Almaz-Antey S-400 Triumph / SA-21 Growler TABM/SAM

Ronny said:
I can't speak Russian but in English, this is the definition of RCS. And yes, of course it only count the part that get reflected back to the radar. Like why would you care about the part that not reflected back to the radar?
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I thought so when I saw the 10m2 ЭПР point for the F-16. I decided that it would be too much for a small plane.
 
lostcosmonauts said:
Lost - none.
Unscheduled rapid disassembly - a few
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I don't know anything about it. As for the С-400 and С-500. I've heard about the С-300, yes. Well.... it's a war. How completely lossless - this very rarely happens. Even against Papuans with bows and arrows, sometimes you can get hurt. And here is a serious opponent after all.
 
GregoryUSSR said:
Forest and what exactly is the doubt here? The "naked" fighter of the 4th generation is about 5-7 m2. The same fighter with missiles, tanks and bombs hanging on the pylons - the ЭПР is 15m2 at once. With missiles of the HARM - 20m2 type. АСП has a very big impact on the target profile.
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Not disputing RCSs, merely the evidence of lots of HARMs having been shot down.
 
NMaude said:
Would you please latin letters not Cyrillic, I don't know what a 3PC battery is? Preferably use the US DoD/NATO designations please.
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I will try. When I figure out the American notation system. "ЗРС" reads like "Зенитно Ракетная Система" (an Anti-Aircraft Missile System).
 
GregoryUSSR said:
But, why. The ЗРС SAM battery shoots perfectly even without radar. Taking data from the network of the general air defense system.
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Not all SAM batteries do, and the 68kg HARM warhead is big enough to also take out datalink antennas. Especially if they shoot more than one HARM at a site.
 
The USAF seems to be moving away from ARMs. It bought some AGM-88G as a stop gap measure until SiAW enters service, but I think SiAW will just have INS/GPS guidance with a terminal seeker for moving targets. They seem confident that fifth generation aircraft can geolocate radars such that passive RF guidance can be offloaded from the missile.
 
Josh_TN said:
The USAF seems to be moving away from ARMs. It bought some AGM-88G as a stop gap measure until SiAW enters service, but I think SiAW will just have INS/GPS guidance with a terminal seeker for moving targets. They seem confident that fifth generation aircraft can geolocate radars such that passive RF guidance can be offloaded from the missile.
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Even AGM-88E already have GPS + INS + 2 way data link + terminal MMW seeker. There is no motivation to remove passive RF seeker from SiAW. In fact, they recently adding passive RF seeker into missile such as LRASM and JSM as well
 
GregoryUSSR said:
In general, artillery and ground-based rocket launchers are more dangerous for air defense systems than air attack vehicles (СВН).
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Yes of course, because practically speaking, artillery and ground based rocket launcher are invisible to air defense system (till they attack). They are somewhat similar to aircraft that hide below radar horizon, but with much better endurance (since they can just stay there).

GregoryUSSR said:
Moreover, as they proved to me here that with the standard activated warhead HARM, the rocket body remains intact.... How's that? If even the light body of the rocket almost does not suffer, then how much damage can it cause to the target? Smash the headlights and scratch the paint? As a maximum to damage the radar. But the batteries will remain almost intact.
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To be fair, original anti radar missile such as AGM-45 was designed to be a SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defense) weapon. You don't even need to destroy the batteries for that to work.
. Early anti radar missiles are practically useless if the SAM operator just shutdown their radar. That is like a blessing in disguise. The idea is that, once ARH missile is launched, SAM operator will turn off their radar to avoid the anti radar missile from finding them. So if you have 2 aircraft with 4 anti radar missiles each, by launching missile one by one , you can create a window of time for the strike package to get in, bomb target, get out. Even if none of your anti radar missile hit target, the mission still a success.
That all change with the introduction of AGM-88E AARGM though. Now it no longer purely a SEAD weapons, but it became a DEAD (Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses) weapons due to introduction of new guidance method.


With GPS guidance, it can operate similar to a JDAM, whether the radar is on/off, it doesn't matter as long as the aircraft geolocated the radar.
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With MMW radar sensor, the missile can even attack non emitting target such as missile launcher
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With 2 ways data link, now the missile can get constant update of target location from the network instead of having to rely purely on internal sensor
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GregoryUSSR said:
I will try. When I figure out the American notation system.
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The wikipedia article on NATO reporting names and specifically American designations along with NATO reporting names.

