NationStates Post-Modern Tech Community Thread

[Balochistan and New York]

Sorry I replied to this late... But what I mean is tech that helps my factories and whatnot manufacture faster, better and cleaner. Mainly cleaner and faster though.

Automation is the primary thing to look at then as far as running faster and more efficiently, as far as cleaner it would be more specific to each industry but things like biodegradable oils, machines that run on grease and not way oil, alternative power sources and mostly running a factory with virtually no lighting are areas to start in, I'll try expanding on this a little more later

Ok so renewable energy and automation are my key points.... So should I try to completely remove fuels in my factories or just make the factory still run on fuels but just lesser than before? Anyways Thanks

[Thoricia]

Automation is the primary thing to look at then as far as running faster and more efficiently, as far as cleaner it would be more specific to each industry but things like biodegradable oils, machines that run on grease and not way oil, alternative power sources and mostly running a factory with virtually no lighting are areas to start in, I'll try expanding on this a little more later

Ok so renewable energy and automation are my key points.... So should I try to completely remove fuels in my factories or just make the factory still run on fuels but just lesser than before? Anyways Thanks

It really depends on the industry honestly, a manufacturing facility geared towards medical supplies is going to be a clean and efficient setup mostly because the regulations are stricter and the tolerances for error are narrower so this tends to create a cleaner and more organized environment, now compare that to a company that manufactures oil filters or some other automobile consumable, for the most part the regulations are looser (except the environmental ones) and the tolerances are much more broader so it's a more relaxed and lazier atmosphere. Now one thing to consider to help ensure your manufacturing sectors run cleaner would be government regulation. Another thing to consider in some sectors and that's really taking off right now is large scale 3D printing which is currently the next revolution in manufacturing so something along those lines for certain industries are good ideas as well

[Neornith]

What do we assess to be the potential usefulness and application of laser-based CIWS and APS technology for anti-missile purposes? I personally put a fair amount of stake in them as an effective method in countering self-propelled explosive weapons, and such systems see extensive usage in my canon, from warships to APCs.

Sorry I meant to answer this sooner, if I'm remembering right (and I could be wrong) CIWS is a bit of a misnomer for the current weapons systems that exist because as I recall their use is primarily for anti-ballistic missile defense but also against small surface craft and UAV. That being said there were, and likely still are, a slew of laser weapon systems developed for awhile there, there was the Air Combat Laser which was a laser mounted on the nose of a 747, which you could likely shrink onto a carrier launched AWACS size aircraft, there was also a joint land based system developed between the Isrealis and the USA so I don't see why something similar couldn't be developed for PMT. The big issue however is the type and that's something I highly suggest you research because that is something that will have a significant impact on what you develop for your nation.

[Maljaratas]

What do we assess to be the potential usefulness and application of laser-based CIWS and APS technology for anti-missile purposes? I personally put a fair amount of stake in them as an effective method in countering self-propelled explosive weapons, and such systems see extensive usage in my canon, from warships to APCs.

Sorry I meant to answer this sooner, if I'm remembering right (and I could be wrong) CIWS is a bit of a misnomer for the current weapons systems that exist because as I recall their use is primarily for anti-ballistic missile defense but also against small surface craft and UAV. That being said there were, and likely still are, a slew of laser weapon systems developed for awhile there, there was the Air Combat Laser which was a laser mounted on the nose of a 747, which you could likely shrink onto a carrier launched AWACS size aircraft, there was also a joint land based system developed between the Isrealis and the USA so I don't see why something similar couldn't be developed for PMT. The big issue however is the type and that's something I highly suggest you research because that is something that will have a significant impact on what you develop for your nation.

Some of the slew that I found a few months ago can be found in this (2 year old) article):
http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/east ... aps-drones
Some of the stuff people have been doing include:
10 kw for shooting down drones in urban areas (Chinese)
Another 10 kw for shooting down UAVs and mortar shells (American)
15-50 kw for destroying drones, missiles, and small boats (American)
The creators of the first two have expressed that they will be upgrading power level and range.

[Haishan]

Sorry I meant to answer this sooner, if I'm remembering right (and I could be wrong) CIWS is a bit of a misnomer for the current weapons systems that exist because as I recall their use is primarily for anti-ballistic missile defense but also against small surface craft and UAV.

It seems that Vistora is trying to figure out a high energy laser (HEL) intended for CIWS usage on where he mentioned APCs. HEL would be certainly useful for that purpose, to shoot down incoming anti tank missiles thus the corollary designation of CIWS.

That being said there were, and likely still are, a slew of laser weapon systems developed for awhile there

Correct. My post in Axis Nova's thread summed what I can search on Google.

there was the Air Combat Laser which was a laser mounted on the nose of a 747, which you could likely shrink onto a carrier launched AWACS size aircraft,

While semantics, the laser is called as Airborne Laser (ABL) which was of course designated for wholly different mission. However there is the Advanced Tactical Laser on C-130, intended for American Special Operations Command use.

there was also a joint land based system developed between the Israelis and the USA so I don't see why something similar couldn't be developed for PMT.

Right, the THEL system. However the Israeli decided to make a newer system known as Iron Beam after knowing Iron Dome costs far too much to defeat Hamas >1000 USD rockets.

The big issue however is the type and that's something I highly suggest you research because that is something that will have a significant impact on what you develop for your nation.

Indeed. The question that should be asked on the other hand; what for? Don't forget the handy infographic in the spoiler below. Type of target intended to be engaged will determine size, weight and part (SWaP) limitations. Engaging a simple drone wouldn't take much than 10 kW (thus small laser) but a ballistic missile at ~300 km will demand 747-sized, 3 MW chemical laser.

For Vistora's intended application however, 100 kW-level HEL will pretty much destroy if not disable most battlefield threats encountered by an armour unit in the field, on the land. The list includes from simple mortars, artillery, anti tank missiles and helicopters that had gotten too close (burning through cockpit window or igniting rockets/missiles on pylons or cutting through the main rotor axle).

How effective it is against actual tank armour is either unknown to the public or too complex to figure out. 10-30 kW is nominally referred to be already effective against mortars but higher power (~100 kW) means less irradiation time needed to defeat the target (e.g 3 sec to defeat a mortar using 10 kW versus 1 sec with 100 kW laser) thus enabling better engagement cycles given it takes less time to engage and switch targets. Of course as I had stated earlier, it depends on envisioned scenario and SWaP limitations of the platform.

[UniversalCommons]

There are a number of ways to make factories run cleaner.
1) Amortize the cost of solar and other renewables into the cost of new construction. If the factory is planned to run 10 years, try and create a setup where the cost of the renewables will be paid off in five years. This requires long term planning. Another example of this is to build near hydroelectric in the countryside to guarantee continuous power.
2) Build in energy efficiency to reduce costs. Again, this is a long term savings. Energy efficiency would include things like natural lighting, sharing heat between buildings, etc. Also grey water recycling can be useful. Wastewater treatment is also often used.
3) Use the Eco-industrial park model where resources are shared between different factories and the community. One factories waste products or leavings can be used in another parks manufacturing. Effectively, you build recycling and shared use between factories. Again this has to be planned from the beginning. It involves research into who can use leftover chemicals and other materials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-industrial_park
4) Use very lean manufacturing. Reduce the amount of material in packaging, use lighter weight metals, make the process very lean. This is not necessarily automation, it can include lots of quality control. Less use of resources means less waste. It leads to cost savings.
5) Include greener transportation. Build next to railroad lines, time your logistics carefully.
6) Set up a lease system for manufacturing and repair with planned obsolescence for the items being manufactured. Arrange a system to bring back what is produced for recycling and reuse in manufacturing. This concept is called Cradle to Cradle manufacturing. http://www.c2ccertified.org/ Think of reduce, reuse, recycle, remanufacture, refurbish.

[The Technocratic Syndicalists]

https://youtu.be/6HYpBpG9J6o?t=227

Eh, I can't read russian and I don't put much stock into CGI videos clearly intended as a marketing tool, regardless of which company they come from.

The details of sort of shady but the US has actually purchased copies of the S-300 PMU and S-300V from former soviet satellite states. For what its worth the only time SAMs have ever been effective in combat (in terms of significantly disrupting hostile air operations) was the SA-2 early in Vietnam and the SA-6 in the beginning of the 1973 arab-isreali war when both systems were relatively new and not well understood by the attackers . After appropriate ECM was developed the effectiveness of the these missiles dropped dramatically, as in an average pk of less than 1% for the remainder of the conflict. The 92N6E fire control and 91N6E and 96L6E radars of the SA-21 system are still PESAs using TWT technology which is susceptible to barrage and repeater jamming with DRFM jammers like those employed by the ALQ-99.

There's a variety of reasons for why SAMs are on average about 1-2 orders of magnitude less effective than AAMs. One reason is SAMs can be "baited" by attacking aircraft. Generally ranges for both AAMs and SAMs are given in "head on" engagements where the target plane is flying towards the launch platform. In a tail chase on the other hand you can do the math but it usually comes out to the effective range of the missile being cut to 1/4 to 1/5 of its maximum range. So if you have an SM-6 with say a maximum range of 370km in a head-on engagement then the range becomes only 93km if the plane is flying away from the launcher.In a "bait" attack the attacking aircraft would then approach the launch platform (in this case a ship), gets the ship to fire a SAM closer to its maximum range, then immediately turns around and put the incoming SAM at its six where the missile will then eventually just run out of fuel and crash into the ocean. A common SEAD tactic is to then have the "baits" wingman, who is hiding under the radar horizon, pop up and launch an ARM. The other reason is that the overwhelming majority of missile kills, be they AAMs or SAMs, come when the pilot us unaware of the threat and does not employ evasive maneuvering or ECM. SAMs are less likely to surprise pilots because they have greater visual and radar/IR signatures and are launched from the ground (duh) with the launch usually kicking up dust and debris.

There's also the concept of a "no escape zone" which applies to AAMs but not really to SAMs when the goal is to fire them at their maximum possible range. "No escape zone" is defined as the range at which the missile can pull sufficient Gs to hit an aggressively maneuvering target. A missiles ability to pull maximum gs is related exponentially to its speed as aerodyanmic control surfaces produces force proportional to the square of freestream velocity. This means a missile has its maximum g capability at its maximum speed, which is usually when the booster and/or sustainer engine burns out. As soon as the engine burns out the missile will begin to decelerate and thus lose both maneuverability and cross-track capability. For a fighter this generally means you want to launch your missile so that its rocket motor is still burning when it reaches the target. With a a long-range SAM shot where rocket motor is burned out by the time it will reach its target the SOP is to put the missile at your three or nine so that the missiles path is perpendicular to yours which maximizes cross-track range, at which point the missile will be forced to continuously turn, increasing drag, thus decreasing its speed, and thus calling it to either loose enough energy that it can't out-maneuver the target or simply crash into the ground or ocean.

