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

balance said:

Now, do both NATO and China have LPI radar in operation?

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Some of the Chinese warning radars being marketed for export are not outrightly saying they are LPI but they have mentioned frequency agility, which is another way to say spread spectrum, pulse compression and low sidelobes, in their brochures.

RAM uses a dual mode seeker. It has a passive RF sensor that can track the emissions of an active homing seeker, and it has an IR seeker that is extremely good at discriminating a low flier from surface reflections. Very very good.
Brahmos and all the other high mach surface skimmers are way over rated. For one thing they are not as fast on the deck as they are at 40,000 feet. Any missile at 40,000 ft will be nailed by a Standard SM-2. On the deck these same missiles are far slower, maybe mach 1.5 and their fuel burn at such low altitudes is hideous. Keep in mind the USN operated Kh-31 Kryptons we bought from the Russians without warheads and converted these to target drones ( the Russians do exactly the same thing ). We also bought their launch rails. The launch rails had to go, they were unsafe. If you tried to jettison the missile in an emergency the pigtail would not disconnect, causing a whole bunch of potentially fatal damage to the airplane. If you watch in flight videos of them the rails and the missile wobbles on the F/A-18's wing. In our experience we could not get more than 15nm out of them when launched at low altitude. By then RAM would have engaged the launch aircraft!
Two other problems with these high mach missiles. Number one, "sea skimming" for MA-31 ( as the drone was called ) and 3M80 Moskit is 15 meters. No, not 15 feet but 15 meters. That really isn't very low. Exocet and Harpoon manage a two meter cruise. The second weakness of high mach missiles is that they glow like the sun to an IR seeker. Ever wonder why we put an outboard IR sensor on CIWS? Ever wonder why most BMD kill vehicles use IR seekers? Fast missiles are hot. RAM is more than capable of dealing with modern high mach sea skimmers.
Just in case you are wondering, the USN replaced Krypton with something actually faster and lower flying for our training. it's made in Sacramento California by Orbital Sciences and is called Coyote ( like Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, it always gets blown up ).



This is a tough target. Any resemblance to 3M80 is entirely deliberate.


You can see some photo's of this system fired from a QF-4 Phantom out of Point Mugu, and see the real thing on genuine US Navy yellow gear. We had 'em, they were not very good. Boeing offered to make some mods to bring them up to our needs but the Russian Navy people who came to California to hear Boeing's were in no mood to hear some Americans tell them how to improve their missile.



The 27nm range figure is for a high altitude launch. A low altitude launch ate into fuel so much that the best we could obtain was 16nm. Such short ranges would force the attacking aircraft to fly through literally hundreds of miles of USN air defense to reach it's launch point. Russian missiles are over rated.
Now a subsonic small sea skimmer with little IR signature and a very low altitude that allows the missile to be lost in surface clutter, one that navigates to it's target area on it inertial nav, one that doesn't turn on it's search radar until the final seconds of the attack, something like Harpoon is a completely different story. This missile is very hard to find and shoot down.

This is a tough target. Any resemblance to 3M80 is entirely deliberate.

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The design is entirely functional, it does not matter how it looks, so long as it works.

Take a look at the ROC's HF-3 supersonic missile. There are also similarities of this design to the Kh-31 and 3M80. Its all function deciding form.



Here is a drone that predates Kh-31 and the Coyotes. Note the similarities once again.



Here is an interesting PDF that shows the evolution of ramjet missiles.



Note Figure 3 and Figure 7.

Of course the other school of ramjet design wants a circular nose, like the Talos missile shown here. Brahmos has gone to this form too.

ACIMD almost replaced Phoenix but the USAF wasn't interested in it. One example sits at the Naval Ordinance Museum at China Lake. I knew about the ALVRJ but never saw a photo of it. That is very interesting indeed. I wonder if the development of that spooked the Soviet Navy into building Sunburn?
There is a funny story in that museum about the AA-11 missile and Agile. Agile was a 1970's program to develop a thrust vectored IR missile that used a helmet mounted sight. Sound familiar? Well the program was cancelled but the Soviets didn't believe it. They thought the program went black. Fearing the potential of this missile they developed AA-11. This never raised an eyebrow over here until Germany reunified. The Luftwaffe received AA-11's with the MiG-29's that came with East Germany. After testing them the Germans called to tell us we have a problem. AA-11 was outstanding. The result was the rapid development of AIM-9X with thrust vectoring and a helmet mounted sight.

man overbored said:

The US/Nato practice is to use specialized EW aircraft to jam the crap out of enemy radars so they do not see our incoming aircraft. Wild Weasel fighters can then launch anti-radiation missiles at the radar sites. If they shut off HARM remembers the last location of the emitter and homes on that, usually doing enough damage to disable the radar. AARGM will actually find radars even when turned off, and will take out moving targets as well. SEAD is one of the great strengths of our tactics. If you look at wars after 1973 there are few occasions were modern ground based air defenses have succeeded in deterring our air forces. Integrated ground based air defense systems are not very useful against a well equipped modern air force.