I've already mentioned some of the ones for the current Russian SAMs but another example is the Kh-47 is the AS-24 Killjoy, the Kub is the SA-6 Gainful, the Bus SA-11 Gadfly, Kh-55 is the AS-15 Kent and the Kh-101 is the AS-23 Kodiak for example.

GregoryUSSR said:
"ЗРС" reads like "Зенитно Ракетная Система" (an Anti-Aircraft Missile System).
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That would be AAMS however in regards to missiles such as the SA-11 and SA-12 these are referred to as SAMs (Surface-to-Air Missiles).
 
Ronny said:
Even AGM-88E already have GPS + INS + 2 way data link + terminal MMW seeker. There is no motivation to remove passive RF seeker from SiAW. In fact, they recently adding passive RF seeker into missile such as LRASM and JSM as well
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The motivation is cost. Also I was unaware AGM-88E/G had a two way datalink; I thought it was a one way datalink for BDA like JASSM. JSM has no RF homing AFAIK, though it seems likely Maritime Strike Tomahawk would (guidance mode remains unspecified).
 
Ronny said:
With GPS guidance, it can operate similar to a JDAM, whether the radar is on/off, it doesn't matter as long as the aircraft geolocated the radar.
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This is the 2nd channel of missile guidance by GPS. But this is not enough. GPS can be turned off. In addition, GPS positioning accuracy may be low. As I understand it, HARM also has a 3rd guidance channel. Memory for optical images. To finally select a target at the final stage of the trajectory. But there is protection from this, too.
I think it's useless to turn off the radar now in the hope that the missile will lose its target. Now need to lead her. And either shoot down, or use electronic warfare. And immediately understand. HARM is flying. This means that something heavier is flying somewhere nearby.
 
GregoryUSSR said:
This is the 2nd channel of missile guidance by GPS. But this is not enough. GPS can be turned off. In addition, GPS positioning accuracy may be low. As I understand it, HARM also has a 3rd guidance channel. Memory for optical images. To finally select a target at the final stage of the trajectory. But there is protection from this, too.
I think it's useless to turn off the radar now in the hope that the missile will lose its target. Now need to lead her. And either shoot down, or use electronic warfare. And immediately understand. HARM is flying. This means that something heavier is flying somewhere nearby.
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And while HARM is flying, it's a 1000m/s missile headed at the radar. With GPS memory of where the radar is when you turn it off and a decent inertial measuring unit to keep the missile pointed in the right direction even if GPS is completely offline. HARM is a small radar target, only a 25cm circle with fins that are edge on to whichever radar the HARM is tracking, so good luck engaging with radar-guided missiles. Better luck with IR guided, the HARM is pretty fast and at low altitude, so the skin temperature is hot.

Plus whatever else is loaded onto the plane that launched the HARM, likely to be Storm Shadows or maybe just GPS-corrected cluster bombs to level the entire dispersed site.
 
Why does it has to be Harm tho ?

Proper reconnaissance is also play considerable roles in cathing the battery. The deployment of the S-300/400 for both sides appears to follow Vietnam model. Which involves provision of several sites and then rotating battery in any of them in random fashion. This requires constant reconnaissance attempt and monitoring to find the sites, determine whether and when they are occupied, and then if occupied determine when the battery goes online.

Ideally and seems to be the case, one would want to catch the battery when it just arrived or offline or in transit to the site. Which apparently the case, enough tho for Telegram vids and various websites.

Attacking a live battery bring risk and effort of having to spare decoys and other means to saturate the thing. S-400 is a multichannel system where it can simultaneously engage multiple targets at same time. a Simple attack from an F-16 with HARM without any proper attempt to decoy the site would see both Harm and the falcon got killed or the Harm got killed in flight.
 
stealthflanker said:
Attacking a live battery bring risk and effort of having to spare decoys and other means to saturate the thing. S-400 is a multichannel system where it can simultaneously engage multiple targets at same time. a Simple attack from an F-16 with HARM without any proper attempt to decoy the site would see both Harm and the falcon got killed or the Harm got killed in flight.
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Attacking and destroying an SA-21 Growler battery is well worth the effort and I can see it being done by spamming it with a large number of ADM-160 MALDs followed by a saturation AGM-88 attack which while expensive is still cheap in comparison given that an SA-21 battery is worth $US900 million and they are both difficult and expensive to replace.
 
NMaude said:
Attacking and destroying an SA-21 Growler battery is well worth the effort and I can see it being done by spamming it with a large number of ADM-160 MALDs followed by a saturation AGM-88 attack which while expensive is still cheap in comparison given that an SA-21 battery is worth $US900 million and they are both difficult and expensive to replace.
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Yeah which also implies large numbers which might not necessarily sustainable for the attacking side.