As I said earlier, any IADS worth its salt uses multi-band and multi-coverage radar systems. They would be able to tell that a swarm of these decoys that suspiciously appear out of nowhere and give readings that do not seem like an aircraft would (due to different radar wavelengths generate different responses) aren't going to be a legitimate target but, decoys. Couple that to some ESM systems and a proper SAM operator, he will find there is likely a swarm of decoys going in and he can instruct lower level assets to verify his readings, using their optical systems. In other words, the IADS will not simply run out of SAMs. Its point defense assets might, to shoot down those decoys if they're paranoid enough to think the decoys also contained some sort of warhead.

The decoys are launched well out of range of hostile radar coverage (500+ nmi) and/or below the radar horizon so they're not appearing out of nowhere. They can also fly high enough (~40k ft) to where they would be immune to lower level point defense systems. The MALD-J, as far as a I can tell, uses a DRFM system to electronically mimic the RCS of other aircraft. Radar "readings" for the most part are just a blip on a screen with the lower the wavelength the lower the resolution, the only way to "filter" the return is to measure it's RCS, velocity, heading, etc which the decoy can mimic. To get an actual "picture" of the target you would need to identify it with NCTR, something like JEM or ISAR. Radars with these modes have to operate in the X, K, W, or MMW bands to get any kind of good resolution. Even if the radar can identify as "not an aircraft" the MALD and ITALD look very cruise-misisle ish so it's likely they would be engaged anyways. You can also do target identification optically, but only at close range and during favorable weather conditions.

AARGM is indeed quite good but I digress. A notable IADS will and must have its lower level assets which are specifically designed to deal with these kinds of precision-guided weapons; IADS is a layered onion. Let's take an example of Russian IADS since it's the gold standard at the moment. The S-400 battery would be logically covered by S-350, Pantsir and occasional Tor. Additionally, it must be equipped with Gazetchik-E early warning and decoying system at least and some provision of mobile decoys.

AAGRM size might make it rather difficult to engage with higher level assets but as the missile gets closer, it will be engaged by Pantsir and Tor which were designed with this ARM (and PGM) threat in mind. Couple that with smart usage of Gazetchik, ammunition usage of aforementioned point defense system could be somewhat be saved for more critical engagements. All of these assumed higher level assets didn't shoot down the AARGM carrier, at minimum 120 km away first.

The idea is launch more HARMS/AARGMs than the IADs could ever handle at a single time. The launch aircraft fly fairly low to stay under the radar horizon and do the "bait and fire" tactic I described earlier. Both missiles (HARM and AARGM) have a fairly low-RCS and high velocity (The H doesn't stand for nothing, it's like M2 at sea level) which results in a fairly small engagement window. This is part of an "alpha strike" package which would include hundreds of HARMS and/or AARGMs as well as hundreds of decoys and surface and air launched cruise missiles launched at standoff ranges. It's a simple brute force attack, you overwhelm the defensive system with more targets than it can track at once and more targets than it has missiles to launch. For reference standard Soviet (and I presume Russian) doctrine is to double-target their SAMs (with the launch spaced by around 30 seconds to a minute depending on target range) so a single S-400 battery with eight TELS and 32 missiles would then be able to handle 16 targets before having to reload. The massive launch of standoff PGMs results in a "soft kill" where the defending assets are degraded through attrition but not completely destroyed. It's just a pure numbers game, one that overwhelmingly favors the attacking side because it can concentrate its assets as need be as opposed to the defender which has to have its assets spread out. The DEAD, or "hard kill" is then done by stealth aircraft employing gravity bombs and/or cluster munitions. TELs and radars are very much "soft" targets in that they lack armor of any kind so dropping simple unguided cluster bombs, which can cover tens of thousands of square meters with cluster bomblets, is a very reliable "hard kill" mechanism. A B-2 carrying a maximum load of CBU-87s could in theory blanket 30 square kilometers with cluster bomblets if dropped from high altitude. If the SAMs are employing "shoot and scoot" tactics the another effective tactic (and probably controversial or frowned upon in RL)would be dropping mine-laying cluster bombs on all the roads. If the IADs radars have been sufficiently attrited then this conceivably could also be done by non-stealthy aircraft, although obviously at a much higher risk.

It also goes both ways; now the IADS element (if supported by ESM systems) know it's being targeted by AARGM (the MMW radar) and thus can instruct lower level assets to engage the said AARGM directly.

The MMW radar in the AARGM is fairly small and by the nature of MMW atmospheric prorogation means it has a very short range, only a few kilometers. It's only turned on in the last few seconds of flight so relying on passive ECM for a targeting solution would be a bit of a precarious proposition.

Indeed mass fire of Tomahawk as evident in Gulf War presented big challenge to a IADS. The Soviets learnt from that experience and made their SAM elements mobile (all under ten minutes) and greater emphasis on point defense systems and decoy systems. But how many Tomahawk were fired to take out the rudimentary (not to mention highly static) Saddam's IADS? Apples and oranges here. The subsonic Tomahawk isn't going any faster to engage IADS elements that can actually move out of the way and fight back through their attendant lower level assets (Pantsir/Tor et al). Then there are decoys employed by any worthy IADS.

The TELS can move in five minutes (TELARS maybe even less) but the larger search radars can take over an hour to pack up and move (the mobile ones at least, some of them are static). Tomahawks aren't used to target mobile TELs (they currently can't hit hit moving targets), they've been used primarily to attack fixed early warning radars, power grids, airfields, and other static, high value targets. The Tomahawk flies very low to the ground which can cause fuzing issues for missiles with active proximity fuzes. During ODS 297 tomahawks were fired of which 285 successful launched. Of the 285 that launched between 2-6 were shot down and 31-35 either crashed or misses or otherwise failed to hit their targets. 124 tomahawks were launched in OOD against libya but I can't find any data on how many crashed or if any were shot down. The USN currently has like 4,000 TLAMs stockpiled so it's not like they're going to run out anytime soon.

NATO don't have a proper IADS (due to distributed nature of NATO assets) and thus the equations would be somewhat easier. Albeit even for NATO IADS, I wouldn't count on mass application of airborne units. SEAD isn't chiefly about air tactics; such mindset will give you a rude surprise if the other party know what they're doing. MALD is not that useful (inclusive versus NATO systems) except against 3rd world States.

---

I stress that NATO (or American?) tactic to deal with proper IADS is sorely lacking and will induce unacceptable losses in terms of money, time and personnel. Modern IADS are highly complex beasts (particularly for Russian and emergent Chinese systems) where ordinary American toolsets no longer effectively apply without attracting unfavourable attrition. Gulf War/Desert Storm cannot be made as the yardstick given they engaged what was monkey model, static systems. The Serbian conflict also brought a telling experience that IADS elements mobility would also challenge the opposing SEAD units.

As I said earlier, it will take more than standoff jammers (which will be shot down at extended ranges), AWACS (will be shot down at very long ranges), MALDs (can be differentiated to be ignored or engaged by point defense elements if the carrier wasn't shot down first), AARGMs (can be similarly located, decoyed and/or shot down) and Tomahawks (can be located and shot down by low level assets).

If air power is to be useful in SEAD, it must exercise low observability to avoid long wavelength radars and somehow avoid low level assets, fire fast weapons where hypersonics are preferred to compress IADS reaction time and feature their own defenses to deal and accept the fact of long ranged missile threats from said IADS. Jamming might prove some use to help stealth aircraft but considering IRL Russian/Chinese emphasis on digitizing and hardening IADS elements to such attacks, the said jammer must accept the fact that it might be shot down first after MALDs and similar were filtered out.

These of course must be combined (I stress again, must) with other parts of the Armed Forces such as armour units to deny maneuver space to the mobile IADS, artillery units to distract IADS point defense/counter-munition elements and the humble grunt behind the lines to search and locate such elusive IADS elements. It seems that you held known American tactics as good. But if we account for current developments and trends in IADS, won't do any good except fattening the paychecks of the questionable anti-IADS systems' manufacturers. On the side note, MALD conceptual video is quite misleading since it didn't even attempt to simulate the rest of IADS attendant systems and tactics.

The NATO IADS is fighter jets with AWACS support. Unlike Russia, which is enormous and thus presents the strategic challenge of defensing huge amounts of airspace, western europe is pretty small and thus the airspace you need to defend isn't nearly as big. You also don't have to use aircraft for SEAD or SEAD, army MLRS were used to suppress SAMS with cluster munitions carrying ATACMs in the prelude to ODS. You can also use howitzers or SPHs and maybe NGFS but you have to be pretty close.

Using legacy aircraft (ie nonstealthy) might result in "unfavourable attrition" (historically defined as 2% of the aircraft launched on any sortie), but only if the goal is DEAD and not simply SEAD where aircraft like the B-1 or F/A-18 can just spam cruise missiles from standoff ranges. AWACS and JSTARS also have powerful enough radars that if they maintain a flight path perpendicular to the hostile launch platform they can illuminate the target launchers while staying outside their effective missile range. Ditto for the EC-130H and it's comm jamming equipment.

Mobility works both ways as a SAM TEL or TELAR on the move can't engage any targets. Relatively few Serbian mobile SAMs were taken out by NATO SEAD assets but at the same time said Serbian SAMs achieved two (three of you count damaged but not shot down) kills out of 845 launches, a pk of less than 0.25%. If you launch a HARM and the SAM turns of its radar and relocates it's a win for the attacker, In the end it didn't matter because the Serbian air defense system never obstructed with the NATO bombing campaign in any meaningful way which means the system failed. TBF since WW2 no IADS has ever stopped anyone and their main function is more to cause the attacker to have to spend thousands of munitions neutralizing them rather than actually denying airspace to the enemy, something that can only be done with fighter aircraft.

True, that's a good point. But using ablative-explosive lasers could entail that any part of a missile may be targeted, rather than risking a miss on what I presume to be its significantly smaller targeting systems.

in any case, I'm thinking of their applicability in more widespread adoption alongside advancements in the technology that goes into them. How effective are they now is all well and good, but I'm curious as to how effective they can be in a PMT context. What can we extrapolate?

The biggest problem is power generation and cooling. For an aircraft with a HEL you can use ram-air turbines or engine bleed air for power and use the airstream and/or fuel for cooling. With a large ships you can have room for large dedicated electrical generators for power and use seawater for cooling. With a ground vehicle you're a bit limited with regards to power generation capability and the volume and weight needed for cooling so its doubtful that it could support a powerful laser (>100 kw), even if the actual laser beam generator itself is relatively compact.

[Thoricia]

https://youtu.be/6HYpBpG9J6o?t=227

Eh, I can't read russian and I don't put much stock into CGI videos clearly intended as a marketing tool, regardless of which company they come from.

The details of sort of shady but the US has actually purchased copies of the S-300 PMU and S-300V from former soviet satellite states. For what its worth the only time SAMs have ever been effective in combat (in terms of significantly disrupting hostile air operations) was the SA-2 early in Vietnam and the SA-6 in the beginning of the 1973 arab-isreali war when both systems were relatively new and not well understood by the attackers . After appropriate ECM was developed the effectiveness of the these missiles dropped dramatically, as in an average pk of less than 1% for the remainder of the conflict. The 92N6E fire control and 91N6E and 96L6E radars of the SA-21 system are still PESAs using TWT technology which is susceptible to barrage and repeater jamming with DRFM jammers like those employed by the ALQ-99.

