Almaz S-300: China's "Offensive" Air Defense

Ambivalent said:

There is only so much that can be done with the basic hardware. Antenna design will define the wave forms possible. Having that gives one a huge leg up developing and testing countermeasures. Were I a user of such a system, I would not be too certain it will not be defeated by a combination of ECM and anti-radiation missiles. Keep in mind you do not have to destroy every battery or defeat every battery every single time to overcome an enemy. Good enough really is good enough in combat. The USAF took two losses over Serbia, hardly a victory for Serbian air defenses, and not nearly enough to deter Nato air attacks, or stave off the eventual capitulation of the Serbs.

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Yes, a very balanced analysis, as always.

For all their numerical and technological superiority, NATO managed pitiful kills and the fact that your vaunted HARMS were so easily spoofed by something as simple as a microwave oven (with modifications I could do easily in my garage) is frankly embarrassing.

Sure, they fixed it so the HARMs are now oven-proof, but that performance hardly inspires confidence about how well those missiles will perform against a truly modern SAM network and countermeasures developed by a near-pear with technology that is not decades out of date. Throw in capable enemy air forces and the odds look longer still.

A classic tactic of fanboys is pitch a single 'enemy' weapon against 'his' entire military and easily conclude that that weapon has no chance and so 'his' military will win hands down. Well that's just wishful thinking at best.

Place things in context. To try and take out Chinese S300 and HQ9s, you will need to get past modern fighters with AWACS support, possibly even with long range naval SAM support out far beyond land-based SAM coverage.

The missiles themselves could easily have been modified or upgraded to have new and different seekers, so all your test data and shoe-horned countermeasures could be made useless, in which case your pilots are going to be the ones who will pay the price if the US military shows as much hubris as you.

In addition, the S300 heavy SAMs will not be operating on their lonesome, they are almost certain to have Tor and AAA defenses against incoming ordinance, and that could be supplemented by HQ7s and/or LD2000s. All of which are highly mobile. But even if they didn't shoot and scoot, you're still going to need a serious number of HARMs to saturate that kind of close in defenses and we are not even taking the softkill and decoys that China no doubt has developed into consideration.

You have some good techno knowledge, but you also seem to have taken a little too much of your own marketing to heart.

The microwave oven story is complete horse manure, a fabrication. HARMs home on energy, and a microwave oven simply lacks that. HARM would never even pick one up. HARMS look for specific wave forms, those associated with specific emitters, not any radiation in the battlespace. The pilot is able to classify the threat from the wave form. I rather doubt Nato coded in the waveform for microwave ovens!
Oh yes, the Riven Joint was also fooled by a microwave oven from 200 nm away? Try again.

Sir:

So what your saying is, even if you have factories that make 75% of all the microwave ovens in the world, it is impossible to modify them (the magnetrons) and to hook them up with computer controls in parallel to simulate various military radars, this is again, in your opinion - just impossible.

See right through it every time. No way you can fox a HARM - its just too ADVANCED! BTW whats the processor on board the missile - 386 class maybe 486 class...?

I for one believe that its a rather trivial task to do that.

What's more I believe it would be rather cheap do so, particularly if you prepare for it in the first place.

Then mount them in the back of a van with a genset on it - trade a few trucks for an equal number of HARMS.

But despite all this - we must therefore defer to your expertise, on the impossibility of all this.

duskylim said:

Sir:

So what your saying is, even if you have factories that make 75% of all the microwave ovens in the world, it is impossible to modify them (the magnetrons) and to hook them up with computer controls in parallel to simulate various military radars, this is again, in your opinion - just impossible.

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Cavity magnetrons aren't used that often in radars anymore; they have an undesirable phenomenon called frequency drift which degrades the radar's accuracy. It was fine for World War II as radars were just meant for search, but for applications that require lots of accuracy (say a targeting radar), everyone has moved onto klystron technology, traveling-wave tube technology, or solid state for increased accuracy.

duskylim said:

See right through it every time. No way you can fox a HARM - its just too ADVANCED! BTW whats the processor on board the missile - 386 class maybe 486 class...?

I for one believe that its a rather trivial task to do that.

What's more I believe it would be rather cheap do so, particularly if you prepare for it in the first place.

Then mount them in the back of a van with a genset on it - trade a few trucks for an equal number of HARMS.

But despite all this - we must therefore defer to your expertise, on the impossibility of all this.