Also that 900 Million is for a battery with over 36 vehicles and full package which in current war, doesnt seem to be the case. How do i know that it's over 36. Because Indonesia was once offered the Favorit which they offer in a "Polk" or a "pool" with that amount of vehicle. That's about 1 B tbh.

If the battery only consist like say 4 launchers, a 92N6 radar. It wont cost that much.
 
Arjen said:
The Dutch F-16s destined for Ukraine have been upgraded throughout their service lives with the Dutch air force.
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Dutch, danish and belgian F-16s happen to be the most antiquated airframes of their kind. Even newer ukrainian mig-29 9.13 models were relegated to museums prior to the outbreak of hostilities.
As stated previously, it is my opinion that the combat proven and fully operational F-35 should grace the modern battlefield with its presence and save the day. This is what it was designed and built for, right?
 
GregoryUSSR said:
This is the 2nd channel of missile guidance by GPS. But this is not enough. GPS can be turned off. In addition, GPS positioning accuracy may be low. As I understand it,
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You are mistaken, "turning off GPS" as in physically destroy it is very hard and costly because satellite are at altitude of 20,000 km and there are 32 of them.
Jamming GPS is plausible, but modern GPS sensor are quite resistant to jamming,
The GPS satellite are very high up in the sky whereas the GPS jammer are located on the ground. That mean the GPS jamming signal always come from the sidelobes of the GPS antenna. Because of that, there are many anti jamming techniques that can be used for the GPS guided system.
The most simple one are Fixed Radiation Pattern Antennas (FRPAs): they use antennas designed to have deep nulls in the horizons where the jamming signal come from.
This evolved into Multiple Element Fixed Radiation Pattern Antennas (MEFRPAs): which divided into 2 methods:
Switched Multiple Element FRPAs: Still very simple, the system has multiple antenna with different radiation pattern, aimed at different parts of the sky and null the rest, it switched between them until it receive the most stable GPS signal.
Multiple Element Canceller : This technique use 2 antennas, the auxiliary one directed at the jammer and the primary one directed at the direction of true GPS signal. Normally that mean the primary one will located on top of the aircraft whereas the auxiliary one will located at the bottom. The primary one will receive a mix of both real GPS signal and Jamming signal whereas the auxiliary one will only receive jamming signal. Then the received signal are combine to eliminate the jamming signal.
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More recent GPS anti jam technique use Controlled Radiation Pattern Antennas (CRPAs) . This is a group of several antennas with a beamforming system that combine signal received from each antennas, so it can create an adjustable radiation pattern. In shorts, it can steer the null toward the direction of the jammer.
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Anti jam GPS system on aircraft can reach some ridiculous anti jam performer like able to operate in environment with 125 dB J/S ratio (125 dB is basically ratio of 1: 3162277700000)
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If all that fall, there is still INS which can't be jammed

GregoryUSSR said:
HARM also has a 3rd guidance channel. Memory for optical images. To finally select a target at the final stage of the trajectory. But there is protection from this, too.
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I think due to language barrier, you mistaken between the MMW and the optical sensor. Sure the resolution of MMW seeker is good enough that it can see the 3D shape of target, but in term of resolution still not as good as optical sensor in clear weather.
 
GregoryUSSR said:
1000m/c? Du you sure what it is so? It's 3600km/h. By our data her speed about 2400km/h. Almost the same like speed medium fighter aircraft.
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Depend on version. AGM-88A/B/C/D/E (the one with big wing) top out at Mach 2, which is approximately 2440 km/h like you said
AGM-88G (the thin one) top out at Mach 4, which is approximately 4880 km/h. Though I'm 100% sure Ukraine don't have this version
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Wallmart Republic said:
Dutch, danish and belgian F-16s happen to be the most antiquated airframes of their kind. Even newer ukrainian mig-29 9.13 models were relegated to museums prior to the outbreak of hostilities.
As stated previously, it is my opinion that the combat proven and fully operational F-35 should grace the modern battlefield with its presence and save the day. This is what it was designed and built for, right?
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Even with HIMARS, they tend to supply the oldest rockets. With F-16, they also only supply the old version instead of block 50/52 or 70.
Supply Ukraine with US top tier weapons is too much escalation I think (yes I know it sound dumb because they already fight indirectly)
 