There's a variety of reasons for why SAMs are on average about 1-2 orders of magnitude less effective than AAMs. One reason is SAMs can be "baited" by attacking aircraft. Generally ranges for both AAMs and SAMs are given in "head on" engagements where the target plane is flying towards the launch platform. In a tail chase on the other hand you can do the math but it usually comes out to the effective range of the missile being cut to 1/4 to 1/5 of its maximum range. So if you have an SM-6 with say a maximum range of 370km in a head-on engagement then the range becomes only 93km if the plane is flying away from the launcher.In a "bait" attack the attacking aircraft would then approach the launch platform (in this case a ship), gets the ship to fire a SAM closer to its maximum range, then immediately turns around and put the incoming SAM at its six where the missile will then eventually just run out of fuel and crash into the ocean. A common SEAD tactic is to then have the "baits" wingman, who is hiding under the radar horizon, pop up and launch an ARM. The other reason is that the overwhelming majority of missile kills, be they AAMs or SAMs, come when the pilot us unaware of the threat and does not employ evasive maneuvering or ECM. SAMs are less likely to surprise pilots because they have greater visual and radar/IR signatures and are launched from the ground (duh) with the launch usually kicking up dust and debris.

There's also the concept of a "no escape zone" which applies to AAMs but not really to SAMs when the goal is to fire them at their maximum possible range. "No escape zone" is defined as the range at which the missile can pull sufficient Gs to hit an aggressively maneuvering target. A missiles ability to pull maximum gs is related exponentially to its speed as aerodyanmic control surfaces produces force proportional to the square of freestream velocity. This means a missile has its maximum g capability at its maximum speed, which is usually when the booster and/or sustainer engine burns out. As soon as the engine burns out the missile will begin to decelerate and thus lose both maneuverability and cross-track capability. For a fighter this generally means you want to launch your missile so that its rocket motor is still burning when it reaches the target. With a a long-range SAM shot where rocket motor is burned out by the time it will reach its target the SOP is to put the missile at your three or nine so that the missiles path is perpendicular to yours which maximizes cross-track range, at which point the missile will be forced to continuously turn, increasing drag, thus decreasing its speed, and thus calling it to either loose enough energy that it can't out-maneuver the target or simply crash into the ground or ocean.

As I said earlier, any IADS worth its salt uses multi-band and multi-coverage radar systems. They would be able to tell that a swarm of these decoys that suspiciously appear out of nowhere and give readings that do not seem like an aircraft would (due to different radar wavelengths generate different responses) aren't going to be a legitimate target but, decoys. Couple that to some ESM systems and a proper SAM operator, he will find there is likely a swarm of decoys going in and he can instruct lower level assets to verify his readings, using their optical systems. In other words, the IADS will not simply run out of SAMs. Its point defense assets might, to shoot down those decoys if they're paranoid enough to think the decoys also contained some sort of warhead.

The decoys are launched well out of range of hostile radar coverage (500+ nmi) and/or below the radar horizon so they're not appearing out of nowhere. They can also fly high enough (~40k ft) to where they would be immune to lower level point defense systems. The MALD-J, as far as a I can tell, uses a DRFM system to electronically mimic the RCS of other aircraft. Radar "readings" for the most part are just a blip on a screen with the lower the wavelength the lower the resolution, the only way to "filter" the return is to measure it's RCS, velocity, heading, etc which the decoy can mimic. To get an actual "picture" of the target you would need to identify it with NCTR, something like JEM or ISAR. Radars with these modes have to operate in the X, K, W, or MMW bands to get any kind of good resolution. Even if the radar can identify as "not an aircraft" the MALD and ITALD look very cruise-misisle ish so it's likely they would be engaged anyways. You can also do target identification optically, but only at close range and during favorable weather conditions.

AARGM is indeed quite good but I digress. A notable IADS will and must have its lower level assets which are specifically designed to deal with these kinds of precision-guided weapons; IADS is a layered onion. Let's take an example of Russian IADS since it's the gold standard at the moment. The S-400 battery would be logically covered by S-350, Pantsir and occasional Tor. Additionally, it must be equipped with Gazetchik-E early warning and decoying system at least and some provision of mobile decoys.

AAGRM size might make it rather difficult to engage with higher level assets but as the missile gets closer, it will be engaged by Pantsir and Tor which were designed with this ARM (and PGM) threat in mind. Couple that with smart usage of Gazetchik, ammunition usage of aforementioned point defense system could be somewhat be saved for more critical engagements. All of these assumed higher level assets didn't shoot down the AARGM carrier, at minimum 120 km away first.

The idea is launch more HARMS/AARGMs than the IADs could ever handle at a single time. The launch aircraft fly fairly low to stay under the radar horizon and do the "bait and fire" tactic I described earlier. Both missiles (HARM and AARGM) have a fairly low-RCS and high velocity (The H doesn't stand for nothing, it's like M2 at sea level) which results in a fairly small engagement window. This is part of an "alpha strike" package which would include hundreds of HARMS and/or AARGMs as well as hundreds of decoys and surface and air launched cruise missiles launched at standoff ranges. It's a simple brute force attack, you overwhelm the defensive system with more targets than it can track at once and more targets than it has missiles to launch. For reference standard Soviet (and I presume Russian) doctrine is to double-target their SAMs (with the launch spaced by around 30 seconds to a minute depending on target range) so a single S-400 battery with eight TELS and 32 missiles would then be able to handle 16 targets before having to reload. The massive launch of standoff PGMs results in a "soft kill" where the defending assets are degraded through attrition but not completely destroyed. It's just a pure numbers game, one that overwhelmingly favors the attacking side because it can concentrate its assets as need be as opposed to the defender which has to have its assets spread out. The DEAD, or "hard kill" is then done by stealth aircraft employing gravity bombs and/or cluster munitions. TELs and radars are very much "soft" targets in that they lack armor of any kind so dropping simple unguided cluster bombs, which can cover tens of thousands of square meters with cluster bomblets, is a very reliable "hard kill" mechanism. A B-2 carrying a maximum load of CBU-87s could in theory blanket 30 square kilometers with cluster bomblets if dropped from high altitude. If the SAMs are employing "shoot and scoot" tactics the another effective tactic (and probably controversial or frowned upon in RL)would be dropping mine-laying cluster bombs on all the roads. If the IADs radars have been sufficiently attrited then this conceivably could also be done by non-stealthy aircraft, although obviously at a much higher risk.

It also goes both ways; now the IADS element (if supported by ESM systems) know it's being targeted by AARGM (the MMW radar) and thus can instruct lower level assets to engage the said AARGM directly.

The MMW radar in the AARGM is fairly small and by the nature of MMW atmospheric prorogation means it has a very short range, only a few kilometers. It's only turned on in the last few seconds of flight so relying on passive ECM for a targeting solution would be a bit of a precarious proposition.

Indeed mass fire of Tomahawk as evident in Gulf War presented big challenge to a IADS. The Soviets learnt from that experience and made their SAM elements mobile (all under ten minutes) and greater emphasis on point defense systems and decoy systems. But how many Tomahawk were fired to take out the rudimentary (not to mention highly static) Saddam's IADS? Apples and oranges here. The subsonic Tomahawk isn't going any faster to engage IADS elements that can actually move out of the way and fight back through their attendant lower level assets (Pantsir/Tor et al). Then there are decoys employed by any worthy IADS.

The TELS can move in five minutes (TELARS maybe even less) but the larger search radars can take over an hour to pack up and move (the mobile ones at least, some of them are static). Tomahawks aren't used to target mobile TELs (they currently can't hit hit moving targets), they've been used primarily to attack fixed early warning radars, power grids, airfields, and other static, high value targets. The Tomahawk flies very low to the ground which can cause fuzing issues for missiles with active proximity fuzes. During ODS 297 tomahawks were fired of which 285 successful launched. Of the 285 that launched between 2-6 were shot down and 31-35 either crashed or misses or otherwise failed to hit their targets. 124 tomahawks were launched in OOD against libya but I can't find any data on how many crashed or if any were shot down. The USN currently has like 4,000 TLAMs stockpiled so it's not like they're going to run out anytime soon.

NATO don't have a proper IADS (due to distributed nature of NATO assets) and thus the equations would be somewhat easier. Albeit even for NATO IADS, I wouldn't count on mass application of airborne units. SEAD isn't chiefly about air tactics; such mindset will give you a rude surprise if the other party know what they're doing. MALD is not that useful (inclusive versus NATO systems) except against 3rd world States.

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I stress that NATO (or American?) tactic to deal with proper IADS is sorely lacking and will induce unacceptable losses in terms of money, time and personnel. Modern IADS are highly complex beasts (particularly for Russian and emergent Chinese systems) where ordinary American toolsets no longer effectively apply without attracting unfavourable attrition. Gulf War/Desert Storm cannot be made as the yardstick given they engaged what was monkey model, static systems. The Serbian conflict also brought a telling experience that IADS elements mobility would also challenge the opposing SEAD units.

As I said earlier, it will take more than standoff jammers (which will be shot down at extended ranges), AWACS (will be shot down at very long ranges), MALDs (can be differentiated to be ignored or engaged by point defense elements if the carrier wasn't shot down first), AARGMs (can be similarly located, decoyed and/or shot down) and Tomahawks (can be located and shot down by low level assets).

If air power is to be useful in SEAD, it must exercise low observability to avoid long wavelength radars and somehow avoid low level assets, fire fast weapons where hypersonics are preferred to compress IADS reaction time and feature their own defenses to deal and accept the fact of long ranged missile threats from said IADS. Jamming might prove some use to help stealth aircraft but considering IRL Russian/Chinese emphasis on digitizing and hardening IADS elements to such attacks, the said jammer must accept the fact that it might be shot down first after MALDs and similar were filtered out.

These of course must be combined (I stress again, must) with other parts of the Armed Forces such as armour units to deny maneuver space to the mobile IADS, artillery units to distract IADS point defense/counter-munition elements and the humble grunt behind the lines to search and locate such elusive IADS elements. It seems that you held known American tactics as good. But if we account for current developments and trends in IADS, won't do any good except fattening the paychecks of the questionable anti-IADS systems' manufacturers. On the side note, MALD conceptual video is quite misleading since it didn't even attempt to simulate the rest of IADS attendant systems and tactics.

The NATO IADS is fighter jets with AWACS support. Unlike Russia, which is enormous and thus presents the strategic challenge of defensing huge amounts of airspace, western europe is pretty small and thus the airspace you need to defend isn't nearly as big. You also don't have to use aircraft for SEAD or SEAD, army MLRS were used to suppress SAMS with cluster munitions carrying ATACMs in the prelude to ODS. You can also use howitzers or SPHs and maybe NGFS but you have to be pretty close.

