NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Vol. 11.0

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Some more thinke

[The Akasha Colony]

True there are exceptions and I hope to be one when I'm older.
Also I'm closer to 18 than 16.
But the best new enlisted combat soldiers would be about 18,
By 30 they could be a Sergeant.
It they start training at 16 they could have 2 years of training.

That's not really how it works, since most positions except for technical ones do not benefit from years of training. And the ones that do generally don't require any kind of peak physical performance.

The reason why basic and even specialty training periods are measured in weeks and not years is because the best long-term training is ultimately to just put the soldier in a unit and let him learn on the job, especially if that unit is able to conduct realistic field exercises. Of course, to do this the soldier needs to already be capable of pulling his weight so that you aren't relying on 16 year olds who are still maturing.

You're really overblowing this notion of "best soldiering years." It's not like a soldier will start needing a walker the moment they hit 25. Most militaries will accept new enlistees into their late 20s or even mid-30s.

[Austrasien]

Let's talk about heliborne offensive ECM instead of the latest teenaged memes.
Considering that we just had a fairly exhaustive discussion on attack helicopters vs SHORADS vs MQ-1's and how attack helicopters are apparently pretty vulnerable... I wonder if there's use in heliborne offensive ECM while fighting people that aren't ISIS.

Yes though a drone is probably better because a decent MALE or HALE drone can hang around in the sky for about a day. In most cases, an aircraft with a jammer is most useful in the air. No surprise there.

Now, the idea of trolling SAMs by repeatedly popping up, jamming them, then dipping back below the horizon is fairly amusing. If they are not supported by aircraft this would be a very difficult tactic to counter. The main risk would be the helicopter unintentionally blundering into an AAA nest while doing it.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Now, the idea of trolling SAMs by repeatedly popping up, jamming them, then dipping back below the horizon is fairly amusing. If they are not supported by aircraft this would be a very difficult tactic to counter. The main risk would be the helicopter unintentionally blundering into an AAA nest while doing it.

Apparently the Soviets/Russians got pretty good use of their Mi-8 jammers disrupting Israeli Hawk's and Georgian SA-6/3's. <.>
Otoh those are pretty legacy systems so idk if the same would work on things like SAMP/T or similar.

[Immoren]

By 30 they could be a Sergeant.

They could be sergeant by 20-21 if you weren't a coward.

[Gallia-]

Now, the idea of trolling SAMs by repeatedly popping up, jamming them, then dipping back below the horizon is fairly amusing. If they are not supported by aircraft this would be a very difficult tactic to counter. The main risk would be the helicopter unintentionally blundering into an AAA nest while doing it.

Apparently the Soviets/Russians got pretty good use of their Mi-8 jammers disrupting Israeli Hawk's and Georgian SA-6/3's. <.>
Otoh those are pretty legacy systems so idk if the same would work on things like SAMP/T or similar.

You can make a jammer that would work on those pretty easily?

Let's talk about heliborne offensive ECM instead of the latest teenaged memes.
Considering that we just had a fairly exhaustive discussion on attack helicopters vs SHORADS vs MQ-1's and how attack helicopters are apparently pretty vulnerable... I wonder if there's use in heliborne offensive ECM while fighting people that aren't ISIS.

Yes though a drone is probably better because a decent MALE or HALE drone can hang around in the sky for about a day. In most cases, an aircraft with a jammer is most useful in the air. No surprise there.

Now, the idea of trolling SAMs by repeatedly popping up, jamming them, then dipping back below the horizon is fairly amusing. If they are not supported by aircraft this would be a very difficult tactic to counter. The main risk would be the helicopter unintentionally blundering into an AAA nest while doing it.

Honestly I figured the use of helicopters vs. fixed wing IL-20s or something was because they could pop up at semi-random places and not be easily destroyed by Lance or Pershing I OCA, or fighter sweeps. Would be hard for a IL-20 to do the same, or a drone, I guess. Theater level jamming equipment also isn't cheap so putting it on a platform that won't get yeeted out of the sky at the drop of a hat is probably a good deal.

OTOH drones might be the ideal chaff corridor producer since chaff is cheap and drones are cheap. :thonkle:

Some more thinke

Young people should live harsh lives, old people comfortable ones.

Mengzi already figured this out 2,000 years ago lmao.

[The New California Republic]

Now, the idea of trolling SAMs by repeatedly popping up, jamming them, then dipping back below the horizon is fairly amusing. If they are not supported by aircraft this would be a very difficult tactic to counter. The main risk would be the helicopter unintentionally blundering into an AAA nest while doing it.

