Vietnam war, where they've learned the hard way).
Logically thinking, it seems like a survivability strategy built on flying at altitudes that can be detected via visual/acoustic techniques is not going to be sound. The Serbs downed a f117 because they had spies who saw it take off and they predicted its flight plans.
source: every military analysts in the western world after one week of combat.
Literally all of them were like “Wait, why do Ukraine still have planes and Russian planes don't fly over Ukraine-controlled land? Are you telling me they can't do SEAD? Holly cow!”, all of them.
They are prostitutes, not analysts; they will say whatever they're being paid to say.
This is Russia we're talking about, they could turn Ukraine and their shitty US sponsored Nazi army into a pile of ashes in a millisecond if that was their goal.
Of course, and instead they're sacrificing most of their newly modernized T-72 Obr. 2016, Su-35, Su-34 and a lot of VDV folks in a “feint” while making zero progress in the Donbas (their “actual goal”®) in the meantime…
I've always found the US war propaganda really cringe, but the Russian one don't even try to make a coherent story. Zero fuck given.
The ukrainians have rather skillfully denied their airspace to the russians using their own AD assets and as a consequence of russian doctrine, they aren't too prepared to deal with SEAD missions so we get this weird situation where both sides deny airspace to each other
That will be, I'm sure, thoroughly analyzed. Advanced stealth aircraft and saturation with drones could enable SEAD missions against advanced AA networks. Or they cannot if AA capabilities catch up. Ukraine looks like an interesting case study for future air power between (near-) peers.
Well, I agree with what you say but there's the small issue that russia both doctrinally and economically is not in a position to do that in the near future. The RuAF is really in a pitiful state hindered by decades of corruption and the political will of mantaining way too many legacy aircraft
A SAM system is quite vulnerable while being transported or setup. I guess they did not properly stage their SAM units? Set up the first on on your site of the border, then one within the shield of the first, then the third within the shield of the second?
SAMs also require ground support or they get overrun, captured, and potentially used against your own aircraft. I'm guessing this was a consideration for Ukraine's placement of air defenses.
Many things in the military are rock-paper-scissors considerations:
> Many things in the military are rock-paper-scissors considerations
Hence the importance of combined arms operations. Sending a column of tanks on its own is just a case of scissors...scissors...scissors. Pre-operational training is also essential. It's too late, in contact, for infantry to figure out how to fight alongside tanks.
Lots of armies seem to discover this the hard way in a war, adapt their tactics accordingly, only to forget it in time for the next war. Incidentally, this also explains the western Battlegroup concept. It's the smallest integrated unit with a sensible mix of different arms, usually structured around an infantry or armour battalion depending on the circumstances.
Honestly, I didn't expect Ukraine to hold out as long as they did, let alone force the Russians to retreat from Kyiv. It does tell one thing so, despite the counter-insurgency warfare of the last decades, Western militaries are the most experienced fighting forces right now. Maybe they'll have some of the problems against advanced AA, like the Ukrainians are deploying, but when it comes to ground combat no other countries are coming even close it seems.
That makes also an interesting case study for Taiwan. If, or rather when, Taiwan can deny its air space a Chinese invasion is basically of the table. The Battle of Britain showed that much. And Ukraine showed that current AA, deployed with proper doctrine and part of a well defined and integrated strategy, can deny air space to modern air forces. Personally, I'm surprised how well drones work. All in all Taiwan seems to have decent chance in case China tries something stupid. Being an island definitely helps as well.
The Battle of Britain isn't a great example, there are plenty of suggestions that the war with Germany would have been over faster if they had been allowed to try an invasion and had their fleet sunk in the Channel.
I don't like maybes, but that approach (letting the Germans try and sink their fleet) sounds risky. Because the invasion could work. And it's not that the German surface fleet played big role in WW2 anyway.
The Battle of Britain showed, so, that Germany called of the invasion once it was clear that air supremacy was not going to be achieved. Which meant that the Royal Navy wouldn't be neutralized to the point of allowing enough of the invasion force to actually cross the channel. The same holds, to an extend, true for China and Taiwan. Without air supremacy China cannot be sure to get enough ground forces across the straight to establish a sustainable beach head. They fail to do that and they lost.
Military is not about rock paper scissors. This meme needs to die.
SAM beats planes is probably the most ridiculous one on this list, since most SAM destroyed at war since the 50s where in fact destroyed by airstrikes.