Using legacy aircraft (ie nonstealthy) might result in "unfavourable attrition" (historically defined as 2% of the aircraft launched on any sortie), but only if the goal is DEAD and not simply SEAD where aircraft like the B-1 or F/A-18 can just spam cruise missiles from standoff ranges. AWACS and JSTARS also have powerful enough radars that if they maintain a flight path perpendicular to the hostile launch platform they can illuminate the target launchers while staying outside their effective missile range. Ditto for the EC-130H and it's comm jamming equipment.

Mobility works both ways as a SAM TEL or TELAR on the move can't engage any targets. Relatively few Serbian mobile SAMs were taken out by NATO SEAD assets but at the same time said Serbian SAMs achieved two (three of you count damaged but not shot down) kills out of 845 launches, a pk of less than 0.25%. If you launch a HARM and the SAM turns of its radar and relocates it's a win for the attacker, In the end it didn't matter because the Serbian air defense system never obstructed with the NATO bombing campaign in any meaningful way which means the system failed. TBF since WW2 no IADS has ever stopped anyone and their main function is more to cause the attacker to have to spend thousands of munitions neutralizing them rather than actually denying airspace to the enemy, something that can only be done with fighter aircraft.

True, that's a good point. But using ablative-explosive lasers could entail that any part of a missile may be targeted, rather than risking a miss on what I presume to be its significantly smaller targeting systems.

in any case, I'm thinking of their applicability in more widespread adoption alongside advancements in the technology that goes into them. How effective are they now is all well and good, but I'm curious as to how effective they can be in a PMT context. What can we extrapolate?

The biggest problem is power generation and cooling. For an aircraft with a HEL you can use ram-air turbines or engine bleed air for power and use the airstream and/or fuel for cooling. With a large ships you can have room for large dedicated electrical generators for power and use seawater for cooling. With a ground vehicle you're a bit limited with regards to power generation capability and the volume and weight needed for cooling so its doubtful that it could support a powerful laser (>100 kw), even if the actual laser beam generator itself is relatively compact.

You're forgetting this is PMT, there are already viable lasers in the testing phase that have been shrunk down to be carried by smaller land systems, cooling being an issue is something I would presume to be solved.

Edit: A quick bit of research reveals the are already viable land based systems

https://www.army.mil/standto/archive_2015-09-09

There are a number of ways to make factories run cleaner.
1) Amortize the cost of solar and other renewables into the cost of new construction. If the factory is planned to run 10 years, try and create a setup where the cost of the renewables will be paid off in five years. This requires long term planning. Another example of this is to build near hydroelectric in the countryside to guarantee continuous power.
2) Build in energy efficiency to reduce costs. Again, this is a long term savings. Energy efficiency would include things like natural lighting, sharing heat between buildings, etc. Also grey water recycling can be useful. Wastewater treatment is also often used.
3) Use the Eco-industrial park model where resources are shared between different factories and the community. One factories waste products or leavings can be used in another parks manufacturing. Effectively, you build recycling and shared use between factories. Again this has to be planned from the beginning. It involves research into who can use leftover chemicals and other materials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-industrial_park
4) Use very lean manufacturing. Reduce the amount of material in packaging, use lighter weight metals, make the process very lean. This is not necessarily automation, it can include lots of quality control. Less use of resources means less waste. It leads to cost savings.
5) Include greener transportation. Build next to railroad lines, time your logistics carefully.
6) Set up a lease system for manufacturing and repair with planned obsolescence for the items being manufactured. Arrange a system to bring back what is produced for recycling and reuse in manufacturing. This concept is called Cradle to Cradle manufacturing. http://www.c2ccertified.org/ Think of reduce, reuse, recycle, remanufacture, refurbish.

I agree with most of this with the exception of the lean manufacturing concept, which isn't really what you described as I've always understood it at least, lean manufacturing is the concept of reducing or keeping less cash tied up in inventory as well as essentially waiting until an item is ordered before a company manufactures it. To further explain, each item a company has in inventory is an item that has used company resources to manufacture and until it's sold that's money that's tied up in the item until it's sold, so a company retains more cash on hand for other uses. Now this is a great concept on paper, in actual execution though it leads too an entire fustercluck for logistics as well as having a long term negative impact on a company.

To fully explain (and bear with me here cause it'll seem like I'm rambling) a dealer of an item orders it from a distribution center, the distribution center orders it from the manufacturer, now let's assume the manufacturer has some of the components to the item sourced out to another manufacturer, the second manufacturer now needs to order the resources to make the item, now the company that's providing the resource needs to harvest or mine or whatever raw material it is, these things take time not to mention the time that's needed to ship the raw material to the second manufacturer, the time needed to make the component the first manufacturer needs, and the time to ship it between manufacturers, and then the time needed to get it to the distribution center. Eventually the dealer gets fed up with the waiting period and finds a similar item from someone that carries what they need in their inventory. So again lean manufacturing sounds great until it's put into actual practice

[Haishan]

I'm continuing the argument in the thread rather than PM since I felt there are some misconceptions that must be cleared and shown. Duly noted if someone else would be able to add to it, either by criticizing or adding to arguments being presented. For TLDR: My argument is pretty simple; airpower is only delaying IADS at best and MALD or x spam (let x be anything of choosing) would be suicide versus a proper IADS. It demands combined strategy with all branches of Armed Forces to deny said IADS. SEAD/DEAD cannot be handled by airpower alone.

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Eh, I can't read russian and I don't put much stock into CGI videos clearly intended as a marketing tool, regardless of which company they come from.

The video I linked shows a conceptual way on how a SAM complex can triangulate an airborne standoff jammer and shoot it down anyway, likely without anti-radiation seeker installed. I showed that since from what I read, you seem to subscribe to the scenario presented by Raytheon on how their MALD product would be used.

The details of sort of shady but the US has actually purchased copies of the S-300 PMU and S-300V from former soviet satellite states.

Correct. However even legacy S-300PMU used by Greece showed NATO how dangerous they were despite being generational older. I believe there's a report stating high overall ECM resiliency of said old system and big challenge for NATO assets to deal with it at that time. Now the topic in question is on about modern complexes which did account for such scenarios. S-400 would perform better than the old S-300PMU when faced with intensive EW; they were developed and named differently for a reason.

For what its worth the only time SAMs have ever been effective in combat (in terms of significantly disrupting hostile air operations) was the SA-2 early in Vietnam and the SA-6 in the beginning of the 1973 arab-isreali war when both systems were relatively new and not well understood by the attackers.

You forgot to add the apparent effectiveness of PATRIOT in the Gulf War which also for some odd reason, is also effective versus Coalition aircraft by mistake. Syrian SA-6 was also a downgraded monkey system so not a fair starting point.

After appropriate ECM was developed the effectiveness of the these missiles dropped dramatically, as in an average pk of less than 1% for the remainder of the conflict.

Same as above, Syrian SA-6 in Arab-Israeli war is pretty much basic. But I give this statement the benefit of doubt since I suspect the Soviets didn't test or know much about the effect of airborne ECM to their SAMs at that time period.

The 92N6E fire control and 91N6E and 96L6E radars of the SA-21 system are still PESAs using TWT technology which is susceptible to barrage and repeater jamming with DRFM jammers like those employed by the ALQ-99.

Aforementioned systems were developed in response of ALQ-99 in Gulf War and thus they're more likely able to handle the said ALQ-99 by virtue of simply outputting more power. Since the subject matter is MALD's DRFM, it wouldn't fair much against the systems that were specifically designed to deal with the higher power ALQ-99.

There's a variety of reasons for why SAMs are on average about 1-2 orders of magnitude less effective than AAMs.

AAMs would have greater range and that's it. The question of comparison is an academic exercise at this point and thus non-sequitur.

One reason is SAMs can be "baited" by attacking aircraft.

AAMs can be also be 'baited' and thus my statement it's academic crunching at this point.

A common SEAD tactic is to then have the "baits" wingman, who is hiding under the radar horizon, pop up and launch an ARM.

Hiding beyond conventional radar horizon wouldn't do much if the pilot enters IADS coverage of short ranged defenses; he will be either forced to break away or shot at. There are also low-level altitude-scanning radar systems that were made to deal with NOE objects, such as the aircraft. A full IADS will have them in addition of more conventional, long range radars.

SAMs are less likely to surprise pilots because they have greater visual and radar/IR signatures and are launched from the ground (duh) with the launch usually kicking up dust and debris.

It depends on what kind of SAM being referenced. Ones that slew at you and launch at short/medium ranges will notify its presence. Another that is physically far from the pilot and able to go ballistic before going down at Mach 5+ with non-burning engine will take the pilot by surprise. IADS normally have both by virtue of layered onion design. If the big one doesn't work, the lower ones will start to work.

There's also the concept of a "no escape zone" which applies to AAMs but not really to SAMs when the goal is to fire them at their maximum possible range.

I would say the goal of SAM (well, big ones at least) is shortest flight time to the target since who knows the incoming aircraft might carry some nuclear bombs and you need to take it out fast? Apples and oranges.

With a a long-range SAM shot where rocket motor is burned out by the time it will reach its target the SOP is to put the missile at your three or nine so that the missiles path is perpendicular to yours which maximizes cross-track range, at which point the missile will be forced to continuously turn, increasing drag, thus decreasing its speed, and thus calling it to either loose enough energy that it can't out-maneuver the target or simply crash into the ground or ocean.

Before I begin, I specifically refer long-ranged SAMs to veins of Russian missiles and not Standard Missile series given they're completely different with respect to each other. The long-range SAM models tend to have velocities in excess of Mach 5 and will hit from above due to needing ballistic trajectory shaping to reach the intended range. The pilot might be aware of initial search radar pinging him but without the support of AWACS, the pilot will have a nasty surprise coming from above him.

The burnout motor actually gives the long range SAM some kind of utility; there's no burning motor that generates a big thermal signature to highlight it at the end of its journey. In respect of your agility argument, most big SAMs (sans SM-4/6 series) also feature equally big payloads to help solve the problem. A 150kg directional warhead have a lethal radius of minimum 60 m and so a precise hit isn't needed.

The decoys are launched well out of range of hostile radar coverage (500+ nmi) and/or below the radar horizon so they're not appearing out of nowhere.

In respect of the IADS in question, they will appear out of nowhere due to logical limitations of the IADS radar range. Flying low will also affect the eventual flight ranges of these decoys and the launcher of said decoys. The quoted range is by logic, for medium to high altitude flight. Lower flight altitude poses certain penalties for any flying objects. While nitpick, please don't assume the given range is the maximum flight range at all operational altitudes since they're usually made for specific flight conditions. For an example, Brahmos. It can reach only 120 km at low altitude but goes up 300 km when it's flying high.

They can also fly high enough (~40k ft) to where they would be immune to lower level point defense systems.

Not a problem when the carrier can be identified and shot down before that. Either by the IADS own units or the supporting component of IADS, interceptors.