It would just be a mild annoyance if anything. But if you really did want to counter it, then I suppose you could use some emitting decoys to bait the helicopter into a certain area so you aren't risking actual systems, triangulate a rough position using ELS, and set up a kill box with camouflaged SPAAGs and/or heatseekers.

[Gallia-]

That's great except the helicopter isn't flying into the SAM site or whatever. I'm not sure they would need to cross over the IGB IRL except if the Soviets had pushed forwards far enough, and that means killing everything in their way.

Unless you're implying the West Germans had some sort of secret Gepard network of AAA guns hiding inside East Germany, I'm not sure what you mean by that.

It's going to be doing a racetrack a few dozen or a hundred kilometers away, or it's popping up when tactical fighters are making an attack run on already visually identified SAM systems in the area, or it's popping up to make the SAM troops think there is a aircraft raid happening just to bother them. The only thing that will reliably be able to engage it is a fighter jet or a long range SAM like S-300 or MIM-104, i.e. the things it is bothering. It isn't a mild annoyance to a crew when they can't actually use their radar, it's a lethal blow to their ability to do their job. Because you have successfully suppressed the enemy air defenses.

Also a radar decoy like TLQ-32 isn't going to be reacting the same way to jamming attempts as a MPQ-65 (it isn't really responsive to jamming attempts at all because it is functionally also a jammer), so it can be easily classified by the jammer as a decoy and marked as such as on the electronic order of battle. If you want a realistic radar decoy then you sorta have to build a radar, at least to fool a theater level jammer like the kinds you find on Hip-KYZs or whatever. It will still fool an ARM though, but that also means it's being deployed in a co-located area with the radars you're trying to attack to begin with. If you can get a visual image of the SAM site (not that hard, anymore) then you can figure out where everything is and target the SAMs with MRLs or something, too. The attack jammer is more what you do when you don't have the MRL capacity to spare to silence every SAM, so instead you silence them by jamming.

No one cares if you have decoys if your HPIRs or UHF radar is lighting up. You'll be jamming regardless and the decoys aren't going to help with that unless they are not really decoys but rather pretending to be search radars, since the point of SAM site decoys is to lure ARMs away from the main radar. The jammer is going to waiting for confirmed missile launches and direct its jammer on illuminators or search radars in the vicinity of the launcher, and if it's facing a battalion sized target (whether real or imagined) it will end up trying to jam parts it thinks are real, and destroy parts it can't jam, because it's not going to ignore the emissions of the battery. And then of course, the decoy will not respond to jamming attempts in the same way as a Q-65 (decoys like ARM-D don't really frequency hop or even detect emissions), so it can be easily filtered by a modern jammer. And by the time you add all that...you aren't much different from a Q-65 to begin with.

There is a reason no one has deployed a decoy designed to emulate a radar system in its most genuine form: it's expensive. You get ARM decoys and visual decoys to construct fake radar sites. These are probably not realistic against state-of-the-art jammers of the 2010s since they will be very different in how they react to jamming attempts. You are better off deploying real systems with ARM-Ds, MAWS, VIRSS generators, and chaff instead of fake ones. That should seduce passive guided ARMs, active ones, and laser guided bombs fine. Fake launchers are of course fine, but the difference is they'll be intermingled with real systems and real radars, both to make the battery seem much bigger on the EOOB and because there is no real way to replicate a radar in all the ways it can be interrogated by ELINT without building an actual radar.

The decoys exist as a part of the real battery, they are not separate, and they aren't going to make the enemy think there is a battalion there is actually nothing. They'll make the enemy confused for a few moments until he realizes everything is fake and flies in at 30,000 feet, above the range of guns and MANPADS, and kills whatever is behind it. OTOH it is far easier to make a battery look like a battalion because you will still have real radar emissions and real (and fake) launchers, so the image formed is much more reasonable. Yes, there are radars here (there might only be one) but they are emitting at different times and intervals to cover each other while the rest are being moved into hide positions, or something to that effect.

Though with that, at best you've delayed a potential air attack while the enemy musters their forces to face your fake Patriot battalion(s). This isn't bad per se, but it's not going to do anything except drain theater jammers, tactical fighters, and MRL rounds for a little bit if that's all you do. You kinda have to follow that up with a air counter-offensive in a place where the resources are being drained from.

