Iranian Air Defense Systems

[Ich]

Me still like the 100 mm automated AAA, electro-optical guided and linked together with 6 in a group, targeting the same aim. Also can linked to greater radars for target search. They can send a lot of metal against saturation attacks

 

[gambit]

@gambit...people like you live in a bubble.

No, it is people like you who lives in a bubble. As we shall see...

Fact is, the U.S NEVER faced a peer opponent since WWII.

This is a worthless argument. What WW II taught EVERYONE, not just US, was that it is stupid to fight a peer or near peer opponent. When you have a peer or near-peer opponent, but sides effectively cancelled each other out. No one is willing to risk defeat. The results are proxies or small scale battles that involves little or no political consequences.

The AK is a great rifle.

Never said it is a 'bad' weapon. I have fired various versions of the AK series. Never owned one, though.

Unfortunately due to PR you are ready to compare a 1940s design with a 1960s (AR-15) design. You are too manipulated to at least compare it to the 5.54mm AK-74.

I was only using your absurd argument that the quantity of ordnance used is somehow indicative of its 'efficiency' in combat.

But just in case you think that the larger caliber inherently make it 'superior', have your left arm shot with the 5.56 and your right arm shot with the 7.62. Then assume you recover and still have arms, tell us which is 'superior'.

Then, if you want to destruct beton structures, yes use dozens of CMs but if you just want to destroy the capability, and whats important, the equipment, you never send 70 CM's.

That was what we wanted -- complete destruction. Not just damaged capabilities.

The CM is a very efficient weapon against targets not defended against state of the art components of the IADS and there are always plenty of targets that or not within the IADS envelope. Or against 1991 Iraq...

But if you try it against that kind of stuff your efficiency drops to the ground.

Tell whatever you need to yourself to make sense of 70 CMs against a limited area building complex. Sure impressive firepower but that's not the way you win wars against a peer opponent.

If we launched X quantity of weapons, it is because we calculated in risks such as technical failures and/or air defense caused. So for you to tell US what you think is an appropriate quantity means you do not know what you are talking about.

So even if half of what launched made it, the weapon is efficient enough. You talk this way not because you have any experience in the matter, even in peace time military service, but because you just want to make any of our stuff look as bad as possible.

There are technologies that transform, not merely make doing things more efficiently.

Does the Iranian Army trains its soldiers with tactics that involves only single shot rifles? Of course not. The machine guns transformed battlefield tactics. No army reduced its ranks because of the machine gun. In fact, the opposite happened. If the machine gun replaced 10 soldiers, the army will simply reassign those 10 soldiers to do something else or buy more machine guns. And so on. Today, if an army does not have the machine gun in any of its variations, it is a defeated army before a single shot is fired by anyone.

The US did not 'invented' the cruise missile. That credit belongs to Nazi Germany with the V-1. But we made the weapon better in ways that it became transformative of how long distance targets are engaged. So far, no one, and that includes US peer or near-peer opponents, demonstrated their versions of the cruise missile to be transformative to their strategies and tactics.

People are not stupid, and that includes the Iranian military leadership. Your generals and admirals are smart enough to understand EXACTLY what I have been saying. Combat experience trumps sales brochures.

 

[PeeD]

@gambit

For some reason you try to imply that I generally said that CM's are inefficient weapons, no strawman arguments please. The CM becomes inefficient in a employment regime against a IADS node equipped with state of the art point defense systems like multishot PESA Pantsir or Tor. Against such targets you need more than subsonic terrain masking CMs to get a high cost/system efficiency.
The U.S never faced such systems in its wars? Well, welcome to the reality...
It's like you send a VLO aircraft directly against a VHF AESA and wonder that it is detected at some point... employ CMs in a good way, based on battlefield intel and they are very useful. Hence no, Americans, Russians and now even Iranians are not just stupid to build CMs.

No one is stupid, F-16.net users might think Iranians are stupid but I never think Americans. I think Russians build the more effective and cost efficient weapons, I might even say hey are he better weapon makers. But this does not mean that they have a higher firepower than the Americans with their vast financial resources.

The AK is a good example. So if we want to compare it to the 3-5 times more expensive milled AR-15 we compare the AK-74 to the AR-15 which both use high velocity intermediate cartridge (not the 40's high drag 7,62 x 39). Then we can compare if the value added with the M-16 is worth a 3-5 times higher price.
A good design always takes cost into consideration and here the Russians perform much better and I claim that accuracy deficits of the AK-74 are negligible.

That was what we wanted -- complete destruction. Not just damaged capabilities.

You never use 70 CMs against a target of that size. It is amazing that you are able to keep your eyes shut on this and try to explain... Hell Americans even claimed nearly all those 70 CMs impacted because NONE were shot down (!).
So in their strange world CMs are still the weapons they used against Iraq 1991 as Syrians were not able to shot down a single one. So if you have such a formidable effective weapons I might protest if you want to send a single dozen, as the target is quite a complex and all equipment needs to be destroyed to a non-repairable state. If you want to say two dozens I will agree to it. If you want to send three dozens, I say its still ok, then the destruction is assured. If you want to say 4 or 5 dozen I begin to think that you have a childish need to reduce every pile to rubble with no effective benefit. If you want to send 6 or 7 dozens I will request a medical check-up.