The MALD-J, as far as a I can tell, uses a DRFM system to electronically mimic the RCS of other aircraft.

DRFM is nothing new here, it's 1980 stuff and certainly not a full solution versus radars that are actually AESA (direction took by big air defense radars now).

Radar "readings" for the most part are just a blip on a screen

Radar contact for the most part were blips on a screen, for legacy CRT-type displays. Modern radars will try to guess what it's looking at and will not give out 'blips'.

with the lower the wavelength the lower the resolution, the only way to "filter" the return is to measure it's RCS, velocity, heading, etc which the decoy can mimic.

Current trend in long wavelength radars as exemplified in Russian, Belarusian and Chinese systems indicate digitization and even AESA usage. Examples are Russian Nebo-M, Belarusian Vostok 3D and Chinese JY-16 sets. They would be able to handle DRFM to a certain extent. And since this is digital low frequency radar, the decoy will need to work with mismatched performance, which will be able to be discerned by said radars. Sure, MALD's DRFM would work versus old systems but not so for the newer (and digital) low frequency radars.

To get an actual "picture" of the target you would need to identify it with NCTR, something like JEM or ISAR. Radars with these modes have to operate in the X, K, W, or MMW bands to get any kind of good resolution. Even if the radar can identify as "not an aircraft" the MALD and ITALD look very cruise-misisle ish so it's likely they would be engaged anyways. You can also do target identification optically, but only at close range and during favorable weather conditions.

As I said earlier and indicated in the video link, IADS tend to use multiple radars. There's no need to go for very good resolution (or an actual picture) with it since by the virtue of radar geometry spacing (radars positioned at different places) and multi-band wavelength plus scheduled civilian flight plans, the operator can make some educated guesses that the incoming contact is not going to be a best friend as far the IADS is concerned with.

After all it's quite rare to see a bird flying at ~800 kph, twelve kilometers above the ground, figuratively speaking. In respect of weather, it might be as well go the other way; the weather wouldn't be cooperative with the launcher of MALDs to go into launching position in the first place. Ditto for the MALDs themselves where bad weather will impact their flight as well.

The idea is launch more HARMS/AARGMs than the IADs could ever handle at a single time.

You'll need either alot of pilots or ARMS or both. Newer short ranged IADS defense systems, particularly Russian have quite a number of missiles. Tor-M2 for example have sixteen ready-fire missiles. There are also decoys, ones that were expressively made to deal and defeat HARM/AARGM spam.

Both missiles (HARM and AARGM) have a fairly low-RCS and high velocity (The H doesn't stand for nothing, it's like M2 at sea level) which results in a fairly small engagement window.

This depends on the quality of short ranged SAM (assuming higher levels have been bypassed) but let's take an example, Tor system. Part of its mission is to destroy low flying, fast targets with reaction time lesser than 10 seconds. The system have maximum target speed of 700 m/s. The launcher of said HARM/AARGM won't be flying at 700 m/s (~Mach 2.04) in any measure without serious dent in flight range and the said Mach 2 HARM/AARGM is within the interception bounds of the missile system. On theoretical aspect, the interceptor missile will be able to shoot at the incoming HARM/AARGM and the aircraft in equally short time intervals. This of course assumes, one-on-one engagement.

This is part of an "alpha strike" package which would include hundreds of HARMS and/or AARGMs

If by this you mean NOE-flying carriers, you will require quite a number of pilots flying low and fast that must not only avoid the terrain and short ranged SAMs but also anti-air artillery that use air burst munitions that were chiefly designed to deal with saturation attacks.

hundreds of decoys

Spamming the IADS with hundred of decoys would be counter-productive. A sudden contact of fifty signatures concentrated in particular sector would arouse suspicion. I'd say you will get more chances with using three or four at best, per intrusion. Who would fly ten aircraft close to each other in war time? Some common sense work a long way here. IADS needs common sense to work in certain circumstances after all.

and surface and air launched cruise missiles launched at standoff ranges.

Ditto as my earlier statement. When you start to place multiple cruise missiles in a single attack path, they can be said to be 'dense' in space and hitting multiple of them becomes a reality for the defender. This particular line of thinking is quite endemic post-Gulf War and obviously for NS (missile spam). It doesn't quite work that way.

It's a simple brute force attack, you overwhelm the defensive system with more targets than it can track at once and more targets than it has missiles to launch.

For what its worth or in monetary terms, the IADS might be defeated physically but at the same time I'm presenting you with a red herring here that you will easily spend twice or more the price of IADS in terms of ammunition (Tomahawk isn't cheap). That's an initial victory for the defender and loss for the attacker (expended ammunition and cost to repurchase them).

For reference standard Soviet (and I presume Russian) doctrine is to double-target their SAMs (with the launch spaced by around 30 seconds to a minute depending on target range)

Minor nitpick here, launch speed is dependent on system. An example Tor unit will be able to launch missiles within seconds of each other. Russian SAMs operate on shoot-shoot-look doctrine by the way, which means you're correct. The standard tactic for any SAM however is also double firing the missiles including Western ones to increase Pk.

So a single S-400 battery with eight TELS and 32 missiles would then be able to handle 16 targets before having to reload.

It depends on what kind of missile being loaded as some can be loaded four in place of single big missile tube. There's no accurate telling (from the air or space) what kind of missile was loaded until it opens fire.

The massive launch of standoff PGMs results in a "soft kill" where the defending assets are degraded through attrition but not completely destroyed.

To launch those, you need to get close enough for respectable range performance. That is, if you can avoid the really big SAMs that want to stop that from happening; ones that target the carriers of said PGMs. If you fly low to avoid big SAM, you won't get enough standoff distance. You also open yourself to lower level assets such as...anti air guns.

It's just a pure numbers game, one that overwhelmingly favors the attacking side because it can concentrate its assets as need be as opposed to the defender which has to have its assets spread out.

It's more than pure numbers game here. As what I elaborated on the 'hundreds' comment, by spamming in a certain location, you make the defender job easier since you conveniently put most of your assets in a single area versus the defender which is widely distributed and must be searched one by one which in turn consumes the time, money and personnel of the attacker.

The DEAD, or "hard kill" is then done by stealth aircraft employing gravity bombs and/or cluster munitions.

As Serbian experience had shown, a pure airpower solution to the SEAD/DEAD isn't favourable. You'll need more than gravity bombs for that. Have some faith upon the boots on the ground.

TELs and radars are very much "soft" targets in that they lack armor of any kind so dropping simple unguided cluster bombs, which can cover tens of thousands of square meters with cluster bomblets, is a very reliable "hard kill" mechanism.

I presume you assume lower level echelons that would be already taken out by your idea of NOE pilots. This also assumes they don't suffer their own attrition as well, versus lower level assets that would shoot back at them. The quoted statement is non-sequitur anyway as such assets cannot be armoured at all except against shell splinters and odd fragments.

A B-2 carrying a maximum load of CBU-87s could in theory blanket 30 square kilometers with cluster bomblets if dropped from high altitude.

A proper IADS will have a long wavelength radar which conveniently look for such low observable targets. Again, non-sequitur however.

If the SAMs are employing "shoot and scoot" tactics the another effective tactic (and probably controversial or frowned upon in RL)would be dropping mine-laying cluster bombs on all the roads. If the IADs radars have been sufficiently attrited then this conceivably could also be done by non-stealthy aircraft, although obviously at a much higher risk.

Could be conceivable but how large of an area you would mine? How would you deliver them without being noticed or shot down by IADS elements? IADS is an onion, they have multiple radars and defensive systems to protect the said radars as well.

The MMW radar in the AARGM is fairly small and by the nature of MMW atmospheric prorogation means it has a very short range, only a few kilometers. It's only turned on in the last few seconds of flight so relying on passive ECM for a targeting solution would be a bit of a precarious proposition.

Not really a problem for a short ranged SAM made expressively for the task, such as the Tor system. Or in Western equivalent, the C-RAM-esque, MHTK system. This also assumes the burning motor of AAGRM (or the launcher platform) is not detected by the short ranged SAM unit at significant distances.

the larger search radars can take over an hour to pack up and move (the mobile ones at least, some of them are static).

Legacy systems take from 30 minutes to several days. Newer ones take 15 minutes. In fact that's the new standard for mobile SAM surveillance radars, pack up in fifteen minutes or less. Any longer than that, you're looking at what are either obsolete systems or static-orientated, big EAW types.

The NATO IADS is fighter jets with AWACS support. Unlike Russia, which is enormous and thus presents the strategic challenge of defensing huge amounts of airspace, western europe is pretty small and thus the airspace you need to defend isn't nearly as big.

What I meant by my comment was, it would cost far too much in context of money and political-terms for the member states as each of them would have their own rules and way of doing things. And so you have NATO cost-conscious solution of primarily relying on fighters for IADS in order to quickly intercept incoming threats.

Using legacy aircraft (ie nonstealthy) might result in "unfavourable attrition" (historically defined as 2% of the aircraft launched on any sortie)

In my opinion, legacy aircraft in face of modern, functional IADS wouldn't be permissible at any event. They're far more dangerous now and thus stealth aircraft have more chances to avoid IADS detection and do their work of suppressing IADS detection elements. With the help of other branches of Armed Forces of course.

B-1 or F/A-18 can just spam cruise missiles from standoff ranges.

I believe I explained why spamming cruise missiles is a bad idea. If you insist on it, it should be faster, way faster than supersonic in order to make a dent on the IADS. Subsonic solution is only good when the IADS is mostly silenced.

AWACS and JSTARS

A proper IADS with a proper operator will shoot down these first. They have big missiles for a reason, which is destruction of these kind of high valued targets.

Mobility works both ways as a SAM TEL or TELAR on the move can't engage any targets.

Well that's a given as no operational, ground-based SAM system can do as such except the Pantsir system which can fire missiles while traveling at certain speed. But in context of SAM TEL/TELAR movements, logically only a part of them move and the rest stay for ready-launch readiness. It's like musical chair. Unit A moves while Unit B watches the skies. Then Unit B moves while Unit A watches et al. That's one of reasons on why it's called as IADS.

But to explore further, if we discard the unreasonable requirement to demand all SAM TEL/TELARs in the IADS to move and fire while being under attack no less, certain SAM systems can fire within seconds after a short pause (several seconds) from marching, such as the Tor and newer Buk system. European MEADS also recently featured such game-changer capability, which is good for them I guess.

If you launch a HARM and the SAM turns of its radar and relocates it's a win for the attacker, In the end it didn't matter because the Serbian air defense system never obstructed with the NATO bombing campaign in any meaningful way which means the system failed.

It is also a win for the this rudimentary Serbian IADS since it survived the SEAD/DEAD mission and costs NATO more, in monetary terms to replace hundreds of HARMs that missed the intended targets. By the time the bombing campaign stopped, there were quite a number of Serbian military units that were presumably the target of the bombing, mostly unscathed to retreat.

