Iran builds S-300-style anti-aircraft!

[ptldM3]

Actually building of stealth UAV is not easy, you will need nano-polymers, which only three countries in the world can produce, Iran included, Iran is very capable in the nanotechnology sector... You can import the material but it will cost you almost cost you 5 million USD with this money you can buy some of the best UAV around the world such as: Reaper, that's why Russia military insist on importing several UAV from Israel. Somethings are better to be bought instead of building inside the country. We had to build the nano-polymers our own because no one would sell it to us.

About Russia anti-aircraft capability... everyone knows it's the best in the world, no one in the world can challenge Russia about it's missile superiority.

I was talking about producing a drone, not about its cost. Everything stealth related is expensive. The F-22 program cost over 60 billions dollars. When i said it was easy to built a stealth drone i was talking about a very simple, very small, very low tech drone. No fancy avionics, just something that has a very low rcs. In otherwords something that can be used to test air defences.

 

[gambit]

That is a very general statment.

No less than many I read from you.

I'm no saying that the Serbs simply locked onto the F-117. I'm saying that the Serbs used man, moment, machine. The "pray and spray" just sounds too crazy, and, yes, i realize that only one F-117 was shot down. However, the Serbs had only one modified SA-3. The same SA-3 that shot down the F-117.

Then what prevented Dani from disseminating his 'techniques', whatever they were, to other battery commanders? On the one breath, you are telling the readers that Dani managed to receive communiques from observers stationed outside of Aviano who relayed messages to field deployed battery commanders like himself. Then on the next breath you are NOW implying that Dani was utterly unable to communicate with anyone to instruct them how to shoot down a 'stealth' aircraft.

Now couple that with reports thats 2 other F-117's were damaged.

From whom? Dani again? If that is true, then perhaps there may be some validity that there were some technical wizardry involved. But if not, then the fact that other aircrafts were damaged can be classified as misfortunes of war.

Also, how does the "pray and spay" work? It's not like the SA-3 had gun sights, and even if it would it would be nearly impossible to perfectly time the launch probably 1 in a trillion shot. I'm not trying to argue that the SA-3 can simply shootdown stealth, because it can not. What I'm trying to say is a system like the S-400 may be able to do so, because according to the manufacture it was succesfully tested against stealthy cruise missles, but i'm not soley basing my argument on that alone. If the S-400 was used in conjunction with intelligence, spotters, and other intell much like Zoltan Dani did with his old SA-3 than it is not out of the realm of possibility to say that, perhaps an S-400 can shoot down a stealth aircraft. It has been done before.

May be? Would you buy a weapons system if the best the seller can give you is a 'may be'?

This next artical does a good job describing man, moment machine:

No it does not do so a 'good job'. Here are the reasons why...

For example, Zoltan knew that his major foe was HARM (anti-radar) missiles and electronic detection systems used by the Americans, as well as smart bombs from aircraft who had spotted him. To get around this, he used landlines for all his communications (no cell phones or radio). This was more of a hassle, often requiring him to use messengers on foot or in cars. But it meant the American intel people overhead were never sure where he was. — His radars and missile launchers were moved frequently, meaning that some of his people were always busy looking for new sites to set up in, or setting up or taking down the equipment. His battery traveled over 100,000 kilometers during the 78 day NATO bombing campaign, just to avoid getting hit.

So does this lead to an indisputable conclusion that other battery commanders were too stupid to realize that mobility and reduced transmissions would increase the odds of survival against SEAD fighters? If so, then the article truly does justice to an imaginative and bold leader. No disagreement there. But if it does NOT lead to such a conclusion, then the article is misleading at best. Other battery commanders probably did the exact same thing as Dani did. Only the writer chose to focus on on Dani and what he did, not that what he did was already common knowledge. This is not honest journalism.

Zoltan studied all the information he could get on American stealth technology, and the F-117. There was a lot of unclassified data, and speculation, out there. He developed some ideas on how to beat stealth, based on the fact that the technology didn’t make the F-117 invisible to radar,...

If this is for the benefit of the readers, then why did the writer not include the fact that the US military never claimed that the 'stealth' mean 'invisible' to radar? Why did the writer not interview others who do have professional experiences in the subject? The writer would have found out that among radar engineers, there is a consensus that nothing is really invisible, especially in the UHF/VHF bands, and that the goal of 'stealth' is to reduce the distance between detection and confirmation of target validity. By omitting this fact, the writer enlarges the myth that Dani performed some outstanding technical wizardry that just about everyone else in the world missed.

...just very to get, and keep, a good idea of exactly where the aircraft was. Zoltan figured out how to tweak his radars to get a better lock on stealth type targets. This has not been discussed openly.—

Tweak? What does that mean? Oh...Of course, how convenient that Dani refused to discuss how.