But ok, maybe the U.S has that amount of excess resources to spend it. Don't expect me to understand non-rational behavior and you may want to re-check the size of that building complex again.

@Ich

The 100mm AAA is indeed one of the Iranian systems which would have a high cost-efficiency against CM saturation attacks. Mesbah-2 with its Phalanx-level rate of fire is also a great asset.

 

[gambit]

@gambit

For some reason you try to imply that I generally said that CM's are inefficient weapons, no strawman arguments please. The CM becomes inefficient in a employment regime against a IADS node equipped with state of the art point defense systems like multishot PESA Pantsir or Tor.

And WHEN will that happen? UNTIL the American cruise missile platform has been proven ineffective against these Russian air defense platforms, what you called as 'inefficient' is baseless speculation.

Before I was deployed to Desert Storm, which is before the Internet Age for most of you on this forum, there were no shortage of speculations, some legitimate, most were baseless, on how the US and allies were going to get caught in a 'quagmire' in Iraq. The Iraqi Army were fanatics, combat experienced against Iran, and were equipped with, as you used the cliche, 'state of the art' Soviet/Chinese weapons. We know what happened, do we?

The U.S never faced such systems in its wars? Well, welcome to the reality...
It's like you send a VLO aircraft directly against a VHF AESA and wonder that it is detected at some point...

You mean you are confident that the US have never tested our F-117, F-22, F-35, and B-2 against these freqs? And that we do not know the results and how to counter them? You have been suckered by the Russians, friend.

No one is stupid, F-16.net users might think Iranians are stupid but I never think Americans. I think Russians build the more effective and cost efficient weapons, I might even say hey are he better weapon makers. But this does not mean that they have a higher firepower than the Americans with their vast financial resources.

Now you are getting the 'big picture'.

There is an apocryphal story about WW II. A German officer and his men captured an American supply truck. They went thru its contents and found a one-week old chocolate cake from a bakery back in the US. The German officer then admitted that the war is lost for Germany. No one can fight against a foe that has enough resources to supply cakes along with ammunition to its soldiers.

Whether that story is true or not, is not the point. Imperial Japanese Navy admiral Yamamoto, the man who planned Pearl Harbor, predicted that the war is lost for Japan simply by sheer economic might from the US. The point of any war is to overwhelm the enemy at ANY point you can see and exploit.

If my 10 'good enough' missiles can overwhelm 2 or 3 of your 'superior' defense -- I win. And that is what the world sees and want to buy.

This is why whenever the US military is hamstrung by other people's rules-of-engagements (ROE), the war or local conflict ended up dragged out and casualties mounts for all sides.

So if there is a shooting fight between US and Iran, and most likely it will just US, you can toss those fancy Russian weapons sales brochures into the garbage. Yeah...Individually, whatever it is maybe technically superior, but against tactics that exploits the best features of multiple platforms that can attack from direction directions at different time? Iran WILL lose.

Seventy cruise missiles against three buildings and they got totally destroyed? Damn good shooting, I'd say...

 

[PeeD]

@gambit

Its not about any side kicking the others *** or Iran come out is a winner against a country with a several hundert times larger defense budget. It's about Americans that never fought even a close to near peer opponent since the WWII.

The most potent SAM system Iraqis had in 1991 was the SA-6, a system at 1965 level, downgraded Soviet technology. It was 25 years to late to do the change while it kicked the *** of the Israelis in 1973 when it was still a 10 year old monkey model.
No offense but I don't know which idiot claimed that Iraqis would be a near-peer opponent in 1991. Just like Iran would have been in 1991 they were a highly inferior opponent equipped with systems which were on average two decades older in generation than US, often older.
But Iran in the 80's with just a few years in power is not the 40 year old Islamic republic of today.

Russians are also not the Soviets anymore wo could do a policy of selling degraded hardware, often with 50% reduced capability.
No. The only thing that was a kind of small threat to the F-117 in 91 were a few old P-18 radars and the Americans did some extra effort to remove them from Iraqi arsenal. The rest was just a fight against a 1960s army which just had some numbers and artillery. Advantages like stealth, night-time attacks or cut communications don't work that way anymore against a 2018 Iran.
I might not believe that Syrian Russian systems shot down the 70 out of 100 as they claim. But 40 is reasonable if the sites were protected by Buk and Pansir. This are the systems that make the difference and the U.S never faced such capable systems, that's why it lives in it's 1991 bubble.

Another point: Iran does not buy Russian systems excepts for very few cases. It mainly develops own systems, often selecting Russian systems as role model and less often American ones.
Irans Sayyad-2 e.g uses a Patriot based launcher, while its 3rd Khordad is modeled on the Buk-M2.
So they have almost no monkey models there with leaked weak points.