In a way, the system only partially failed but it succeeded in its mission to distract air power from fully committing to destroy ground units. To point absurdities in the situation, the Serbian system was several generations old compared to much more modern (and numerous) NATO assets. The Serbians also used substantial amount of ground decoys and such you might want to question the "killmarks" of participating NATO aircraft.

TBF since WW2 no IADS has ever stopped anyone and their main function is more to cause the attacker to have to spend thousands of munitions neutralizing them rather than actually denying airspace to the enemy, something that can only be done with fighter aircraft.

This is quite debatable. IADS is an onion. It shouldn't stand by its own. It amplifies other components of Armed Forces. In Aircraft scenario, when the interceptors goes home to refuel, the IADS will be there to enforce the no-flight-zone. In ground scenario, IADS protects the much more vulnerable ground units by diverting the attention of enemy air power to itself. In a sense, IADS complements the little staying power of airpower; a fighter that can only fly for an hour wouldn't be able to deny airspace 24/7 without serious expenditures in resources.

And by the comment of spending enemy munition, that's a job well done for the IADS even at its most rudimentary form. At least Private Joe in the Army wouldn't have to worry about a bomb landing on him from the skies since he knows Lt. John in Air Defense will cover for him.

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You're forgetting this is PMT, there are already viable lasers in the testing phase that have been shrunk down to be carried by smaller land systems, cooling being an issue is something I would presume to be solved.

Edit: A quick bit of research reveals the are already viable land based systems

https://www.army.mil/standto/archive_2015-09-09

Indeed. On the other hand, there's FIRESTRIKE modules that supposedly can be carried by Humvee at present but it by no means battlefield grade at 100 kW unless a special Humvee is designed for it.

[The Macabees]

I saw some increased activity on the #nspmt channel on IRC.

I'm moving GD's chat over to Discord, pending seeing if people prefer it over the old channel, so I made a channel for NSPMT as well.

NSPMT: https://discord.gg/en5ffZy

GD: https://discord.gg/sJBV9D3

[Thoricia]

I saw some increased activity on the #nspmt channel on IRC.

I'm moving GD's chat over to Discord, pending seeing if people prefer it over the old channel, so I made a channel for NSPMT as well.

NSPMT: https://discord.gg/en5ffZy

GD: https://discord.gg/sJBV9D3

Will you be retaining the Esper nspmt IRC channel or is it being moved over completely as well

[The Macabees]

I'll play it by ear. I still do other business on #irc, so I'll be on there as well, but we'll see where people flow to and what they prefer.

[Thoricia]

I'll play it by ear. I still do other business on #irc, so I'll be on there as well, but we'll see where people flow to and what they prefer.

Fair enough

I'm continuing the argument in the thread rather than PM since I felt there are some misconceptions that must be cleared and shown. Duly noted if someone else would be able to add to it, either by criticizing or adding to arguments being presented. For TLDR: My argument is pretty simple; airpower is only delaying IADS at best and MALD or x spam (let x be anything of choosing) would be suicide versus a proper IADS. It demands combined strategy with all branches of Armed Forces to deny said IADS. SEAD/DEAD cannot be handled by airpower alone.

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Eh, I can't read russian and I don't put much stock into CGI videos clearly intended as a marketing tool, regardless of which company they come from.

The video I linked shows a conceptual way on how a SAM complex can triangulate an airborne standoff jammer and shoot it down anyway, likely without anti-radiation seeker installed. I showed that since from what I read, you seem to subscribe to the scenario presented by Raytheon on how their MALD product would be used.

The details of sort of shady but the US has actually purchased copies of the S-300 PMU and S-300V from former soviet satellite states.

Correct. However even legacy S-300PMU used by Greece showed NATO how dangerous they were despite being generational older. I believe there's a report stating high overall ECM resiliency of said old system and big challenge for NATO assets to deal with it at that time. Now the topic in question is on about modern complexes which did account for such scenarios. S-400 would perform better than the old S-300PMU when faced with intensive EW; they were developed and named differently for a reason.

For what its worth the only time SAMs have ever been effective in combat (in terms of significantly disrupting hostile air operations) was the SA-2 early in Vietnam and the SA-6 in the beginning of the 1973 arab-isreali war when both systems were relatively new and not well understood by the attackers.

You forgot to add the apparent effectiveness of PATRIOT in the Gulf War which also for some odd reason, is also effective versus Coalition aircraft by mistake. Syrian SA-6 was also a downgraded monkey system so not a fair starting point.

After appropriate ECM was developed the effectiveness of the these missiles dropped dramatically, as in an average pk of less than 1% for the remainder of the conflict.

Same as above, Syrian SA-6 in Arab-Israeli war is pretty much basic. But I give this statement the benefit of doubt since I suspect the Soviets didn't test or know much about the effect of airborne ECM to their SAMs at that time period.

The 92N6E fire control and 91N6E and 96L6E radars of the SA-21 system are still PESAs using TWT technology which is susceptible to barrage and repeater jamming with DRFM jammers like those employed by the ALQ-99.

Aforementioned systems were developed in response of ALQ-99 in Gulf War and thus they're more likely able to handle the said ALQ-99 by virtue of simply outputting more power. Since the subject matter is MALD's DRFM, it wouldn't fair much against the systems that were specifically designed to deal with the higher power ALQ-99.

There's a variety of reasons for why SAMs are on average about 1-2 orders of magnitude less effective than AAMs.

AAMs would have greater range and that's it. The question of comparison is an academic exercise at this point and thus non-sequitur.

One reason is SAMs can be "baited" by attacking aircraft.

AAMs can be also be 'baited' and thus my statement it's academic crunching at this point.

A common SEAD tactic is to then have the "baits" wingman, who is hiding under the radar horizon, pop up and launch an ARM.

Hiding beyond conventional radar horizon wouldn't do much if the pilot enters IADS coverage of short ranged defenses; he will be either forced to break away or shot at. There are also low-level altitude-scanning radar systems that were made to deal with NOE objects, such as the aircraft. A full IADS will have them in addition of more conventional, long range radars.

SAMs are less likely to surprise pilots because they have greater visual and radar/IR signatures and are launched from the ground (duh) with the launch usually kicking up dust and debris.

It depends on what kind of SAM being referenced. Ones that slew at you and launch at short/medium ranges will notify its presence. Another that is physically far from the pilot and able to go ballistic before going down at Mach 5+ with non-burning engine will take the pilot by surprise. IADS normally have both by virtue of layered onion design. If the big one doesn't work, the lower ones will start to work.

There's also the concept of a "no escape zone" which applies to AAMs but not really to SAMs when the goal is to fire them at their maximum possible range.

I would say the goal of SAM (well, big ones at least) is shortest flight time to the target since who knows the incoming aircraft might carry some nuclear bombs and you need to take it out fast? Apples and oranges.

With a a long-range SAM shot where rocket motor is burned out by the time it will reach its target the SOP is to put the missile at your three or nine so that the missiles path is perpendicular to yours which maximizes cross-track range, at which point the missile will be forced to continuously turn, increasing drag, thus decreasing its speed, and thus calling it to either loose enough energy that it can't out-maneuver the target or simply crash into the ground or ocean.

Before I begin, I specifically refer long-ranged SAMs to veins of Russian missiles and not Standard Missile series given they're completely different with respect to each other. The long-range SAM models tend to have velocities in excess of Mach 5 and will hit from above due to needing ballistic trajectory shaping to reach the intended range. The pilot might be aware of initial search radar pinging him but without the support of AWACS, the pilot will have a nasty surprise coming from above him.

The burnout motor actually gives the long range SAM some kind of utility; there's no burning motor that generates a big thermal signature to highlight it at the end of its journey. In respect of your agility argument, most big SAMs (sans SM-4/6 series) also feature equally big payloads to help solve the problem. A 150kg directional warhead have a lethal radius of minimum 60 m and so a precise hit isn't needed.

The decoys are launched well out of range of hostile radar coverage (500+ nmi) and/or below the radar horizon so they're not appearing out of nowhere.

In respect of the IADS in question, they will appear out of nowhere due to logical limitations of the IADS radar range. Flying low will also affect the eventual flight ranges of these decoys and the launcher of said decoys. The quoted range is by logic, for medium to high altitude flight. Lower flight altitude poses certain penalties for any flying objects. While nitpick, please don't assume the given range is the maximum flight range at all operational altitudes since they're usually made for specific flight conditions. For an example, Brahmos. It can reach only 120 km at low altitude but goes up 300 km when it's flying high.

They can also fly high enough (~40k ft) to where they would be immune to lower level point defense systems.

Not a problem when the carrier can be identified and shot down before that. Either by the IADS own units or the supporting component of IADS, interceptors.

The MALD-J, as far as a I can tell, uses a DRFM system to electronically mimic the RCS of other aircraft.

DRFM is nothing new here, it's 1980 stuff and certainly not a full solution versus radars that are actually AESA (direction took by big air defense radars now).

Radar "readings" for the most part are just a blip on a screen

Radar contact for the most part were blips on a screen, for legacy CRT-type displays. Modern radars will try to guess what it's looking at and will not give out 'blips'.

with the lower the wavelength the lower the resolution, the only way to "filter" the return is to measure it's RCS, velocity, heading, etc which the decoy can mimic.

Current trend in long wavelength radars as exemplified in Russian, Belarusian and Chinese systems indicate digitization and even AESA usage. Examples are Russian Nebo-M, Belarusian Vostok 3D and Chinese JY-16 sets. They would be able to handle DRFM to a certain extent. And since this is digital low frequency radar, the decoy will need to work with mismatched performance, which will be able to be discerned by said radars. Sure, MALD's DRFM would work versus old systems but not so for the newer (and digital) low frequency radars.

To get an actual "picture" of the target you would need to identify it with NCTR, something like JEM or ISAR. Radars with these modes have to operate in the X, K, W, or MMW bands to get any kind of good resolution. Even if the radar can identify as "not an aircraft" the MALD and ITALD look very cruise-misisle ish so it's likely they would be engaged anyways. You can also do target identification optically, but only at close range and during favorable weather conditions.

As I said earlier and indicated in the video link, IADS tend to use multiple radars. There's no need to go for very good resolution (or an actual picture) with it since by the virtue of radar geometry spacing (radars positioned at different places) and multi-band wavelength plus scheduled civilian flight plans, the operator can make some educated guesses that the incoming contact is not going to be a best friend as far the IADS is concerned with.

After all it's quite rare to see a bird flying at ~800 kph, twelve kilometers above the ground, figuratively speaking. In respect of weather, it might be as well go the other way; the weather wouldn't be cooperative with the launcher of MALDs to go into launching position in the first place. Ditto for the MALDs themselves where bad weather will impact their flight as well.

The idea is launch more HARMS/AARGMs than the IADs could ever handle at a single time.

You'll need either alot of pilots or ARMS or both. Newer short ranged IADS defense systems, particularly Russian have quite a number of missiles. Tor-M2 for example have sixteen ready-fire missiles. There are also decoys, ones that were expressively made to deal and defeat HARM/AARGM spam.