What Kyiv is talking about is more "blundering into an ISIS DShK or SA-7s" rather than "roving patrols of Gepards or Pantsirs swatting it", the former of which is a pretty realistic problem in a place like Syria (it's happened to MQ-9s), but not so much the latter which is technothriller fantasy since we already know the efficacy of Gepards and Pantsirs at killing low, slow aircraft is a tad poor. Also the movement distances of mechanized units per day is rarely greater than a a couple dozen kilometers in wars like WW2 or Korea, because they tend to blunder into resistance every few miles, and that stops them for a day or so. In that case, simply moving the helicopter back another few dozen miles would add a week of time to the Helicopter Sniper Battalion's mission and probably end up killing it, you know, assuming anyone would waste Gepards on trying to attack a theater level jammer rather than defend tank forces against Mi-24V.

In the latter case the biggest potential problem would be enemy fighters or something similar rolling up and killing your helicopter and that's not much you can do about that besides kill enemy aircraft on the ground.

[The New California Republic]

Now, the idea of trolling SAMs by repeatedly popping up, jamming them, then dipping back below the horizon is fairly amusing. If they are not supported by aircraft this would be a very difficult tactic to counter. The main risk would be the helicopter unintentionally blundering into an AAA nest while doing it.

Apparently the Soviets/Russians got pretty good use of their Mi-8 jammers disrupting Israeli Hawk's and Georgian SA-6/3's. <.>
Otoh those are pretty legacy systems so idk if the same would work on things like SAMP/T or similar.

Yeah the Hawk, the SA-3 and SA-6 are so thoroughly compromised at this point that most half-decent military forces will have some jammer in their inventory that can counter them. It should be noted however that companies like Tetraedr offer upgrades to SA-3 that increase jam resistance of Low Blow significantly in comparison to the baseline model.

[New Vihenia]

Yeah the Hawk, the SA-3 and SA-6 are so thoroughly compromised at this point that most half-decent military forces will have some jammer in their inventory that can counter them. It should be noted however that companies like Tetraedr offer upgrades to SA-3 that increase jam resistance of Low Blow significantly in comparison to the baseline model.

The best upgrade is actually either a new engagement radar or an active/passive homing seeker. There unfortunately not much to be gained from old radars. Despite the upgrades, these radars retained their old designs, prob waveform too and therefore.. same weaknesses.

The SA-6 is the best candidate that could benefit from such upgrade. It's already have the kinematic performance, super-mobile and wide user-base. Giving it a Radar seeker and it simply on-par or bit above EU-US offers. With the only problem that no-one making new missiles anymore as it was made by Vympel which then switch to A2A and Novator were happen to not making any ducted rocket/ramjet missile anymore. SA-3 maybe the 2nd and the 5V27 missile appears to be still in production for Pechora-2A.

[The New California Republic]

Yeah the Hawk, the SA-3 and SA-6 are so thoroughly compromised at this point that most half-decent military forces will have some jammer in their inventory that can counter them. It should be noted however that companies like Tetraedr offer upgrades to SA-3 that increase jam resistance of Low Blow significantly in comparison to the baseline model.

There unfortunately not much to be gained from old radars. Despite the upgrades, these radars retained their old designs, prob waveform too and therefore.. same weaknesses.

Not necessarily, as the Tetraedr upgrade in particular appears to use a frequency hopping design with a very good spreading ratio.

[New Vihenia]

Not necessarily, as the Tetraedr upgrade in particular appears to use a frequency hopping design with a very good spreading ratio.

and the same Antenna which will obviously retain the same sidelobe level as it was when it made in 1960's. So it's susceptibility to ESM would be the same as well as jamming.

[The New California Republic]

Not necessarily, as the Tetraedr upgrade in particular appears to use a frequency hopping design with a very good spreading ratio.

and the same Antenna which will obviously retain the same sidelobe level as it was when it made in 1960's. So it's susceptibility to ESM would be the same as well as jamming.

Without seeing the tech specs, as clearly they are a closely-guarded secret, it wouldn't surprise me if the upgraded Low Blow used some form of sidelobe blanking.

[New Vihenia]

Without seeing the tech specs, as clearly they are a closely-guarded secret, it wouldn't surprise me if the upgraded Low Blow used some form of sidelobe blanking.

I mean, the radar remains susceptible to enemy ESM. your antenna sidelobe will give away your presence in rather considerable range especially it's a parabolic reflector with apparently no real attempt to control the amount of sidelobe.