I would never underestimate the U.S firepower, but you, as a product of the community you grew up in, has no touch of the reality.
The 70 CMs on single limited building complex and the "none shot down, all hit" claim of the U.S might be a starting point for you to get some doubts on the reality on the ground, rational.

 

[gambit]

@gambit

Its not about any side kicking the others *** or Iran come out is a winner against a country with a several hundert times larger defense budget. It's about Americans that never fought even a close to near peer opponent since the WWII.

And how is this even a legitimate criticism of US military power? And why is it targeted only at the US? What make you think Soviet/Russian weapons systems are 'superior' to US when neither variants of that country never fought against a peer or near-peer opponent?

The most potent SAM system Iraqis had in 1991 was the SA-6, a system at 1965 level, downgraded Soviet technology. It was 25 years to late to do the change while it kicked the *** of the Israelis in 1973 when it was still a 10 year old monkey model.
No offense but I don't know which idiot claimed that Iraqis would be a near-peer opponent in 1991. Just like Iran would have been in 1991 they were a highly inferior opponent equipped with systems which were on average two decades older in generation than US, often older.
But Iran in the 80's with just a few years in power is not the 40 year old Islamic republic of today.

Here is the flaw in your argument...

When you focused solely on the technical aspects of a weapon, you have effectively removed any tactic, human skills, experience, and institutional knowledge that WILL influence the battlefield effectiveness of that weapon. In the hands of a raw recruit fresh out of Basic, a machine gun would be useless against an experienced soldier armed with only a single shot rifle. That is what you have been telling everyone all this time when you claimed that Soviet/Russian weapons are technically superior to US.

Do you really believe that if it was the Soviets back in 1990, they could -- not would -- have defeated the F-117? No, they could not have. And if you could not, then you would not be able. Some weapons and their deployment would simply overpower their opposition on the battlefield regardless of how wealthy and advanced the source country maybe. Soviet electronics engineer Adolf Tolkachev worked for US and he confirmed that the Soviets had no credible defense against the F-111. Tolkachev did not worked on consumer products but on Soviet air defense radars.

Desert Storm shook the foundation of every military academies in the world, including the Soviets'. The first shots fired in Desert Storm was not some 'hi-tech' weaponry but from the standard Hellfire missile launched from the regular Apache helos. Not even the cruise missile was considered. We wanted literally human confirmation that the Iraqi radar stations were out of action. No other weapon platform could have provided that.

So for those military academies, including Iran's, the fact that Iraq was not a even a near-peer opponent to US is irrelevant. According to Said Aburish, Saddam Hussein's weapons buyer, Saddam Hussein tried to buy Western weapons first before he had to settle on Soviet/Chinese sources.

Advantages like stealth, night-time attacks or cut communications don't work that way anymore against a 2018 Iran.

This is called 'hubris'. Look it up.

Right now, there is not a single shred of proof -- outside the lab -- that those long wavelengths radars are effective against US 'stealth'.

I would never underestimate the U.S firepower, but you, as a product of the community you grew up in, has no touch of the reality.
The 70 CMs on single limited building complex and the "none shot down, all hit" claim of the U.S might be a starting point for you to get some doubts on the reality on the ground, rational.

You have underestimated US -- badly. We do not care if it was 70 or even 10. As long as the target is destroyed, that is all that mattered.

 

[PeeD]

@gambit

And how is this even a legitimate criticism of US military power? And why is it targeted only at the US? What make you think Soviet/Russian weapons systems are 'superior' to US when neither variants of that country never fought against a peer or near-peer opponent?

You didn't get my point: You can't brag about the fact that you obliterated Iraqis in 91 despite people said they are the 4th strongest military in the world.
Why? Because they were not, they were vastly inferior. There are worlds between Soviet capability of 91 and Iraq's.

You bring the example of Iraq often, so let me put it short: No, Iraq in 91 had several generations obsolete gear compared to U.S and Soviets. You can't use Iraq 91 to prove Soviet/Russian systems are inferior to western.

Capability wise the recent engagement was one of near-peer opponent, a representative one. JASSM against Pantsir in one of the seldom cases of equal generation systems from east and west facing each other.

That is what you have been telling everyone all this time when you claimed that Soviet/Russian weapons are technically superior to US.

I didn't say they are technically superior in general. I said they are better designs for warfare and certainly you get more bang for the buck. I would pick a M16 over a AK-74 but it doesn't change the fact that I can equip 3-4 times more units with a negligibly worse weapon.

Do you really believe that if it was the Soviets back in 1990, they could -- not would -- have defeated the F-117? No, they could not have.

Bold statement. After the hellfires you mentioned took out Iraqi P-18/-12 in the starting hours, the F-117 had free hand to attack even the most critical targets in Iraq and where still not, CM's did the job.
So no, you could not have attacked the Soviets with F-117 at will, back then they had OTH radars as well as replaced their P-18 with Nebo and all the other things like P-14 tall kings around.

So no-go areas would have vastly increased, no strikes against communication nodes at will. Soviets just didn't really believe that Americans would do all the effort for a VLO platform like the F-117. You did go the extra mile with the unlimited resources at hand. Still, as said, unlike the Iraqis their systems were not obsolete.