Both missiles (HARM and AARGM) have a fairly low-RCS and high velocity (The H doesn't stand for nothing, it's like M2 at sea level) which results in a fairly small engagement window.

This depends on the quality of short ranged SAM (assuming higher levels have been bypassed) but let's take an example, Tor system. Part of its mission is to destroy low flying, fast targets with reaction time lesser than 10 seconds. The system have maximum target speed of 700 m/s. The launcher of said HARM/AARGM won't be flying at 700 m/s (~Mach 2.04) in any measure without serious dent in flight range and the said Mach 2 HARM/AARGM is within the interception bounds of the missile system. On theoretical aspect, the interceptor missile will be able to shoot at the incoming HARM/AARGM and the aircraft in equally short time intervals. This of course assumes, one-on-one engagement.

This is part of an "alpha strike" package which would include hundreds of HARMS and/or AARGMs

If by this you mean NOE-flying carriers, you will require quite a number of pilots flying low and fast that must not only avoid the terrain and short ranged SAMs but also anti-air artillery that use air burst munitions that were chiefly designed to deal with saturation attacks.

hundreds of decoys

Spamming the IADS with hundred of decoys would be counter-productive. A sudden contact of fifty signatures concentrated in particular sector would arouse suspicion. I'd say you will get more chances with using three or four at best, per intrusion. Who would fly ten aircraft close to each other in war time? Some common sense work a long way here. IADS needs common sense to work in certain circumstances after all.

and surface and air launched cruise missiles launched at standoff ranges.

Ditto as my earlier statement. When you start to place multiple cruise missiles in a single attack path, they can be said to be 'dense' in space and hitting multiple of them becomes a reality for the defender. This particular line of thinking is quite endemic post-Gulf War and obviously for NS (missile spam). It doesn't quite work that way.

It's a simple brute force attack, you overwhelm the defensive system with more targets than it can track at once and more targets than it has missiles to launch.

For what its worth or in monetary terms, the IADS might be defeated physically but at the same time I'm presenting you with a red herring here that you will easily spend twice or more the price of IADS in terms of ammunition (Tomahawk isn't cheap). That's an initial victory for the defender and loss for the attacker (expended ammunition and cost to repurchase them).

For reference standard Soviet (and I presume Russian) doctrine is to double-target their SAMs (with the launch spaced by around 30 seconds to a minute depending on target range)

Minor nitpick here, launch speed is dependent on system. An example Tor unit will be able to launch missiles within seconds of each other. Russian SAMs operate on shoot-shoot-look doctrine by the way, which means you're correct. The standard tactic for any SAM however is also double firing the missiles including Western ones to increase Pk.

So a single S-400 battery with eight TELS and 32 missiles would then be able to handle 16 targets before having to reload.

It depends on what kind of missile being loaded as some can be loaded four in place of single big missile tube. There's no accurate telling (from the air or space) what kind of missile was loaded until it opens fire.

The massive launch of standoff PGMs results in a "soft kill" where the defending assets are degraded through attrition but not completely destroyed.

To launch those, you need to get close enough for respectable range performance. That is, if you can avoid the really big SAMs that want to stop that from happening; ones that target the carriers of said PGMs. If you fly low to avoid big SAM, you won't get enough standoff distance. You also open yourself to lower level assets such as...anti air guns.

It's just a pure numbers game, one that overwhelmingly favors the attacking side because it can concentrate its assets as need be as opposed to the defender which has to have its assets spread out.

It's more than pure numbers game here. As what I elaborated on the 'hundreds' comment, by spamming in a certain location, you make the defender job easier since you conveniently put most of your assets in a single area versus the defender which is widely distributed and must be searched one by one which in turn consumes the time, money and personnel of the attacker.

The DEAD, or "hard kill" is then done by stealth aircraft employing gravity bombs and/or cluster munitions.

As Serbian experience had shown, a pure airpower solution to the SEAD/DEAD isn't favourable. You'll need more than gravity bombs for that. Have some faith upon the boots on the ground.

TELs and radars are very much "soft" targets in that they lack armor of any kind so dropping simple unguided cluster bombs, which can cover tens of thousands of square meters with cluster bomblets, is a very reliable "hard kill" mechanism.

I presume you assume lower level echelons that would be already taken out by your idea of NOE pilots. This also assumes they don't suffer their own attrition as well, versus lower level assets that would shoot back at them. The quoted statement is non-sequitur anyway as such assets cannot be armoured at all except against shell splinters and odd fragments.

A B-2 carrying a maximum load of CBU-87s could in theory blanket 30 square kilometers with cluster bomblets if dropped from high altitude.

A proper IADS will have a long wavelength radar which conveniently look for such low observable targets. Again, non-sequitur however.

If the SAMs are employing "shoot and scoot" tactics the another effective tactic (and probably controversial or frowned upon in RL)would be dropping mine-laying cluster bombs on all the roads. If the IADs radars have been sufficiently attrited then this conceivably could also be done by non-stealthy aircraft, although obviously at a much higher risk.

Could be conceivable but how large of an area you would mine? How would you deliver them without being noticed or shot down by IADS elements? IADS is an onion, they have multiple radars and defensive systems to protect the said radars as well.

The MMW radar in the AARGM is fairly small and by the nature of MMW atmospheric prorogation means it has a very short range, only a few kilometers. It's only turned on in the last few seconds of flight so relying on passive ECM for a targeting solution would be a bit of a precarious proposition.

Not really a problem for a short ranged SAM made expressively for the task, such as the Tor system. Or in Western equivalent, the C-RAM-esque, MHTK system. This also assumes the burning motor of AAGRM (or the launcher platform) is not detected by the short ranged SAM unit at significant distances.

the larger search radars can take over an hour to pack up and move (the mobile ones at least, some of them are static).

Legacy systems take from 30 minutes to several days. Newer ones take 15 minutes. In fact that's the new standard for mobile SAM surveillance radars, pack up in fifteen minutes or less. Any longer than that, you're looking at what are either obsolete systems or static-orientated, big EAW types.

The NATO IADS is fighter jets with AWACS support. Unlike Russia, which is enormous and thus presents the strategic challenge of defensing huge amounts of airspace, western europe is pretty small and thus the airspace you need to defend isn't nearly as big.

What I meant by my comment was, it would cost far too much in context of money and political-terms for the member states as each of them would have their own rules and way of doing things. And so you have NATO cost-conscious solution of primarily relying on fighters for IADS in order to quickly intercept incoming threats.

Using legacy aircraft (ie nonstealthy) might result in "unfavourable attrition" (historically defined as 2% of the aircraft launched on any sortie)

In my opinion, legacy aircraft in face of modern, functional IADS wouldn't be permissible at any event. They're far more dangerous now and thus stealth aircraft have more chances to avoid IADS detection and do their work of suppressing IADS detection elements. With the help of other branches of Armed Forces of course.

B-1 or F/A-18 can just spam cruise missiles from standoff ranges.

I believe I explained why spamming cruise missiles is a bad idea. If you insist on it, it should be faster, way faster than supersonic in order to make a dent on the IADS. Subsonic solution is only good when the IADS is mostly silenced.

AWACS and JSTARS

A proper IADS with a proper operator will shoot down these first. They have big missiles for a reason, which is destruction of these kind of high valued targets.

Mobility works both ways as a SAM TEL or TELAR on the move can't engage any targets.

Well that's a given as no operational, ground-based SAM system can do as such except the Pantsir system which can fire missiles while traveling at certain speed. But in context of SAM TEL/TELAR movements, logically only a part of them move and the rest stay for ready-launch readiness. It's like musical chair. Unit A moves while Unit B watches the skies. Then Unit B moves while Unit A watches et al. That's one of reasons on why it's called as IADS.

But to explore further, if we discard the unreasonable requirement to demand all SAM TEL/TELARs in the IADS to move and fire while being under attack no less, certain SAM systems can fire within seconds after a short pause (several seconds) from marching, such as the Tor and newer Buk system. European MEADS also recently featured such game-changer capability, which is good for them I guess.

If you launch a HARM and the SAM turns of its radar and relocates it's a win for the attacker, In the end it didn't matter because the Serbian air defense system never obstructed with the NATO bombing campaign in any meaningful way which means the system failed.

It is also a win for the this rudimentary Serbian IADS since it survived the SEAD/DEAD mission and costs NATO more, in monetary terms to replace hundreds of HARMs that missed the intended targets. By the time the bombing campaign stopped, there were quite a number of Serbian military units that were presumably the target of the bombing, mostly unscathed to retreat.

In a way, the system only partially failed but it succeeded in its mission to distract air power from fully committing to destroy ground units. To point absurdities in the situation, the Serbian system was several generations old compared to much more modern (and numerous) NATO assets. The Serbians also used substantial amount of ground decoys and such you might want to question the "killmarks" of participating NATO aircraft.

TBF since WW2 no IADS has ever stopped anyone and their main function is more to cause the attacker to have to spend thousands of munitions neutralizing them rather than actually denying airspace to the enemy, something that can only be done with fighter aircraft.

This is quite debatable. IADS is an onion. It shouldn't stand by its own. It amplifies other components of Armed Forces. In Aircraft scenario, when the interceptors goes home to refuel, the IADS will be there to enforce the no-flight-zone. In ground scenario, IADS protects the much more vulnerable ground units by diverting the attention of enemy air power to itself. In a sense, IADS complements the little staying power of airpower; a fighter that can only fly for an hour wouldn't be able to deny airspace 24/7 without serious expenditures in resources.

And by the comment of spending enemy munition, that's a job well done for the IADS even at its most rudimentary form. At least Private Joe in the Army wouldn't have to worry about a bomb landing on him from the skies since he knows Lt. John in Air Defense will cover for him.

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You're forgetting this is PMT, there are already viable lasers in the testing phase that have been shrunk down to be carried by smaller land systems, cooling being an issue is something I would presume to be solved.

Edit: A quick bit of research reveals the are already viable land based systems

https://www.army.mil/standto/archive_2015-09-09

Indeed. On the other hand, there's FIRESTRIKE modules that supposedly can be carried by Humvee at present but it by no means battlefield grade at 100 kW unless a special Humvee is designed for it.

FIRESTRIKE is the first land system actively used on the battlefield, it's use however is delegated against mines and IEDs currently however it's not unreasonable to assume that something more powerful would be feasible in a PMT setting so long as it's use is agreeable to everyone in a RP.

Also is there any chance you can repost your Axis Nova post here in the PMT thread, after reading it over I think it'd be a wonderful resource to have and maybe Mac can link it in the thread OP

[The Technocratic Syndicalists]

You're forgetting this is PMT, there are already viable lasers in the testing phase that have been shrunk down to be carried by smaller land systems, cooling being an issue is something I would presume to be solved.