Let's give an illustration on possible range of enemy ESM detection range on SNR-125. We have this equation from the David Adamy's EW-10x Book. For sidelobe detection range



Pt is your transmitter power in dB
Gs is sidelobe gain expressed in magnitude of sidelobe compared to mainlobe (0 dB means sidelobe gain is equal to mainlobe)
F is the operating frequency in MHz
Gr is the ESM's antenna gain in dB
Sens is the receiver sensitivity in big minus decibel value.

the SNR-125 have following :

Peak power of 270 KW or 84 dBm. this is not going or unlikely to change
Sidelobe gain.. is since the one emitting is the center UV-12 antenna and it's a parabolic.. one can assume say -20 Db of sidelobe
Frequency is X-band so 9000 MHz. Convert that to base 20 as wanted by the equation and we have 79.08

Now on the possible receiver, should be modern with this typical value
Sensitivity of -85 dB a modern channelized receiver
Antenna of Spiral with broad beam but can manage 5 dB in X-band.

Now we have everything so :

R=84+(-20)-32-79.08+5-(-85)
R=42.92

To get the R out from dB value we have to do some base 20 anti Log so

R=10^(42.92/20)
R=139.9 km or 140 Km.

So the enemy ESM can pick your sidelobe emissions from 140 Km. Which beyond the range of the missile :x.

In other hand if we have Phased array antenna with managed sidelobe and we can reach say -48 dB The enemy ESM detection range would be :

R=84+(-48)-32-79.08+5-(-85)
R=14.92 Or about 5.5 Km.

[The New California Republic]

Without seeing the tech specs, as clearly they are a closely-guarded secret, it wouldn't surprise me if the upgraded Low Blow used some form of sidelobe blanking.

I mean, the radar remains susceptible to enemy ESM. your antenna sidelobe will give away your presence in rather considerable range especially it's a parabolic reflector with apparently no real attempt to control the amount of sidelobe.

Yes I wasn't disputing it, I was just addressing the jamming aspect.

The Low Blow upgrade is being coupled with a decoy package, so I think they implicitly acknowledge that they can't do anything about the sidelobe issue.

[New Vihenia]

Yes I wasn't disputing it, I was just addressing the jamming aspect.

Since the antenna is the same... it would means technique to jam it e.g Inverse gain jamming will still work.

The Low Blow upgrade is being coupled with a decoy package, so I think they implicitly acknowledge that they can't do anything about the sidelobe issue.

Yeah and they can't do anything like increasing the amount of target it can engage.

Those two requires new antenna at least.

[The New California Republic]

Yes I wasn't disputing it, I was just addressing the jamming aspect.

Since the antenna is the same... it would means technique to jam it e.g Inverse gain jamming will still work.

But since Low Blow uses a LORO-mode antenna (UV-10) after target acquisition then its vulnerability to inverse gain jamming is questionable.

[New Vihenia]

But since Low Blow uses a LORO-mode antenna (UV-10) after target acquisition then its vulnerability to inverse gain jamming is questionable.

Same as the late model of SNR-75. But wont stop the jamming technique being used anyway as it may still be using same scan rate. LORO, SORO would help if none of your equipment fell into enemy's hand.

Otherwise, being Monopulse or at least Conopulse would be a much better investment. Which upgraded SNR-125 are not :x.

[The New California Republic]

But since Low Blow uses a LORO-mode antenna (UV-10) after target acquisition then its vulnerability to inverse gain jamming is questionable.

Same as the late model of SNR-75. But wont stop the jamming technique being used anyway as it may still be using same scan rate.

Yes but the only way that inverse gain jamming would work against a LORO-mode antenna is if the jammer just randomly guesses and generates the inverse gain cycle and hopes that it gets lucky; but in all likelihood it won't, or at least not fast enough to make a difference.

LORO, SORO would help if none of your equipment fell into enemy's hand.

...well, yeah...I mean, that's taken as a given. Any system is going to be compromised if it falls into enemy hands.

Otherwise, being Monopulse or at least Conopulse would be a much better investment. Which upgraded SNR-125 are not :x.

Sure, but these upgrades are usually targeted at nations that have these legacy systems and have a limited budget to spend, and simply cannot afford the multi-million dollar cost per unit that newer AESA designs or another complete replacement come with. Hence why these upgrades are a good compromise.

[Gallia-]

Then the US Air Force buys the same upgrades and you're back at square one.

[Slavakino]

Good

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 47552?s=20

[The New California Republic]

Good

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 47552?s=20

...wait, how is this relevant here? Methinks you posted in the wrong thread...

[Ideal Britain]

Is it true that conscription produces rubbish soldiers?

[Immoren]

Is it true that conscription produces rubbish soldiers?

Only problem with conscripts is retaining skill/capability if active service is short enough and rotation of conscripts fast.
Other problems can be rectified.

[The Akasha Colony]

Is it true that conscription produces rubbish soldiers?

No. It never has been.

Notice how the largest conflicts of the last century and beyond have all been fought with conscripts.