Soviet electronics engineer Adolf Tolkachev worked for US and he confirmed that the Soviets had no credible defense against the F-111. Tolkachev did not worked on consumer products but on Soviet air defense radars.

Not credible. A traitor with narrow knowledge on some systems making a bold claim. But well actually he is right, any air defense will have problems with terrain masking platforms. This is a general line of sight problem.
However after pop-up against a point defense protected target, a Tor or Tunguska would have cared for the F-111. If low level bombing was the plan, it again would need to come so close to release it's retarding bombs that against those systems would have cared for it.
But against all those other (many) targets, not protected by such systems the F-111 would have been great, hands down.

So for those military academies, including Iran's, the fact that Iraq was not a even a near-peer opponent to US is irrelevant. According to Said Aburish, Saddam Hussein's weapons buyer, Saddam Hussein tried to buy Western weapons first before he had to settle on Soviet/Chinese sources.

It was a impressive show of firepower and how several generations more advanced systems can make obsolete systems worthless. Everybody learned some lessons from it and some developed asymmetric counter technology to it. Soviets understood that Americans were really ready to spend money on such a exotic system like the F-117, while their rational thinking would have put that money on F-111s for example.

As for the shopping list of the Iraqis: Guess there is something truth in it. You must feel quite pissed if Soviets treat you like monkeys that deserve just weapon systems that are 25 years behind in technology than the build for themselves...

This is called 'hubris'. Look it up.

Right now, there is not a single shred of proof -- outside the lab -- that those long wavelengths radars are effective against US 'stealth'.

No hubris... if you think you those methods work the same way like on Iraq in 91 then you have the hubris.

Come on, why do you think the Apaches took out those ancient Iraqi P-18/-12 first of all? Iraqis thought those were useless junk and favored their S- and X-band assets.
There is no doubt anymore about the effect of VHF-band against fighter sized stealth. We already discussed the use of P-18 to down the F-117 over Serbia. Of course the RQ-170 also just had a strange malfunction and Iranians didn't detect it at all... Resonance regimes and Rayleigh-, Mie-scattering are pretty well understood effects by now.
This does not mean that stealth does not offer that extra of capability that can decide on life or death. Stealth is good, but no one in the east could believe the Americans would spend so much money on such a technology and really produce the cockroach.

Let me just state here the fact that no F-117 will be able to drop LGBs on a communication node undetected if a VHF-Nebo is around. No F-35 will attack Russian S-400 with a volley of SDBs.
But a RQ-170 will use its stand-off GMTI if the airspace is not sufficiently covered by VHF assets and offer a great added capability.

You have underestimated US -- badly. We do not care if it was 70 or even 10. As long as the target is destroyed, that is all that mattered.

I don't think so. I just know that only the U.S can afford to spend so many expensive weapons on such a limited size target, around the load out of a cruiser for one building complex, more than 70 million USD.... Good for your opponents that you make war like that...

 

[Blue In Green]

@gambit

For some reason you try to imply that I generally said that CM's are inefficient weapons, no strawman arguments please. The CM becomes inefficient in a employment regime against a IADS node equipped with state of the art point defense systems like multishot PESA Pantsir or Tor. Against such targets you need more than subsonic terrain masking CMs to get a high cost/system efficiency.
The U.S never faced such systems in its wars? Well, welcome to the reality...
It's like you send a VLO aircraft directly against a VHF AESA and wonder that it is detected at some point... employ CMs in a good way, based on battlefield intel and they are very useful. Hence no, Americans, Russians and now even Iranians are not just stupid to build CMs.

No one is stupid, F-16.net users might think Iranians are stupid but I never think Americans. I think Russians build the more effective and cost efficient weapons, I might even say hey are he better weapon makers. But this does not mean that they have a higher firepower than the Americans with their vast financial resources.

The AK is a good example. So if we want to compare it to the 3-5 times more expensive milled AR-15 we compare the AK-74 to the AR-15 which both use high velocity intermediate cartridge (not the 40's high drag 7,62 x 39). Then we can compare if the value added with the M-16 is worth a 3-5 times higher price.
A good design always takes cost into consideration and here the Russians perform much better and I claim that accuracy deficits of the AK-74 are negligible.



You never use 70 CMs against a target of that size. It is amazing that you are able to keep your eyes shut on this and try to explain... Hell Americans even claimed nearly all those 70 CMs impacted because NONE were shot down (!).
So in their strange world CMs are still the weapons they used against Iraq 1991 as Syrians were not able to shot down a single one. So if you have such a formidable effective weapons I might protest if you want to send a single dozen, as the target is quite a complex and all equipment needs to be destroyed to a non-repairable state. If you want to say two dozens I will agree to it. If you want to send three dozens, I say its still ok, then the destruction is assured. If you want to say 4 or 5 dozen I begin to think that you have a childish need to reduce every pile to rubble with no effective benefit. If you want to send 6 or 7 dozens I will request a medical check-up.

