Chinese SAM and ABM

Sferrin said:
J-KEI or K-GBI? KEI, had it gone forward, would have been developed and then replaced GBI as I recall. (KEI was boost-phase, yes, but my understanding was they ultimately wanted to use the same missile for both missions.)
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I was under the impression that the KEI was intended to complement the GBI not replace it.
 
Depends what you are defending against. The fact that these are appearing on the LAC instead of on the coast seems to point to a limited use case…perhaps they are primarily being used as UAV protection, where as most any bomb or missile might easily penetrate a bunker with sufficient precision.
 
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Dilandu said:
Not a bad idea. US military should clearly took the lesson; in modern era, camouflage and dispersion might be less useful than several feet of concrete above missile battery protecting Guam or Okinawa.
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One small problem, the radar still has to go above the ground, the destruction of which then leaves you with a really expensive underground paperweight storage facility.
 
Radar shelter actually looks flimsier, like it would barely defend against small cluster submunitions.

also, a radar areay needs time to fold down and some door needs time to cover the gap. Could be a minute.

Them again, its possible that most threats to sam site itself would be tracked for a few minutes prior to impact.
 
Forest Green said:
One small problem, the radar still has to go above the ground, the destruction of which then leaves you with a really expensive underground paperweight storage facility.
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Yes, but phased array radars could be hardened to significant extent. Also, there is a significant trend toward "autonomous" SAM, where radar (or passive sensors) only provide warning & general target position. The missile went to the target area by autopilot, and perform search by its own seeker.
 
Josh_TN said:
De poo ends what you are defending against. The fact that these are appearing on the LAC instead of on the coast seems to point to a limited use case…perhaps they are primarily being used as UAV protection, where as most any bomb or missile might easily penetrate a bunker with sufficient precision.
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Perhaps they are not meant to block ammunition, but to increase the cost of enemy strikes. Without shelters, a single cluster or large airburst munition could disable a SAM site. With shelters, the enemy is forced to rely on precision-guided munitions—each one can only destroy one point rather than an area composed of multiple points.

The enemy would have to expend more ammunition—more precise, more powerful, and more expensive munitions. Moreover, the delivery platforms would have to operate longer and more frequently along the frontlines, creating opportunities for our own forces to engage and destroy them.
 
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TwoTribes said:
Perhaps they are not meant to block ammunition, but to increase the cost of enemy strikes. Without shelters, a single cluster or large airburst munition could disable a SAM site. With shelters, the enemy is forced to rely on precision-guided munitions—each one can only destroy one point rather than an area composed of multiple points.

The enemy would have to expend more ammunition—more precise, more powerful, and more expensive munitions. Moreover, the delivery platforms would have to operate longer and more frequently along the frontlines, creating opportunities for our own forces to engage and destroy them.
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You only need a single munition to functionally destroy most strategic SAM systems. One PGM or ARM into the target engagement radar and the entire battery is functionally destroyed until you obtain a replacement.
 
Which is why we've been seeing SAM batteries with multiple targeting radars. And active guidance inside missiles also distributes the cost. Patriot's radar itself is, as far as I can quickly research, 120 or 130 million USD. Sounds like a lot, but each MSE missile is almost $4 million. so 6 launchers, times 12, a single battery loadout comes to like $280 million. With launchers themselves and ancillary vehicles likely adding another $100 million or more.

Now, one way to look at that would be - hey, for destroying a single target, i neutralized 4 times pricier equipment than the one I actually destroyed. And sure, temporarily that checks out. But I would wager that the disproportionate costs have led or will lead to more radars being produced than needed, per battery. Not necessarily to be used right away, if the battery design doesn't allow it, but to be ready as a quick replacement. That too would lead to a temporary neutralization of the whole battery with one weapon, but likely a much, much shorter one.

And in the not so distant future I would wager we will see SAM batteries be deconstructed into small firing units, like maybe just two launchers. And radars being in a detection mesh layer completely separate from launchers. Interceptor missiles will somehow send their location data to the network until the radars can start tracking them, alongside enemy threats.
 
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Dilandu said:
Yes, but phased array radars could be hardened to significant extent. Also, there is a significant trend toward "autonomous" SAM, where radar (or passive sensors) only provide warning & general target position. The missile went to the target area by autopilot, and perform search by its own seeker.
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That capability is very limited since the aircraft is likely to have moved significantly during the flight time. You can't have a functional radar and protect it against missile impacts, whilst the radar is able to scan for aircraft, the aircraft is able to hit it. You could also have armed drone or MALD swarms loitering above waiting to say, 'nope', when it pops up.
 
Forest Green said:
That capability is very limited since the aircraft is likely to have moved significantly during the flight time.
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Assuming that missile isn't getting the course correction, you are right. But if it got such - from the same passive tracker or remote radar, for example - it could do the job perfectly.
 
