Gallia- wrote:Husseinarti wrote:The best way to kill something is to kill it with another thing like it, tanks kill tanks, ships kill ships, and jets kill jets.
Not really though. The Battle of Khafji was won by USAF, USN, and Marine Corps jets bombing hundreds of trucks, tanks, and APCs while a few BMPs and T-55s of a division's forward vanguard were annihilated by a LAR company, some AMXs, and a few attack helicopters. If the Marines had 100 tanks they might have won the slug match but the airplanes with Paveways and AGM-65 won it for them.Husseinarti wrote:Ground based air defenses are reactionary like anti-tank guided missiles,
I wouldn't say they're reactionary. They can certainly surprise pilots, but they're defensive. There are very few targets that a SAM can attack offensively (maybe a small boat or being fired ballistically at a fixed ground target) but aircraft aren't one of these. They're more like land mines in that if you're aware of their presence, or suspect it, they can be completely nullified, but if you're caught unawares they can be very dangerous and the only option is to turn tail and flee the way you came, or bull through.
Something like RBS 23 would be good if it had a passive RF search and IIR attack mode, like RIM-116, than the ACLOS radar guidance it uses ATM, at least against certain things, like cruise missiles. OTOH the ACLOS is probably better against relatively slow, maneuvering targets like helicopters. And if you're aware of high performance SAM systems you generally have to take them into account by making yourself vulnerable to other forms of attack.
An F-15 can fly with impunity in the electric eye of a MIM-104 and attack things from much higher levels of energy/altitude if the enemy plane is flying at a very low altitude because it is trying to avoid a high performance SAM. It would be more worrisome to be spotted by a fighter that's 15,000 feet above you than it would be in the reverse situation, even if both sides are aware of the other, because you have much less room to fly your plane without being shot by an AMRAAM or something. If you have a flying radar that makes it worse since it reduces the size and number of radar shadows that the enemy planes can hide in.
OTOH given the relatively crummy performance of BVR systems in combat (most "BVR" missiles tend to be fired within 5-10 miles in practice) it is a bit overzealous to say that a F-15 at 30,000 feet can stop all planes within the kinematic range of its rockets because once they burn out they effectively waste a lot of potential maneuver energy. It's enough to make me think that if a MAWS could tell you when a missile that is attacking you has run out of energy that would be up there with telling you the direction and type of radar locked onto you, because it opens an airplane up to much greater possibilities for evasive maneuver if the rocket stopped burning 10 seconds ago (a dead weight glide bomb can't outclimb twin F110s).Husseinarti wrote:something you don't like shows up and you engage it with your reactionary weapon system. Air defenses force air forces to engage in attrition fights if they choose to engage them.
Again, not necessarily.
Saddam's or Sadat's air forces couldn't fight the American or Israeli ones, even under the cover of their own SAMs (plenty of MiGs were wiped out by Python toting Mirages in 1973 because the pilots were badly trained). They were defeated easily, but the SAMs were still able to successfully defend targets until they were blown up by commandos or nullified by use of new technologies or whatever. That neither could necessarily take advantage of the SAM's strengths is no more an indictment against air defense systems than Turkey being unable to take advantage of their total air supremacy and Drone Death Stars, or America's total control of the skies in Vietnam, is an indictment against the advantages of air supremacy on being able to make it easier for ground troops to attack and take land. The fact that neither the USA nor Turkey could invade their opponents successfully doesn't really mar the advantages of air supremacy, it just means that is the current state of things in those times and places.
Turkey is probably injured more by the fact that its pilots are kinda bad (like Sadat's) and the drones are more a crutch than anything, since they can't effectively fight enemy air forces, and there isn't really any reason to believe that drones will somehow turn into autonomous superkiller 400-hours-per-year-tacair-fighter-pilots in a couple years either.
SAMs can't turn over an air defense battle by themselves anymore than a dozen planes bombing a tank division 50 miles away can stop it from stealing their airfield. Much like how the dozen planes usually ends up needing to be hundreds, most SAM defense nets tend to be relatively small versus the threats they face. They increase the amount of resources needing to be committed to win a battle. In 1973, Israel and Egypt were roughly equivalent, but Israel was prepared in a fashion to fight a major ground war against multiple opponents of the Arab armies, while Egypt was prepared to keep the army from couping Sadat, which would have naturally skewed the priorities of the establishments in a war that benefited Israel and harmed Egypt, and the USA had an economy 2.5-3x larger than the Soviets, so the relative support from the Soviets was limited vis-a-vis the Americans, even excluding the Vietnam techno-industrial-war experience.