But ok, maybe the U.S has that amount of excess resources to spend it. Don't expect me to understand non-rational behavior and you may want to re-check the size of that building complex again.

@Ich

The 100mm AAA is indeed one of the Iranian systems which would have a high cost-efficiency against CM saturation attacks. Mesbah-2 with its Phalanx-level rate of fire is also a great asset.

Mesbah-2 has been developed already?

 

[Ich]

The best way to place the iraqi army in 91 is to look with what army Iran defeated them some years before.

 

[gambit]

@gambit

You didn't get my point: You can't brag about the fact that you obliterated Iraqis in 91 despite people said they are the 4th strongest military in the world.
Why? Because they were not, they were vastly inferior. There are worlds between Soviet capability of 91 and Iraq's.

Then it looks like no one got your point because back then, every military in the world was predicting 'Vietnam War' era casualties for the US and allies. Even US got into the act because before deployment, our squadron received the typical 'worst case' scenarios briefing that covers everything from NBC weapons to POWs.

Look at China's PLA today for its reforms. Got American signatures all over. The PLA leadership presented to the Politburo its analysis that while the US and allies would win, the Iraqi Army would inflict thousands, if not tens of thousands, casualties thanks to and in large part of Soviet/Chinese weapons and tactics. It ended we were more in danger of fratricide than of those Soviet/Chinese weapons and tactics.

Yours is the typical hindsight 20/20 criticism that everyone despises. You offer no insights, not even an addition to the current retroactive studies that are still being circulated today on how to fight a modern war.

You bring the example of Iraq often, so let me put it short: No, Iraq in 91 had several generations obsolete gear compared to U.S and Soviets. You can't use Iraq 91 to prove Soviet/Russian systems are inferior to western.

Here is what you missed...And probably because you never served to understand better. Am not saying that as an insult but as a matter of fact.

Weapons and tactics have a push-pull relationship to each other. Tactics hints at human interventions. The implications are enormous on the battlefields. If you are given a machine gun, but did not deploy it in positions to take advantage of its capabilities, the machine is no good to your army and you will be be defeated. No matter how much you extols the virtues of the machine gun after defeat, it will extremely difficult to see that weapon in a positive light.

The Soviets do make excellent, not merely good, hardware. But the centralized ground control and command doctrines that they, and the Chinese, exported proved inadequate in large scale at Desert Storm. Tactics, or poorly designed tactics, crippled whatever good features of the hardware. That was one major hard lessons of Desert Storm. And it looks like that lesson was missed in this forum.

Bold statement. After the hellfires you mentioned took out Iraqi P-18/-12 in the starting hours, the F-117 had free hand to attack even the most critical targets in Iraq and where still not, CM's did the job.
So no, you could not have attacked the Soviets with F-117 at will, back then they had OTH radars as well as replaced their P-18 with Nebo and all the other things like P-14 tall kings around.

Damn right it is, and I have no problems making it.

The initial opening of the Iraq air defense radar net was not for the F-117, as you seemed to imply. It was to create a radar coverage hole large enough for ALL air assets to exploit for as long as the Iraqis continued to remain confused. And the confusion is what you missed.

This is not the movies where everything reacts instantaneously. The few minutes that Iraqi centralized command structures needed to confirm that the radar gap was not due to hardware failure -- was what we intended. When you have weapons that travels at several hundreds km/hr, every minute lost in translation is X distance of km that the enemy covered towards your positions that has no response mechanisms. That had nothing to do with how sophisticated the hardware.

So yes, that was a hard lesson about 'stealth' for the Soviets and their clients who bought their hardware and uses their tactics. So yes, I have no problems saying that if it was the Soviets, they would have been 'shocked and awed' by the F-117 and everything that flew that night.

Not credible. A traitor with narrow knowledge on some systems making a bold claim. But well actually he is right, any air defense will have problems with terrain masking platforms. This is a general line of sight problem.

Absolutely credible. His 'traitor' accusation had nothing to do with the technical data that he gave to US. When I was on the F-111, at every arms reduction negotiations, the Soviets demanded that we remove the F-111 from the UK basing. And each time we told the Soviets to STFU. Tactics is where you exploit any gap, be it technological or human caused or both. Tolkachev confirmed just one of our many suspicions. Your slur of him revealed an emotion bias, not objectivity as you should have been.

However after pop-up against a point defense protected target, a Tor or Tunguska would have cared for the F-111. If low level bombing was the plan, it again would need to come so close to release it's retarding bombs that against those systems would have cared for it.
But against all those other (many) targets, not protected by such systems the F-111 would have been great, hands down.

I remember one excellent night air refueling training sortie and I was fairly new on the jet. It was a four-ship flight. After refueled, lead was contacted and asked if the flight was willing to help the French with their new experimental air defense radar. The flight split into two attack elements, approaching from north and west. The pilot asked how low can we go over the Channel and I, in the WSO seat, said about 50 ft or about 20 meters. Both flights did pop ups within a few seconds of each other. If it was a nuclear delivery, it would have been over for the target area. The French air defense radar never picked up the F-111s because the approach altitude was too low.

