One of the many things about an air defense radar system that everyone has an erection over is how many targets can the radar track and actively engage. The 'track' quantity is usually higher than the 'engage' quantity. For the S-300PMU with its phased array radar, its 'engage' quantity is 6. Some people would jump to the conclusion that the 6 'engage' quantity is because there are only 6 missiles per battery. It is a reasonable assumption but it is valid only up to a point. It could mean that there are hardware and software related limitations to 6 targets. Anyway...The 6 'engage' quantity does not mean there are 6 different radar beams but that there is only ONE beam moving from one target to another. Of course, a phased array antenna would be moving its beam faster than a mechanical antenna, which is limited by structural inertia, including motor capability.
Now we come to a very important point in simulation: That there is no need for us to simulate all 6 targets.
Think about it for a moment...If the radar is crap on target resolutions -- speed, altitude and aspect angle -- for one target. It will be crap for all 6 'engage' targets. And those same resolutions will be even worse for the higher quantity 'track' targets.
Even if the above assumptions are hypothetical I would like to point out a few thing about the S-300.
First it's processing power:
96L6 Radar
100 targets simultaneously at speeds between 30 to 2,750 m/s.
Now altitude:
S-300PMU SA-10 GRUMBLE - Russia / Soviet Nuclear Forces
The S-300PMU2 Favorit can engage targets flying from 10 m to 27 km
Altitude and aspect angle:
Although I could not find a S-300 demo I did find a Tor-M1 demo, forward to 2:51-2:53 and 3:10-3:15.
Note the altitude which the targets were knocked out, also note the targets themselves were missiles, as we all know missile are smaller, faster and harder to knock out than aircraft.
When NPO Almaz made the claim that the S-300 can intercept cruise missiles and in general 'stealthy' targets they weren’t kidding, systems such as the S-300 have achieved real world kills against small rcs targets such as cruise missiles and engineers have gone to extreme lengths when testing these batteries and their radars.
The following picture shows an F-117 replica being tested, if you believe that the Serbians gave F-117 wreckage to Russia for examination than we can assume that the F-117 mock-up has similar composites and similar RAM, similar radar blockers and a similar geometry.
Now I’m not saying that an S-300 can shoot down a 'stealth' aircraft but what I am saying is that the systems on the S-300 have been put through a battery of tests and that it is far from trash; considering that the S-300's radar has been tested rigorously, it would be safe to assume that no 'LO' aircraft would feel comfortable any where near this system considering it's radar has been tested against 'LO' targets.
Also, to make the assumption that the system can engage 6 targets because there are only 6 missiles per battery would be a very reasonable assumption considering that Russia has much smaller radars that can double the number of targets engaged (12).
The S-300 also has data-link which enable it to engage 36 targets, of course this is over-kill.
The data-link is capable of more than just data transfer from SAM to SAM :
S-300PMU2 Favorit SA-20 GARGOYLE
the 83M6E2 uses its own radar data and data received from the controlled SAM systems, as well as information derived from higher control aids, elec*tronic reconnaissance troops and neighboring SAM sys*tems groupings.
The ability to share and transfer data via several methods would assure batter survivability and enhance the systems overall performance.
The need to have physical possession of the opposition's hardware is far less today than before, at least for US anyway because of our superior technological lead over the Russians. Our data analysis, meaning our ability to break down an intercepted radar signal, aka SIGINT, is all that we need to recreate the same signal characteristics using our own hardware. It does not matter if the recreated signal is transmitted by a mechanical antenna or a phased array. Given our superior lead in semiconductor technology, our data processing for one target will be superior to the Russians'. That mean our simulations will be of a lower tolerance than the actual Russian hardware and that mean our response will be more precise. It is easier for the superior to simulate the inferior than the opposite.
Soviet/Russia SAMs have always been a big threat and regarded as some of the most capable SAMs in the world regardless of the fact the Soviet Union wasn't the best in the semiconductor industry. However, Russia is not the Soviet Union, US companies such as IBM have sold Russia one of its most powerful super computers.
Currently Russia also has access to computers, microprocessor and the likes from Israel, France, Japan, and of course the United States.
The Russian semiconductor industry has also been growing, partly because of government funds, partly because of access to foreign technology and partially because Russian workers over seas.
What we do is provoke the Soviets into transmitting their air defense radars. The longer we record their transmissions, the better we understand Soviet tactics and technology.
Getting back to what we are talking about...If we can get a reasonably good sampling of the S-300's radar -- and we have -- then we can break down the signal into discrete elements like frequency, amplitude, pulse repetition freq (PRF), pulse train duration, and many more. The amount of details are dependent upon the technology available to us.
The older S-300's via the 1980s and 1970's probably/maybe because the US obtained some from former Warsaw pact nations, but modern S-300 share almost nothing in common with S-300's of decades past, so older S-300 will likely be destroyed at little to no cost, new systems, however, be more difficult to deal with.
Russia was also well aware that examples of the S-300 had fallen into wrong hands, and considering that the Soviets changed out Mig-25 systems after Victor Bilenko defected we can assume that the S-300 went through a similar process.
The S-300 was designed to defeat electronic counter measures, the designers considered everything.
Have no doubt we can replicate the S-300's radar signals to %99.999 fidelity and apply it against any aircraft we want.
New S-300's? Perhaps there might be success against old S-300 but modern day S-300's are a different systems all together, again they are designed to overcome and defeat electronic counter measures, just like American systems such as the PAC-3 were designed with the same purpose.
And not only are they designed with counter measures in mind but the ability to share data-link via different methods will make it that much more difficult to kill, especially if you have a large network of them receiving and transferring data by various means.