I guess had the Israelis tried to fight 1973 by making Egypt turn itself into a liberal democracy through internal revolt, instead of marching on Cairo, they would have failed as bad as the Egyptians had because their war strategy would have been a mismatch of their pre-war priorities.
What we actually see in practice is that tiny countries, whose GDPs are smaller than the state of Texas and often poorly managed for protracted industrial warfare or other mitigating circumstances like being the epicenter of a civil war, are being mogged by 50+ Texas-sized economies and would have had no hope of seriously challenging their opponents even if they had actual Nazi UFOs or something. The fact that a few high performance missile systems, or even moderate performance ones, are being smothered shouldn't be surprising.
Maybe the last time where the small-but-noticeable effect that SAMs have against two countries fighting an air war would have tipped the balance was the Battle of Britain. In every other case they were capable of winning the battle before it starts, or the relative economic-industrial strengths of the opponents (and their marshaling of the strengths they possessed) were too large to be overcome by a single weapon. The fact that a lot of the data points are effective war marshaling economies (NATO) fighting siloized and disparate organizations in authoritarian regimes doesn't do the latter any favors, nor does the fact that they tend to be international pariahs with relatively lower industrial capacities.Husseinarti wrote:Ideally a jet just flies around an air defense radar or air defense system when it finds it, however you put those air defenses around important things like a factory, a bridge, or a divisional HQ, which that jet has to blow up.
In practice, what happens is that the thing being defended by AAA suffers significant damage anyway, or the thing being defended forces the enemy to change tactics entirely. Sometimes both. Had America not had F-117s in Desert Storm and Package Q were its only options it would have been seriously limited in its ability to conduct combat sorties over downtown Baghdad. Luckily America had a big enough economy and sufficient political will to build an airplane who's sole purpose was telling Gainful and Guideline to vacate the premises.
What SAMs really do is that they divert excess industrial resources towards breathing room, giving you more time to push additional Me-262s out the door, at least in the strategic sense.
In the tactical sense they force aborts of bombers and tac fighters and push them to lower levels of energy, making them more vulnerable to additional air defense systems during the egress or during defensive jinking. As planes maneuver they come closer to Earth, so setting up a "ambush" with deliberately positioned machine guns, AAA, and Strelas, and forcing a tac bomber force down to the ground by a combination of high performance SAMs and mediocre fighters is eminently viable provided everything goes correctly. Naturally this is much more complex than it was in WW2, and there are more parts that can be assembled wrong, but it's usually something widespread like your tac fighter pilots simply can't get enough flight hours because the KGB is in charge of the country and keeps giving money to the strategic rocket forces, or the tac fighters are kept grounded because Erdogan is afraid that they will bomb him instead of the Syrians, or whatever. Sometimes it's justified sometimes it isn't, but regardless it happens.Husseinarti wrote:You ideally augment them with your own jets who do things.
Friendly planes in the context of an air ambush keep the ambushees from, to continue the land mine analogy, simply bulling through the AAA/SAM net at supersonic speeds and eating the losses in radios [url]or helmets[/url] or whatever. You can fly straight if someone shoots a SA-7 at you because it's a tiny rocket and you will probably outrun it if your flares don't distract it. This is what Allied tac bombers like Strike Eagle and Tornado did in Desert Storm when hitting Saddam's airbases with Durandals. It worked alright.
This is a different matter if you have a Mirage F.1 or MiG-23 on your tail because you need to start maneuvering, which bleeds energy and speed, and makes you vulnerable longer in the kill zone of the ambush. Tac bombers are like HEMTTs. They drive through ambushes and keep going where they're going. Tac fighters/escort are tanks. They attack into the jaws of the ambush and try to distract enemy AAA by strafing and shooting missiles.
Saddam's Mirages and MiGs were shot down in less than 72 hours though and even when they got on the tails of Allied bombers the Allied pilots were well practiced at low level flight in their F-111s or whatever and could make them crash anyway.Husseinarti wrote:Denying an attack run is pretty much equally as good as destroying the jet. You keep your asset and they have to rearm and refuel to try for another run.
It's virtual attrition. Stopping a bombing run today is good if you can destroy the bomber tomorrow. If you can't destroy the bomber ever it will just keep coming until you surrender. It only costs them fuel and ammo.
The people who can usually resist such campaigns the longest don't actually care much if the bomber hits its targets or not.
yeah i guess
'NUFF SAID
US ARMY AIRBORNE RANGER 1992-1993