Do not tell US what we 'need' to do based upon your inexperience.

No hubris... if you think you those methods work the same way like on Iraq in 91 then you have the hubris.

No, we do not. But what we are is the world's most self critical military. We have no problems with anyone's image of US as we do not care. We have not been idle since Desert Storm. In fact, many things we used in DS we discarded in light of newer technologies and tactics that those new technologies revealed. So maybe you should consider the possibility that it is YOU who have been stuck on Desert Storm because it was not yours to start, and that you cannot expand upon the lessons it produced, whereas we can.

Come on, why do you think the Apaches took out those ancient Iraqi P-18/-12 first of all? Iraqis thought those were useless junk and favored their S- and X-band assets.
There is no doubt anymore about the effect of VHF-band against fighter sized stealth. We already discussed the use of P-18 to down the F-117 over Serbia.

NATO flew over 30,000 sorties over Yugoslavia and lost only two jets: An F-16 and an F-117.

That is not an air defense combat record to boast at the bar.

Am going to ask you again: Do you really believe that we do not know of basic radar principles, at all bands, when we designed our 'stealth' platforms, and that we do not know how to counter them, either with technologies or tactics or both?

Your avoidance of those questions reveals much about your fear -- that you really do not have that much confidence in what the Russians and Chinese claimed.

No one on this forum is a greater proponent of 'stealth' than I, because I have seen its effects first hand. You have not. All you have are sales brochures from sellers who either have no experience or is struggling with the technology.

Let me just state here the fact that no F-117 will be able to drop LGBs on a communication node undetected if a VHF-Nebo is around. No F-35 will attack Russian S-400 with a volley of SDBs.

That is no 'fact'. You do not know the meaning of the word. That is hubris.

I don't think so. I just know that only the U.S can afford to spend so many expensive weapons on such a limited size target, around the load out of a cruiser for one building complex, more than 70 million USD.... Good for your opponents that you make war like that...

Yes, you have underestimated US in this debate. War is not a boxing match where both contestants fights within boundaries. We do not care if people mock US for using outsized quantity of X weapons against a target. If a fly needed to be killed and all we have is a rocket, we will use that rocket to kill that fly if such an action will help win the war.

I will put this bluntly: Except for acts of war crimes, in a war, the end always justifies the means.

 

[WordsMatter]

Then it looks like no one got your point because back then, every military in the world was predicting 'Vietnam War' era casualties for the US and allies. Even US got into the act because before deployment, our squadron received the typical 'worst case' scenarios briefing that covers everything from NBC weapons to POWs.

Look at China's PLA today for its reforms. Got American signatures all over. The PLA leadership presented to the Politburo its analysis that while the US and allies would win, the Iraqi Army would inflict thousands, if not tens of thousands, casualties thanks to and in large part of Soviet/Chinese weapons and tactics. It ended we were more in danger of fratricide than of those Soviet/Chinese weapons and tactics.

Yours is the typical hindsight 20/20 criticism that everyone despises. You offer no insights, not even an addition to the current retroactive studies that are still being circulated today on how to fight a modern war.


Here is what you missed...And probably because you never served to understand better. Am not saying that as an insult but as a matter of fact.

Weapons and tactics have a push-pull relationship to each other. Tactics hints at human interventions. The implications are enormous on the battlefields. If you are given a machine gun, but did not deploy it in positions to take advantage of its capabilities, the machine is no good to your army and you will be be defeated. No matter how much you extols the virtues of the machine gun after defeat, it will extremely difficult to see that weapon in a positive light.

The Soviets do make excellent, not merely good, hardware. But the centralized ground control and command doctrines that they, and the Chinese, exported proved inadequate in large scale at Desert Storm. Tactics, or poorly designed tactics, crippled whatever good features of the hardware. That was one major hard lessons of Desert Storm. And it looks like that lesson was missed in this forum.


Damn right it is, and I have no problems making it.

The initial opening of the Iraq air defense radar net was not for the F-117, as you seemed to imply. It was to create a radar coverage hole large enough for ALL air assets to exploit for as long as the Iraqis continued to remain confused. And the confusion is what you missed.

This is not the movies where everything reacts instantaneously. The few minutes that Iraqi centralized command structures needed to confirm that the radar gap was not due to hardware failure -- was what we intended. When you have weapons that travels at several hundreds km/hr, every minute lost in translation is X distance of km that the enemy covered towards your positions that has no response mechanisms. That had nothing to do with how sophisticated the hardware.

So yes, that was a hard lesson about 'stealth' for the Soviets and their clients who bought their hardware and uses their tactics. So yes, I have no problems saying that if it was the Soviets, they would have been 'shocked and awed' by the F-117 and everything that flew that night.


Absolutely credible. His 'traitor' accusation had nothing to do with the technical data that he gave to US. When I was on the F-111, at every arms reduction negotiations, the Soviets demanded that we remove the F-111 from the UK basing. And each time we told the Soviets to STFU. Tactics is where you exploit any gap, be it technological or human caused or both. Tolkachev confirmed just one of our many suspicions. Your slur of him revealed an emotion bias, not objectivity as you should have been.