The F-117 he shot down was only 13 kilometers away.

Here is the damning reason why this article is not taken seriously by those who have relevant experience in the business. The goal of 'stealth' is not about invisibility but to reduce the distance between detection and confirmation, or to conclude that there is a valid target. Radar detection is essentially a stochastical process, meaning statistics. That mean the radar must detect a suspicious return over distance and time BEFORE making a definitive declaration to the human operator that it conclude that this is no longer 'suspicious' but verified. That confirmation is signified by a point of light on a scope or an outstanding spike on a scale.

So now there is a valid target at 13 km. Is this good or bad? For a busy airport, this is bad because it gives traffic controllers not much time and margins of errors to coordinate take-offs and landings. For a military installation, be it a mobile missile launcher or a nuclear facility, this 13 km confirmation distance is very bad because this put in the installation into weapons range of the hostile aircraft. How does one know if by this time, the hostile aircraft has not dropped its bombs? Or is on its way in? Or it is in its egress route empty of ordnance? No...There is no way to know if this 13 km distance is true, but even if we grant that latitude, it is still a very bad situation for the defenders that the 'stealth' aircraft is finally confirmed at so near.

All the writer did was to let the readers make their own assumptions based upon their ignorance of the subject matter. This is not honest journalism.

Zoltan got some help from his enemies. The NATO commanders often sent their bombers in along the same routes, and didn’t make a big effort to find out if hotshots like Zoltan were down there, and do something about it. Never underestimate your enemy.

Predictability was a sin by NATO at that time. That does not support the belief that Dani performed so technical wizardry on his weapons.

Defence Aviation - Who shot down F-117 ?

"We used a little innovation to update our 1960s-vintage SAMs to detect the Nighthawk," Dani said. He declined to discuss specifics, saying the exact nature of the modification to the warhead's guidance system remains a military secret.

How convenient to play upon the gullibility of some people.

It involved "electromagnetic waves," was all that Dani — who now owns a small bakery in this sleepy village just north of Belgrade — would divulge.

Radio and television transmissions also involved EM waves. Once again...Dishonest journalism and once again...Evasive by Dani. No credibility there.

USATODAY.com - Serb discusses 1999 downing of stealth

James O'Halloran, editor of Jane's Land-Based Air Defense, said the Serbs could succeed because the stealth fighter was not design to be invisible to old long pulse duration radars.

I highly doubt that this was all that O'Halloran said...So read next...

RCS

# Raleigh region. If the target is a lot smaller than the wavelength of the radar system, the target is said to be in the Raleigh region. If the target is in the Raleigh region, the radar cross section of the target tends to be smaller than the target's physical size.

# Resonance region. If the target is of similar dimension to that of the wavelength, the target is said to be in the resonance region. In the resonance region, the RCS of the target may vary a great deal but tends to be larger than the physical size of the target.

# Optical region. The optical region occurs when the target is much larger than the operating wavelength of the radar. This is quite often the case with operational radar systems whose wavelengths are normally in the order of centimetres in length. When operating in this region, the RCS of the target is similar to its physical size.

The behavior of a radar signal upon a complex body is well known. As shown above, those are the results of the relationships between the signal and the complex body. If the signal is centimetric, 10 cm for example, and the complex body is one meter, then the target belongs to the 'optical region'. If the complex body is 1 cm against the same centimetric signal, then the target belongs to the 'Raleigh region'. If the target is 10 cm against this same centimetric signal, then depends on the movement of this complex body, this target will fluctuate between the 'optical' and 'resonance' region.

So what O'Halloran said was that since the F-117 is about 20 meters in length and about 13 meters in wingspan, it is best to use HF, VHF and UHF bands against the aircraft and those three bands are meters length freqs. So at best, Dani may have been more analytical than his fellow commanders but O'Halloran did not expose any supposedly 'weaknesses' about the aircraft. The HF bands are 100 meters in wavelength. The 747 airliner is about 70 meters in length. So you can see for yourself how the above three results of the relationships between wavelengths and bodies are applicable to any aircraft, including 'stealth'. Except that for 'stealth' aircrafts, their bodies are deliberately planformed to have deflections away from the direction of transmitter, so if any of the three above behaviors applied, it would give a radar echo at much closer distance that for 'non-stealth' bodies.

What is also well known among radar engineers is that the longer the wavelength employed, the more ambiguous target data information become. Those ambiguous information are: speed, altitude and aspect angle. So not only is it difficult to detect the F-117, but if it was truly detected at 13 km, the information about it was sufficiently ambiguous that they compelled Dani to launch many missiles in the general vicinity of this ambiguous target. The amount of missiles Dani conveniently refused to divulged. Why? May be he is worried about revealing a clue about state budget? We call that 'spray and pray'.