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Actually, aviation avionics technology isn't all that advanced; the mission computer on a F/A-18 Hornet is only as fast as a Pentium I or a 486 computer. There’s a very good reason for this apparent lag in technology. What the new fighter aircraft computers lack in computer power, they more than make up for in ruggedness. Part of the lag between personal/commercial computer developments and military computers can be attributed to all the testing required to qualify equipment for military specifications. Your laptop or desktop computer might be powerful but, how long would it keep working at 35,000 feet, in -50°C tempuratures, and under a force of five times normal gravity?

The key thing is that radars usually only operate using certain frequencies; this is for a very important reason. Certain frequencies offer certain advantages and disadvantages, and radar designs are usually tailored to those frequencies.

So, therefore, if you know certain aspects of the radars you are targeting operates(and this can be gathered through spying or through your ELINT capabilities), you can tune your systems to look in particular for those specific signals and to discount other random signals.

Pointblank said:

So, therefore, if you know certain aspects of the radars you are targeting operates(and this can be gathered through spying or through your ELINT capabilities), you can tune your systems to look in particular for those specific signals and to discount other random signals.

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Sorry if this look stupid because I have absolutely no knowledge on radar signals. However I am wondering, if it is possible for host countries to actually emit fake signals that resembled the radar signals that was fielded by the nation? This might not be modified microwave ovens, but other more sophisticated equipments mounted on trucks to deceive attacking opponents. I believe country like China could have this capability to do it.

Ambivalent said:

The microwave oven story is complete horse manure, a fabrication. HARMs home on energy, and a microwave oven simply lacks that. HARM would never even pick one up. HARMS look for specific wave forms, those associated with specific emitters, not any radiation in the battlespace. The pilot is able to classify the threat from the wave form. I rather doubt Nato coded in the waveform for microwave ovens!
Oh yes, the Riven Joint was also fooled by a microwave oven from 200 nm away? Try again.

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Rubbish.

The microwave decoys were a fact. Although they weren't the silver bullet they helped in combination with other measures/tactics.

Over 1000 Harms were fired during the conflict while the number of destroyed radars can be counted on your fingers (single digit number).

It's interesting that nearly all Marconi S-600 radars were either destroyed or disabled (5 out of 6) and some of the AN/TPS-70 were also hit while the older Soviet P-15 and P-18 came out relatively unscathed due to operating in the metric wave band.

One little detail everyone is missing is that the S-300 system is thoroughly understood by the USAF. They have batteries of them at Nellis AFB

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That must be why the Americans and Israelis are "moving mountains" to prevent the delivery of the S-300 to Iran

Husar said:

Rubbish.

The microwave decoys were a fact. Although they weren't the silver bullet they helped in combination with other measures/tactics.

Over 1000 Harms were fired during the conflict while the number of destroyed radars can be counted on your fingers (single digit number).

It's interesting that nearly all Marconi S-600 radars were either destroyed or disabled (5 out of 6) and some of the AN/TPS-70 were also hit while the older Soviet P-15 and P-18 came out relatively unscathed due to operating in the metric wave band.



That must be why the Americans and Israelis are "moving mountains" to prevent the delivery of the S-300 to Iran

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Again, the microwave story is a fabrication. A microwave oven does not begin to emit enough energy for a HARM to detect. Not even close. You could line a runway with microwave ovens and HARM will not home on this. Too little energy. They run on house current, it's nothing.
A microwave over also does not have a wave form a HARM will home on. HARMs have a threat library on board to tell the pilot what radar it is detecting. Panasonic didn't make it into the threat library. What you are claiming is that a microwave has the same exact wave form and other important characteristics such as prf or frequency modulation for CW radars and that the microwave fooled a HARM into thinking it's emissions matched that of a known threat emitter. Laughable. Again, the microwave story is a fabrication, no more credible than an Elvis sighting.
Here is the truth of that battle. The Serbs sis not emit much, limiting greatly what their missiles could do, but also limiting the opportunities for the NATO SEAD missions to find radars to attack.



No matter how you slice it, Serb tactics resulted in their defeat. They could not utilize their air defense weapons fully without risking attack, and NATO was able to work around this adequately to deliver a military defeat to Serbian forces from the air.