Forest Green said:
You can't have a functional radar and protect it against missile impacts, whilst the radar is able to scan for aircraft, the aircraft is able to hit it. You could also have armed drone or MALD swarms loitering above waiting to say, 'nope', when it pops up.
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One possible solution is bystatic or multistatic radar with several transmitters, working on short pulses from protected shelters. If the working order is sufficiently random, the opponent would have a hard time guessing which transnmitter would be vulneranle next.
 
Dilandu said:
Assuming that missile isn't getting the course correction, you are right. But if it got such - from the same passive tracker or remote radar, for example - it could do the job perfectly.
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True but that would only work if the target aircraft was emitting, and the remote radar would have the same vulnerabilities, so you're back to needing to have something vulnerable above ground to have an AD capability. The passive ground radar could also be detected with satellite recon.

Dilandu said:
One possible solution is bystatic or multistatic radar with several transmitters, working on short pulses from protected shelters. If the working order is sufficiently random, the opponent would have a hard time guessing which transnmitter would be vulneranle next.
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Easy solution there, hit all of then with drone swarms. Or have an ARM like ALARM that hangs off a parachute and waits for them to pop up again.

The real problem is that nobody aims preferentially for the launchers, they always prioritise the radars, so the solution boils down to the radar system in the end, as your responses kind of highlight, so whether you have the SAMs above or below ground becomes irrelevant.
 
Modern AD systems are becoming sensor/shooter agnostic, but at the same time using a few more PGMs is not especially difficult either.

I suspect this is primarily an anti UAV defense, because these sites are on the Indian border. There were a lot of attacks on SAM sites by UAVs in the recent Indian/Pakistan conflict. Coastal and interior SAM sites likely are at very low threat of being engaged that way.
 
Forest Green said:
True but that would only work if the target aircraft was emitting, and the remote radar would have the same vulnerabilities, so you're back to needing to have something vulnerable above ground to have an AD capability. The passive ground radar could also be detected with satellite recon.
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By "passive sensors" I meant all kind that do not rely on active emissions - infrared, optical, multistatic receivers, ect.

Forest Green said:
Easy solution there, hit all of then with drone swarms. Or have an ARM like ALARM that hangs off a parachute and waits for them to pop up again.
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Well, there is no perfect solution) But there are ones that - combined with concrete hardening - could made destruction of SAM systems very problematic.

Forest Green said:
The real problem is that nobody aims preferentially for the launchers, they always prioritise the radars, so the solution boils down to the radar system in the end, as your responses kind of highlight, so whether you have the SAMs above or below ground becomes irrelevant.
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Actually, in recent Russo-Ukrainean conflict, the launchers are attacked far more often than radars. Mainly because launchers are usually close to targets they defend & thus more open and vulnerable, while radars are placed behind (of course, if radar & launcher isn't the same system) and additionally protected by short-range defenses.
 
Dilandu said:
Yep. Drone swarms did not like open spaces, like sea, where they could be easily detected by AEW planes & picked by interceptors.
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There are also range limitations; presumably no warship is just sitting off the Chinese coast releasing drones. Taiwan is the closest threat, and it will be interesting to see if any of these bunkers start appearing adjacent.
 
Dilandu said:
By "passive sensors" I meant all kind that do not rely on active emissions - infrared, optical, multistatic receivers, ect.
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IR/Optical is very short ranged, if you reduce an enemy to that, your SEAD job is done.
Dilandu said:
Well, there is no perfect solution) But there are ones that - combined with concrete hardening - could made destruction of SAM systems very problematic.
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The array is still very fragile and exposed.
Dilandu said:
Actually, in recent Russo-Ukrainean conflict, the launchers are attacked far more often than radars. Mainly because launchers are usually close to targets they defend & thus more open and vulnerable, while radars are placed behind (of course, if radar & launcher isn't the same system) and additionally protected by short-range defenses.
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Not what I'm seeing. And SEAD/DEAD is fundamentally about surpressing and targeting radars, i.e. jamming, ARMs, all focus on radars. The launchers are very much secondary targets.
Dilandu said:
Yep. Drone swarms did not like open spaces, like sea, where they could be easily detected by AEW planes & picked by interceptors.
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Well that's certainly not true, I've seen Ukraine launch drones off naval drones and hit Russian radars in Crimea regularly. Occasionally the interceptors also get taken down, not to mention successful drone strikes in many other places all the time.
 
SOC said:
You only need a single munition to functionally destroy most strategic SAM systems. One PGM or ARM into the target engagement radar and the entire battery is functionally destroyed until you obtain a replacement.
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Fighters and AWACS can guide SAMs.
 
TwoTribes said:
Fighters and AWACS can guide SAMs.
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In which case the engagement radar becomes the AWACS. This is why I was careful to describe the radar as having to be above ground level and not necessarily on it. Also why the US is studying 1,000+km engagements for A2A using AMTI satellites.
 

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