Edit: A quick bit of research reveals the are already viable land based systems

https://www.army.mil/standto/archive_2015-09-09

True, PMT electronics may result in increase in the power density of the laser generator (ie more laser power for less size/weight) but cooling is still a fundamental physics problem that doesn't change with tech level. If you have a 100kw solid state laser with a 33% wall plug efficiency (a reasonably optimistic assumption) you need a power system that can supply 300kW and a cooling system that can remove 200kW of heat. The Boeing HEL-MD, referenced in the article you posted, was only a 10kw laser. Granted that's still powerful enough do destroy drones and small mortar rounds. That kind of laser could also destroy the seekers of EO/IR guided ATGMs and could blind or destroy the EO/IR sensors on other vehicles. Now even in PMT water, which has the highest volumetric heat capacity of any substance, is still going to be used to cool any non-FEL laser and thus based on the laser's power level and wall plug efficiency you then need x amount of water flow-rate at y temperature to cool the laser. In fact I worked at a large defense contractor last summer doing CFD work and one of the things they had me do (which I probably can't go into any detail about) was writing a code that would calculate the cooling requirements for a vehicle based laser weapon system.

[Thoricia]

You're forgetting this is PMT, there are already viable lasers in the testing phase that have been shrunk down to be carried by smaller land systems, cooling being an issue is something I would presume to be solved.

Edit: A quick bit of research reveals the are already viable land based systems

https://www.army.mil/standto/archive_2015-09-09

True, PMT electronics may result in increase in the power density of the laser generator (ie more laser power for less size/weight) but cooling is still a fundamental physics problem that doesn't change with tech level. If you have a 100kw solid state laser with a 33% wall plug efficiency (a reasonably optimistic assumption) you need a power system that can supply 300kW and a cooling system that can remove 200kW of heat. The Boeing HEL-MD, referenced in the article you posted, was only a 10kw laser. Granted that's still powerful enough do destroy drones and small mortar rounds. That kind of laser could also destroy the seekers of EO/IR guided ATGMs and could blind or destroy the EO/IR sensors on other vehicles. Now even in PMT water, which has the highest volumetric heat capacity of any substance, is still going to be used to cool any non-FEL laser and thus based on the laser's power level and wall plug efficiency you then need x amount of water flow-rate at y temperature to cool the laser. In fact I worked at a large defense contractor last summer doing CFD work and one of the things they had me do (which I probably can't go into any detail about) was writing a code that would calculate the cooling requirements for a vehicle based laser weapon system.

More efficient cooling systems would be within reason, also the article states they're planning on mounting a 50kw to 60kw laser with their goal being a 100w eventually, perfectly within the realm of possibility for pretend writing

[Vistora]

Is there any feasibly justifiable reason for giving a manned, armed airplane top speeds in excess of 5000 km/h, presuming that it is technologically plausible?

[The Technocratic Syndicalists]

Is there any feasibly justifiable reason for giving a manned, armed airplane top speeds in excess of 5000 km/h, presuming that it is technologically plausible?

So Mach 5 at high altitude? That's certainly within reason, something powered by combined cycle turbojet/ramjet engines using cryogenic fuel could cruise at those speeds. I have access to AIAA papers referencing a 1985 design by Lockheed (which itself is still classified top secret) called the M5 Penetrator which was a mach 5, methane fueled (hence M5) aircraft design that looks kind of like an SR-71 but with 2D inlets and a single vertical tail. Some other things to look into would be precooled turbofans (look up LAPCAT) and the GE57 aka the revolutionary turbine accelerator engine (designed for mach 4 with conventional hydrocarbon fuel).

[Vistora]

Is there any feasibly justifiable reason for giving a manned, armed airplane top speeds in excess of 5000 km/h, presuming that it is technologically plausible?

So Mach 5 at high altitude? That's certainly within reason, something powered by combined cycle turbojet/ramjet engines using cryogenic fuel could cruise at those speeds. I have access to AIAA papers referencing a 1985 design by Lockheed (which itself is still classified top secret) called the M5 Penetrator which was a mach 5, methane fueled (hence M5) aircraft design that looks kind of like an SR-71 but with 2D inlets and a single vertical tail. Some other things to look into would be precooled turbofans (look up LAPCAT) and the GE57 aka the revolutionary turbine accelerator engine (designed for mach 4 with conventional hydrocarbon fuel).

I see that's it's certainly feasible, but mostly I'm wondering as to what purpose such an airplane would serve, being both manned and armed.

[The Technocratic Syndicalists]

I see that's it's certainly feasible, but mostly I'm wondering as to what purpose such an airplane would serve, being both manned and armed.

Recon?

Giving it weapons would be harder, you would also need to design a weapon which could survive ejection at those speeds.

[The Macabees]

There are a lot of nations who use nuclear-engined bombers for super long-range bombing missions and to loiter. I had the idea back, back in the day to create an interceptor that could hit Mach 5 to intercept these bombers before they were in range of releasing their payload. This is what ultimately came out of that: Lu-27 Condor.

[Vistora]

There are a lot of nations who use nuclear-engined bombers for super long-range bombing missions and to loiter. I had the idea back, back in the day to create an interceptor that could hit Mach 5 to intercept these bombers before they were in range of releasing their payload. This is what ultimately came out of that: Lu-27 Condor.

Ahhh, yes. Inasmuch as I have figured, hypersonic planes would primarily make good long range interceptors. I was thinking they might not just catch bombers far beyond payload deployment range, but also perhaps be used to intercept ballistic missiles around their late boost phase. That is the idea behind my own Mach-5 interceptor, the F-8 Corinus.

[The Technocratic Syndicalists]

There are a lot of nations who use nuclear-engined bombers for super long-range bombing missions and to loiter. I had the idea back, back in the day to create an interceptor that could hit Mach 5 to intercept these bombers before they were in range of releasing their payload. This is what ultimately came out of that: Lu-27 Condor.

At mach 5 the stagnation temperature would be 550-600 degrees C. Carbon-expoy for the skin is a bit of a perplexing choice as it has only has a service temperature of around 180-200 degrees C. The front of the F22 uses carbon/BMI but even that is only good up to 230 degrees C. If you want a polymer skin for mach 5 you would need to use an inorganic polymer like polysialate aka geoploymer (alumino-silicate instead of carbon based) reinforced with either carbon or silicon carbide fibers. For metals mach 4 is generally the continuous limit for uncooled titanium and steel, to go faster than than you need inconel MMCs, or refractories.

The SR-71 aren't turboro-ramjets, that refers to specific engine (sometimes called an air turborocket) which uses a gas generator to drive a turbine mounted forward of a ramjet combustor. The SR-71's engines are bleed-bypass turbojets, there's no ramjet function in them. "Bleed-bypass" refers to the fact that at high speeds air is bled from the compressor where it is rerouted around the combustion chamber and turbine through six bypass tubes and then reinjected into the afterburner. Most of that bypass air, which at mach 3+ is around 40% of the air that enters the turbine, is used for backside cooling of the afterburner rather than for thrust augmentation. The speed of the aircraft is limited by the maximum allowable CTIT which for a J58 is 427 degrees which depending on ambient air temperature at 85,000 feet corresponds to an aircraft velocity of Mach 3.3-3.5. Go beyond that and the engine will melt. To go faster you would need a combined cycle turbojet/ramjet (it's confusing but its different from a turboramjet) which is either a turbojet and ramjet located on top of each other with a variable 2D ramp inlet (like this: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi ... 018299.pdf) or a turbojet and ramjet located in tandem with a 3D asymmetric inlet like on the SR-71 and with a variable bypass system that would close off the turbine at mach 3 and reroute all the incoming air directly into the ramjet (like the GE57). At mach 5+ you would also either have to actively cool the inlet and engine using cryogenic fuel or you would have to use heavy, high temperature refractories.

[Democratic Limbang]

Could something like a portable SADARM-launcher become a thing.

[Thoricia]

There are a lot of nations who use nuclear-engined bombers for super long-range bombing missions and to loiter. I had the idea back, back in the day to create an interceptor that could hit Mach 5 to intercept these bombers before they were in range of releasing their payload. This is what ultimately came out of that: Lu-27 Condor.

At mach 5 the stagnation temperature would be 550-600 degrees C. Carbon-expoy for the skin is a bit of a perplexing choice as it has only has a service temperature of around 180-200 degrees C. The front of the F22 uses carbon/BMI but even that is only good up to 230 degrees C. If you want a polymer skin for mach 5 you would need to use an inorganic polymer like polysialate aka geoploymer (alumino-silicate instead of carbon based) reinforced with either carbon or silicon carbide fibers. For metals mach 4 is generally the continuous limit for uncooled titanium and steel, to go faster than than you need inconel MMCs, or refractories.

The SR-71 aren't turboro-ramjets, that refers to specific engine (sometimes called an air turborocket) which uses a gas generator to drive a turbine mounted forward of a ramjet combustor. The SR-71's engines are bleed-bypass turbojets, there's no ramjet function in them. "Bleed-bypass" refers to the fact that at high speeds air is bled from the compressor where it is rerouted around the combustion chamber and turbine through six bypass tubes and then reinjected into the afterburner. Most of that bypass air, which at mach 3+ is around 40% of the air that enters the turbine, is used for backside cooling of the afterburner rather than for thrust augmentation. The speed of the aircraft is limited by the maximum allowable CTIT which for a J58 is 427 degrees which depending on ambient air temperature at 85,000 feet corresponds to an aircraft velocity of Mach 3.3-3.5. Go beyond that and the engine will melt. To go faster you would need a combined cycle turbojet/ramjet (it's confusing but its different from a turboramjet) which is either a turbojet and ramjet located on top of each other with a variable 2D ramp inlet (like this: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi ... 018299.pdf) or a turbojet and ramjet located in tandem with a 3D asymmetric inlet like on the SR-71 and with a variable bypass system that would close off the turbine at mach 3 and reroute all the incoming air directly into the ramjet (like the GE57). At mach 5+ you would also either have to actively cool the inlet and engine using cryogenic fuel or you would have to use heavy, high temperature refractories.

I think you're confusing PMT with MT again.

Could something like a portable SADARM-launcher become a thing.

Make it a mortar round that's effective against light armor, that small though you're gonna need some serious punch to penetrate anyone's PMT MBT's armor and I don't know how well received it would be having missile launchers than can kill multiple tanks in one shot by other players. Something like the JAVELIN missile launcher accomplishes the same thing though, however it's a one shot one kill system but it does do the top down attack as well and is intended to be used against tanks so you may consider something like that if your looking for a portable tank killer

[Democratic Limbang]

Could something like a portable SADARM-launcher become a thing.

Make it a mortar round that's effective against light armor, that small though you're gonna need some serious punch to penetrate anyone's PMT MBT's armor and I don't know how well received it would be having missile launchers than can kill multiple tanks in one shot by other players. Something like the JAVELIN missile launcher accomplishes the same thing though, however it's a one shot one kill system but it does do the top down attack as well and is intended to be used against tanks so you may consider something like that if your looking for a portable tank killer

Would it be possible to downscale the caliber of the munition, seeing as most of the current day SADARM munitions has a caliber of around 152mm. Maybe doing a 120mm SADARM to increase the mobility of the mortar. Or making a launch platform light enough to be carried by infantry.