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Ronny said:
Jamming GPS is plausible,
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That's what I meant. Jammiling the signal may not mean completely suppressing it. In this case, the task is to increase the positioning КВО - Круговая Вероятная Ошибка (is a circular probable error) from 4x10-1 to 40. And with such an error, the missile will not be able to accurately hit a small-sized target.
Ronny said:
More recent GPS anti jam technique use Controlled Radiation Pattern Antennas (CRPAs) . This is a group of several antennas with a beamforming system that combine signal received from each antennas, so it can create an adjustable radiation pattern. In shorts, it can steer the null toward the direction of the jammer.
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In this case, some modulation of the carrier frequency of the total signal occurs, which again increases the КВО.
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Ronny said:
I think due to language barrier, you mistaken between the MMW and the optical sensor. Sure the resolution of MMW seeker is good enough that it can see the 3D shape of target, but in term of resolution still not as good as optical sensor in clear weather.
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You're probably right.
 
Wallmart Republic said:
Dutch, danish and belgian F-16s happen to be the most antiquated airframes of their kind. Even newer ukrainian mig-29 9.13 models were relegated to museums prior to the outbreak of hostilities.
As stated previously, it is my opinion that the combat proven and fully operational F-35 should grace the modern battlefield with its presence and save the day. This is what it was designed and built for, right?
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No one is donating a 5th gen aircraft. Most of the equip given has been deactivated, refurbished, or time expired.
 
Josh_TN said:
Most of the equip given has been deactivated, refurbished, or time expired.
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The Russo-Ukrainian war has been a good way to get rid of old stock/equipment/munitions without going to the time and expense of properly demilitarising it.
 
Scott Kenny said:
HARM is a small radar target, only a 25cm circle with fins that are edge on to whichever radar the HARM is tracking, so good luck engaging with radar-guided missiles. Better luck with IR guided, the HARM is pretty fast and at low altitude, so the skin temperature is hot.
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SA-17 and SA-22 both have open-source brochure Pk numbers against HARM. 0.5 for the former from memory.
 
I suspect the only challenge for S300/400 engagement of a HARM is response time or saturation. I’m pretty sure the system has automatic engagement for the former. I suspect the S300/400 engagements that are successful involve elaborate combinations of ADM-160, HIMARS, HARM, and StormShadow in an effort to saturate radar tracks and launcher capacity.
 
IIRC the latest SA-21 batteries to be destroyed involved the. use of MGM-140s equipped with cluster munition warheads.
 
GregoryUSSR said:
That's what I meant. Jammiling the signal may not mean completely suppressing it. In this case, the task is to increase the positioning КВО - Круговая Вероятная Ошибка (is a circular probable error) from 4x10-1 to 40. And with such an error, the missile will not be able to accurately hit a small-sized target.

In this case, some modulation of the carrier frequency of the total signal occurs, which again increases the КВО.
View attachment 712448
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You can think of turning the null toward the jammer is quite similar to basically turning your face away when someone shining the light at your eye. You just don't see anything from that direction
Scott Kenny said:
HARM is a small radar target, only a 25cm circle with fins that are edge on to whichever radar the HARM is tracking, so good luck engaging with radar-guided missiles.
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This is P-12 radar detection range against AGM-45 Shrike
SA-2E detection range.jpg

AGM-45 is basically a smaller AGM-88 HARM, so I don't think modern radar really have any issue detecting and tracking HARM.
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Josh_TN said:
No one is donating a 5th gen aircraft. Most of the equip given has been deactivated, refurbished, or time expired.
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Hardly a donation, it is a loan. Surely, after pawning their extant industry and arable land as collateral, ukryin would be able to deploy the F-35, which is known for its affordability and is blessed with a truly extended production run.
 
NMaude said:
If the transfer to Ukraine goes ahead that will knot Putin's shorts.
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As someone pointed out in another thread, the S400s contract likely have limits of transfer. I doubt Turkey wants to completely burn its bring with Russia, given the two countries entanglement in Syria. And this assumes some kind of F-35 deal is forthcoming - it appears to be a US trial balloon.
 
aonestudio said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1767563386814939340
View: https://twitter.com/Archer83Able/status/1767563386814939340
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Undated video of a Russian S-400 air defense unit defending itself from a Ukrainian attack with M142 HIMARS/M270 MLRS' GMLRS rockets.S-400's transporter erector launcher (TELs) can be seen firing a number of missiles against the targets in the sky. In the later part of the video, the sounds of at least two GMLRS impacts can be heard in the close distance.
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The cameraman sits inside of a 96L6E early-warning and acquisition radar. According to the original source, one S-400 TEL was lightly damaged, while one S-400 TEL operator was lightly wounded.
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