I remember one excellent night air refueling training sortie and I was fairly new on the jet. It was a four-ship flight. After refueled, lead was contacted and asked if the flight was willing to help the French with their new experimental air defense radar. The flight split into two attack elements, approaching from north and west. The pilot asked how low can we go over the Channel and I, in the WSO seat, said about 50 ft or about 20 meters. Both flights did pop ups within a few seconds of each other. If it was a nuclear delivery, it would have been over for the target area. The French air defense radar never picked up the F-111s because the approach altitude was too low.

Do not tell US what we 'need' to do based upon your inexperience.


No, we do not. But what we are is the world's most self critical military. We have no problems with anyone's image of US as we do not care. We have not been idle since Desert Storm. In fact, many things we used in DS we discarded in light of newer technologies and tactics that those new technologies revealed. So maybe you should consider the possibility that it is YOU who have been stuck on Desert Storm because it was not yours to start, and that you cannot expand upon the lessons it produced, whereas we can.


NATO flew over 30,000 sorties over Yugoslavia and lost only two jets: An F-16 and an F-117.

That is not an air defense combat record to boast at the bar.

Am going to ask you again: Do you really believe that we do not know of basic radar principles, at all bands, when we designed our 'stealth' platforms, and that we do not know how to counter them, either with technologies or tactics or both?

Your avoidance of those questions reveals much about your fear -- that you really do not have that much confidence in what the Russians and Chinese claimed.

No one on this forum is a greater proponent of 'stealth' than I, because I have seen its effects first hand. You have not. All you have are sales brochures from sellers who either have no experience or is struggling with the technology.


That is no 'fact'. You do not know the meaning of the word. That is hubris.


Yes, you have underestimated US in this debate. War is not a boxing match where both contestants fights within boundaries. We do not care if people mock US for using outsized quantity of X weapons against a target. If a fly needed to be killed and all we have is a rocket, we will use that rocket to kill that fly if such an action will help win the war.

I will put this bluntly: Except for acts of war crimes, in a war, the end always justifies the means.

very well articulated... Well said about the hubris of IRI and the prevailing ignorance amongst those who falsely assume, wish really, that IRI will be the David that brought down the US Goliath.

 

[Muhammed45]

very well articulated... Well said about the hubris of IRI and the prevailing ignorance amongst those who falsely assume, wish really, that IRI will be the David that brought down the US Goliath.

@Serpentine
Derailing, off topic insulting Iran. He doesn't add anything logical to this section, Iranian air defense system. But just trolling

Do something, thanks mod

 

[WordsMatter]

@Serpentine
Derailing, off topic insulting Iran. He doesn't add anything logical to this section, Iranian air defense system. But just trolling

Do something, thanks mod

That's funny...

 

[Muhammed45]

That's funny...

@Serpentine

 

[PeeD]

@gambit

When I criticize the U.S it is on a high level and then mainly the defense industry not the services. I also must say that you are spoiled for your previous conflicts, while I talk more on the technological side.
Irans military has transformed 180° from desert storm to now.

If you would have been on the sober technological side of things you would have questioned that bullshit of "4th strongest military" in 91.
You would have known that Soviets gave Iraqis 1950's vintage pure steel penetrators for their tank guns.
You would have known that their static ground based air defense, despite being modeled on Soviet role model used compromised French systems because again: Soviets wanted to sell them early 1960's vintage C2 in the late 80's.

No. Everyone with such knowledge would have predicted a deep generational discrepancy that would end very sad.
And still they shot down more than 50 aircraft...

The Americans did a good job there and had good tactics and training. But don't sell be such hero stories, at least not to me here.

When Iraq attacked Iran they did not manage to take a single city. While Iran was just a few year old military with war experience and total lack of gear, it managed to cut of Iraqis from the sea from which they exported their most vital resource.
All this despite the west provided it with all possible intelligence from AWACS data to satellite and U2 imagery.
So Iran did this to the "4th best military in the world" and Iraqis could only break that siege via unprecedented (since WWI) use of chemical weapons, with the OK from the west.
So yes, don't sell me those story and Iran knows what a total war means, without any limits.

DS was a impressive show of firepower and how several generations of technological gap between adversaries can lead to total obliteration of the obsolete side. It was the first "modern" war.

Look at China's PLA today for its reforms. Got American signatures all over. The PLA leadership presented to the Politburo its analysis that while the US and allies would win, the Iraqi Army would inflict thousands, if not tens of thousands, casualties thanks to and in large part of Soviet/Chinese weapons and tactics. It ended we were more in danger of fratricide than of those Soviet/Chinese weapons and tactics.

I have absolutely no respect from pre mid 90's PLA conventional capability. The gap between them and Soviets was very large and they just tried to copy their role model. So sorry, absolutely unimportant what 1991 conventional PLA thought or not.