I am willing to bet that O'Halloran said a lot more than what was quoted. But how convenient that the readers can see only what the writer wanted them to see.

Why junk? And no one claimed it can outperform anything but stealthy cruise missles, and conventional aircraft. This "Junk" you speak of has garnered the attention of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a long time US allie as well as an important customer of US weapons. If the S-400 was junk don't you think Saudi Arabia would opt for the PATRIOT, or whatever else the US has to offer? Crazy Saudies willing to spend 7 billion dollars on "junk." Right now Israel is strongly opposed to the sales of the S-400 because its range could threaten Israeli aircraft, so as for now nothing is clear. However, Saudi Arabia a country that has traditionally has bad relations with Russia and good relations with the US, so isn't it strange that Saudi Arabia is interested in the S-400?

When I called it 'junk' I am merely taking gratuitous fun at the Russians. Bottom line here is that so far, we have nothing but the Russians' claims that the S-400 can do so-and-so. Their weapons have proved to be largely ineffectual against US weapons.

How do you explain AMERICAN stealth cruise missles with one vertical stab? I'm not arguing that a single vertical stabalizers is better than the v-stabalizer because it probably isn't but the US has build several stealthy cruise misles with one vetical stabalizer.

http://defense-update.com/images/jassm-aa04.jpg

http://www.wingweb.co.uk/wingweb/img/450-AGM-129A_Cruise_missile.jpg

http://www.wingweb.co.uk/wingweb/img/450-AGM-129A_Advanced_Cruise_Missile.jpg

It is not merely about the single vertical stab but also its relationship to other flight control surfaces to create corner reflectors. I have explained what is a 'corner reflector' elsewhere and you can look it up yourself. But as far as these 'stealth' cruise missiles are concerned, what make them low observable are not only their planforms but also the fact that they are low altitude flyers. You also need to look up radar horizon, another item that I explained elsewhere here. What you posted, the KH-90, is hardly comparable. It was a high altitude air-surface missile. Its production was supposedly canceled.

The word 'stealth' here is somewhat misplaced. When an aircraft is sufficiently low enough in radar horizon, it is 'stealthy' in that it is difficult to detect due to environmental limitations. This is different from focusing on the object that become an emitter when illuminated. For the American AGM-129, we exploited both. We planform the body wherever we can to reduce its innate RCS, then we make it low altitude to make any remaining RCS value difficult to distinguish from among ground clutter.

A brick is 'stealthy' in the sense that it is small and therefore somewhat difficult to detect until it is sufficiently close to the radar. But the brick itself is not electronically low observable in construct because its surfaces are not laid out in a fashion that would deflect away from the direction of the transmission. The KH-90 is 'brick-like'.

Seriously...You have brought on nothing new.

 

[Jigs]

But anyhow, how does the US counter the S-400 when they only have the old S-300's. It's like Iran building a counter to the F-14, only to face the F-22. Back to the topic, the only viable counter the US can use against the S-400 is stealth, and even then it is no guarantee that stealth will work the way it has against, say, Iraq. During Kosovo, for example, the Serbs figured out the flight path of the F-117, and with the help of some spotters, and a modified, and old SA-3 the Serbs were able to down an F-117. If a crusty SA-3 was able to shoot down an F-117 why can't the S-400 which was tested against stealthy cruise missles? The US may try cruise missles but the S-400 was built to couter that treat. The last and probably not the best counter would be to fly around the 250 mile kill zone, or fly fast and low and hope you can out-turn, and at the same time use counter measures, but the problem is the new generation SAMS such as the S-400 can hit targets as low as 10 meters, or 32 feet, they are very accurate, very meanuverable, very fast, and very powerful, that is, it doesn't need a direct hit it just needs to get close enough and when it does its proximity fuse will activate, anything remotley close will be in big trouble.

First they knew the flight path of the F-117 the radar they modified used a longer wavelength to have the chance to detect it but what this also does is produce a lot of clutter. That is where the spotters came in and visually track the aircraft with NVG and such so when the clutter showed up they were able to and to find the F-117 which btw the SA-3 systems where only 8 miles from.

They then launched multiple SA-3s at it the pilot who only had 6 seconds to react and one of these missiles exploded by the aircraft damaging it and causing its destruction.

So in the end they knew the flight path, they had spotters visually tracking the aircraft, the SA-3 systems where 8 miles out, they fired multiple missiles at it, and had modified radars.

Now the F-22 has a MUCH lower radar signature then a F-117 so good luck trying all that on a F-22