SAM destroys planes and planes destroy SAM, that's it.
Almost any weapons is able to destroy anything in a favorable engagement. For instance, during this war, we've even seen footage of
- at least three Russian tanks destroyed by IFV or APC[1]
- an helicopter destroyed by a anti-tank missile[2]
In the end, it all depends on how one force engage with another one, and different forces have different strength and weaknesses when it comes to engagement.
- Infantry is really good at concealing, and is highly mobile in urban situation. But they have little mobility on their own in a wide battlefield, have low range (especially against enemy infantry), and have limited firepower (suppression fire isn't something infantry can do effectively on a battlefield).
- Artillery has excellent range, lot of firepower but will be defeated (and often even captured) by pretty much anything that can come close enough.
- Tanks are heavily armored, have decent range and a lot of firepower, but they are kind of hard to hide…
Seems like the battlefield has moved entirely into EWF whith these
sorts of things around. Everything comes down to fast RFDSP in jammer
pods to screw with their radar.
I would go on to add that the new warfare supremacy is all about EWF, drones & social media psyops. Less boots on the ground, more information & hitting with precision.
A lot of Eastern European countries should still have large stockpiles of old Soviet military gear. Including Germany, which inherited the entirety of East Germany's armed forces, including top notch MiGs (not the watered down export versions other countries where using). Some of those stockpiles are provided to Ukraine, including ex. DDR APCs (didn't know Germany still had those, I supposed they have been scraped a long time ago...). Which makes sense, those Soviet weapon systems are much easier to use for Ukraine than NATO gear.
The solution to S-300/S-400 is simple - saturation attacks using low cost, high altitude cruise missiles. Fly them too high to be intercepted by AA guns, with a payload too large/powerful to ignore, and the S-300/S-400 would be forced to expend a hugely expensive missile to intercept. Continue sending the wave until all missile are expended, then let your planes attack.
The biggest problem is likely to find a military contractor willing to build an inexpensive high flying drone.
These missiles mimic the radar signature of a full sized plane. They’re extremely expensive, but can absolutely be used to force the SAMs to expend their missiles.
I’m thinking of something a few orders of magnitude cheaper. Flight need not cost millions. Airfoils used for human powered flight produce planes weighing 300lbs, powered with only 300 watts. Scale this up to a 3000lbs flying bomb, using 3kw, or less than 5HP. Let it slog along at 40km/h, and in an 8 hour transit, they’ve covered over 300km. If electric, that requires just 24kwh of batteries, contained in 5 Tesla battery modules at 55lbs each, for 275lbs of batteries. Each module is around $1500 used, so $7500 in batteries. Foam and plastic wrapped wings with aluminum spars could be constructed for a few thousand dollars at scale. Add in the Mark 84 payload at $3k, and a navigation system for <$1000. Total could be well under $20k. Launched in a wave of 1000, flying at night, tens of meters off the ground to avoid radar, rising to maximum altitude prior to getting within AA range, roughly an hour before destination, this $20M swarm of 1000 2000lbs bombs needs to be neutralized by the enemy. They can only use their S-300/S-400s. Each cruise missile would be capable of taking out any ship in the Russian Black Sea fleet. Sevestapol would be a indefensible against nightly attacks launched from just 300km away in Odessa. Even Russia would eventually run out of S-300 missiles. Probably in the first night. Target the launch points? Where? Anywhere within a 300km radius? The day before, drones could fly themselves (unarmed) to 100 different preset locations within this 300km radius, met by small teams with generators to recharge the batteries. 100 teams, each charging 10 drones. Would be hard to locate and destroy the launch points.
The ADM-141 TALD is designed to be much cheaper than a HARM. It alone can't destroy the SAM, but it can distract it. I guess if you use enough of them you could call it saturation.
Just needs to be optimized to get above anti-aircraft range, and with a sufficient range. Mount a large enough bomb along with sufficient gps guidance and terminal optical guidance (make it a threat they can’t ignore) and they’ll have to shoot it down.
HARM is more of a defensive missile at this point. The strategy revolves around SDB and JSOW saturation attacks. Both are mildly stealthy weapons with long ranges, relatively low cost and aircraft can carry large numbers of them, particularly the SDB
I’m not denying Russians can achieve technological brilliance, often bypassing budgetary constraints in novel ways, equally their military technology seems to regularly come up top trumps on paper and not in the battlefield.