The Soviets do make excellent, not merely good, hardware. But the centralized ground control and command doctrines that they, and the Chinese, exported proved inadequate in large scale at Desert Storm. Tactics, or poorly designed tactics, crippled whatever good features of the hardware. That was one major hard lessons of Desert Storm. And it looks like that lesson was missed in this forum.

It's not the Soviets fault that Saddam was stupid.
You can't have an proper ground based IADS if all components are not available and redundancy is to low.
The Iraqi or even PLA IADS of 91 were not flexibel or powerful enough to win a war against U.S airpower. The Soviet IADS was on the other side, but they kept it for themselves, never thought about exporting it.
Was it immune to terrain masking aircraft? No, but who in the world back than had such a capability? Nobody.
Was it capable to detect and kill F-117? Certainly..., probably the only military back then that could do that.

So yes, that was a hard lesson about 'stealth' for the Soviets and their clients who bought their hardware and uses their tactics. So yes, I have no problems saying that if it was the Soviets, they would have been 'shocked and awed' by the F-117 and everything that flew that night.

This kind of hubris, makes me wonder how much of the technological side was present in the U.S fighter community.

Yes, Soviet clients with second and third grade gear were probably pissed. Soviets themselves probably thought, damn, now we need to make systems like the Nebo, export items, without heavy downgrading.
But they certainly knew one thing: Those high flying subsonic F-117 will be a nice snack for our interceptors once or large P-14 or Nebo network start to detect them...

Absolutely credible. His 'traitor' accusation had nothing to do with the technical data that he gave to US. When I was on the F-111, at every arms reduction negotiations, the Soviets demanded that we remove the F-111 from the UK basing. And each time we told the Soviets to STFU. Tactics is where you exploit any gap, be it technological or human caused or both. Tolkachev confirmed just one of our many suspicions. Your slur of him revealed an emotion bias, not objectivity as you should have been.

Rather not emotional bias but wondering how someone can think a technology leak in one field would mean the U.S would have "known it all" about Soviet gear. What information did he provide you about the Nebo? Did he work on it too?
No, he had limited knowledge about a limited amount of systems.

Terrain masking is up until today something that is extremely difficult to counter. Exploiting a physical effect (LOS) is easier than designing something that creates a physical effect (F-117).

I remember one excellent night air refueling training sortie and I was fairly new on the jet. It was a four-ship flight. After refueled, lead was contacted and asked if the flight was willing to help the French with their new experimental air defense radar. The flight split into two attack elements, approaching from north and west. The pilot asked how low can we go over the Channel and I, in the WSO seat, said about 50 ft or about 20 meters. Both flights did pop ups within a few seconds of each other. If it was a nuclear delivery, it would have been over for the target area. The French air defense radar never picked up the F-111s because the approach altitude was too low.

Do not tell US what we 'need' to do based upon your inexperience.

Good example. For nuclear delivery terrain masking can almost always guarantee reaching within 20km of the target which might be sufficient.
What was your conventional plan against Tor and Tunguska protecting a war deciding asset? Hoping that they are junk?

Look at your "Do not tell US what we 'need' to do" hubris. What I see is a highly trained military which does not make as good decisions on equipment as the Russians/Soviets and it's mainly due to your defense industry.

NATO flew over 30,000 sorties over Yugoslavia and lost only two jets: An F-16 and an F-117.

That is not an air defense combat record to boast at the bar.

We are on the technological side of things. Yes Iraqis had a 100 times larger air defense force and shoot down 50 coalition aircraft... Completely unimportant.

What is important is the case of 1950's and 60's P-18 and SA-3 shooting down a 80's "superweapon". Plus the hubris to think that this "superweapon" would then have shock and awed 1991 Soviets.

Am going to ask you again: Do you really believe that we do not know of basic radar principles, at all bands, when we designed our 'stealth' platforms, and that we do not know how to counter them, either with technologies or tactics or both?

Your avoidance of those questions reveals much about your fear -- that you really do not have that much confidence in what the Russians and Chinese claimed.

Answer: Americans know very well about the long wave problem of their VLO assets. They think the extra benefit against fire control radars is well worth the extra financial effort. They are also wise enough to know that the F-117 would be ineffective against a near-peer opponent today and is a very cost inefficient system.
They also know that their stealth is highly effective against all the countries, except for those who are at near-peer level.
So in total: Stealth is a very expensive but certainly good to have capability and still you will never attack a asset like the S-400 due to it.

Btw. Chinese only became mature in IADS in the 2000's if you ask me.

Yes, you have underestimated US in this debate. War is not a boxing match where both contestants fights within boundaries. We do not care if people mock US for using outsized quantity of X weapons against a target. If a fly needed to be killed and all we have is a rocket, we will use that rocket to kill that fly if such an action will help win the war.

Ok if this is your explanation of the 70 CMs on one building complex issue, good for you. I believe the Russians here: At best 20 were for that target, the rest were shot down when they attempted to target more critical targets protected by Buk an Pantsir. This is the wake up call for the U.S, the first such case, just like the F-117 was the first such case back then.

@BlueInGreen2

Mesbah-2 is the designation for the 8 barrel variant, as far as I remember.