Not mentioned in the USAF paper is AGM-88E, a modification of HARM that includes an active seeker that will allow targeting radars that have ceased emitting, or only emit for a few seconds, as well as moving targets. ARGM is an interim solution using HARM dynamics until a new rocket ramjet missile is developed for that seeker. HARM has an inertial reference intended to counter radar shutdown ( a tactic dating back to Vietnam ), but needed more time that the Serbs made available to determine the location of the threat emitter. AGM-88E greatly improves the ability to hit radars that are shut down and can hit batteries that are on the move, something HARM could never do.

Ambivalent said:

Again, the microwave story is a fabrication. A microwave oven does not begin to emit enough energy for a HARM to detect. Not even close. You could line a runway with microwave ovens and HARM will not home on this. Too little energy. They run on house current, it's nothing.
A microwave over also does not have a wave form a HARM will home on. HARMs have a threat library on board to tell the pilot what radar it is detecting. Panasonic didn't make it into the threat library. What you are claiming is that a microwave has the same exact wave form and other important characteristics such as prf or frequency modulation for CW radars and that the microwave fooled a HARM into thinking it's emissions matched that of a known threat emitter. Laughable. Again, the microwave story is a fabrication, no more credible than an Elvis sighting.
Here is the truth of that battle. The Serbs sis not emit much, limiting greatly what their missiles could do, but also limiting the opportunities for the NATO SEAD missions to find radars to attack.

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No matter how you slice it, Serb tactics resulted in their defeat. They could not utilize their air defense weapons fully without risking attack, and NATO was able to work around this adequately to deliver a military defeat to Serbian forces from the air.

Not mentioned in the USAF paper is AGM-88E, a modification of HARM that includes an active seeker that will allow targeting radars that have ceased emitting, or only emit for a few seconds, as well as moving targets. ARGM is an interim solution using HARM dynamics until a new rocket ramjet missile is developed for that seeker. HARM has an inertial reference intended to counter radar shutdown ( a tactic dating back to Vietnam ), but needed more time that the Serbs made available to determine the location of the threat emitter. AGM-88E greatly improves the ability to hit radars that are shut down and can hit batteries that are on the move, something HARM could never do.

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From what you have written, it seems doable to build decoy radars that accomplish the same thing as that in the microwave oven myth.

I don't understand the part to do with the energy of emission. Isn't the energy related to frequency not amplitude?

hbogyt said:

From what you have written, it seems doable to build decoy radars that accomplish the same thing as that in the microwave oven myth.

I don't understand the part to do with the energy of emission. Isn't the energy related to frequency not amplitude?

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Radar emission power levels are usually quoted in "effective radiated power". This term combines both the transmit power and the antenna gain (P * G). The antenna gain is a function of both the antenna area and the transmit wavelength (hence, frequency).

One item in a radar decoy designer's favor is the radar propagation. Since the decoy does not have to worry about receiving the reflected energy, it is only worrying about one-way propagation (R-squared) vs the two-way propagation (R-fourth). Therefore, a radar decoy can be at lower powers and still function, assuming it's emissions are strong enough to be detected by whatever it is trying to decoy (aircraft RWR, missile seeker, etc).

carandol said:

Radar emission power levels are usually quoted in "effective radiated power". This term combines both the transmit power and the antenna gain (P * G). The antenna gain is a function of both the antenna area and the transmit wavelength (hence, frequency).

One item in a radar decoy designer's favor is the radar propagation. Since the decoy does not have to worry about receiving the reflected energy, it is only worrying about one-way propagation (R-squared) vs the two-way propagation (R-fourth). Therefore, a radar decoy can be at lower powers and still function, assuming it's emissions are strong enough to be detected by whatever it is trying to decoy (aircraft RWR, missile seeker, etc).

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There is test equipment that is used to create radar targets for calibrating missiles in the depot. This equipment has to create an exact replica of the various threat signals a missile will home on, and this equipment is not easy to make. Such "boxes" cost well into six or seven figures, for one item, and must generate levels of energy, even in the confined space of an anechoic chamber, that are far greater, orders of magnitude greater, than what a microwave generates.
In the field we have equipment that will create a high fidelity simulation of various threat radars for pilots to train against with their jammers and HARM's. This equipment requires trailers, diesel generators and large trucks to deploy to the field. The equipment is nearly as large and complex as the actual threat radar. You will never generate anything close to enough energy out of a microwave oven to meet the thresholds an anti-radiation missile will home on. Consider that guidance illuminators must create sufficient gain to create a return signal off an aircraft that might be 50-80 nm away from the antenna. How can a microwave oven generate such power? It cannot.