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This is clearly influenced by a lot of propaganda. Even if the attacking aircraft can detect the presence of search radars, they cannot know precisely where they are until they are close enough for SAMs to hit them.

And how are EW and wild weasel aircraft any use against any opponent with home-on-jam missiles? It's as if you think the US can simply flip a switch on an EW aircraft and turn enemy radars non-functional. This is such a silly and childish view.

Clearly, a robust ground-based air defense can easily detect, track and engage any aircraft in the US inventory (although F-22 would be quite difficult). Slow moving EW aircraft would simply be easy pickings for home-on-jam SAM's. This is why in the real world, the US is quite wary of regional powers like China building robust, multi-layered air defenses -- they can't take it down with air power alone.

Through triangulation by EW/ECR aircraft, you get a pretty precise location of a radar, even though it's still some distance away.
And you don't need to exactly pinpoint it, an anti-radiation missile "just" needs to be in range and have a rough fix.
If the radar doesn't turn off short after launch, it's pretty hard to evade that missile.
Also, if you have two or more EW aircraft, wich jam alternatingly, the HoJ missile will jump back and forth between those and might pretty well get confused.

Of course modern SAMs are dangerous assets to all modern aricraft and SEAD/ DEAD is a difficoult and dangerous job. But HoJ e.g. doesn't make wild weasel helpless.

Roger604 said:

This is clearly influenced by a lot of propaganda. Even if the attacking aircraft can detect the presence of search radars, they cannot know precisely where they are until they are close enough for SAMs to hit them.

And how are EW and wild weasel aircraft any use against any opponent with home-on-jam missiles? It's as if you think the US can simply flip a switch on an EW aircraft and turn enemy radars non-functional. This is such a silly and childish view.

Clearly, a robust ground-based air defense can easily detect, track and engage any aircraft in the US inventory (although F-22 would be quite difficult). Slow moving EW aircraft would simply be easy pickings for home-on-jam SAM's. This is why in the real world, the US is quite wary of regional powers like China building robust, multi-layered air defenses -- they can't take it down with air power alone.

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It's a team effort. The E-8 and Rivet Joint can loiter well outside the battle space, and beyond any SAM threat to identify and classify threat radars. They can be located well enough to bring an F-16J into contact with the radar site. This is not propaganda, but how it was actually done over Kosovo. The Serbs did not illuminate very often since they knew that if they stayed on more than 20 seconds they risked eating a HARM. This forced Nato to fly HARMS on the wings of certain strike aircraft instead of strike ordinance in case there was a "pop up" target that illuminated the strike. Do not forget it takes time for the radar system to acquire and lock a strike aircraft. The seeker on the HARM missile tells the pilot there is a threat and locks on that threat. All the pilot needs to do once he or she has the indication is to launch. If the radar stayed on long enough HARM will fly to that point in space and explode. AARGM can locate and follow a moving target even when the radar is off, it has several seekers built into it. It is a game of cat and mouse however. If the radar is not on long enough then HARM many not obtain a lock, but then the SAM site cannot obtain a lock either. In general, a HARM can be fired before a SAM site can lock and fire. Now once the SAM is in the air it becomes a game of chicken. For a SAHR or TVM missile like S-300, the radar site must remain on for the duration of the engagement, making for an easy target for the HARM. Does the SAM site shut off and loose this engagement or continue and guarantee a HARM hit? Generally the SAM site shuts down, but now the HARM will fly to the last known location of that emitter. Boom. Usually this is close enough to disable the radar antenna if nothing else. The site will be down for repairs but this may be an opportunity for a bombing run if such an asset is readily available. Sometimes there is no bomb equipped aircraft available and the F-16J doesn't carry the LANTRIN pod to do that mission itself. Once the radar shuts off the SAM they launched lacks guidance and goes astray.
The Serb's radars were so well suppressed they resorted to firing hundreds of SAM's blindly in salvos without guidance. None of these hit a Nato aircraft. When jamming aircraft like an EA-6 flew with the strike aircraft, Serbian radars that lit off would not see useful targeting data, but even with jamming, if that radar stayed on for more than twenty seconds it was toast. This is the value of having jammers in the strike package. With enough time a really skilled radar operator might work around some jamming, but that would leave the radar on far too long and draw a HARM strike.
Over Baghdad, the Iraqi's left their radars on the first night and lost literally hundreds. Rivet Joint located radars from afar while EA-6's and EF-111's jammed them so that F-16J's could attack with HARM. The Iraqi's did not shut down when they sensed jamming, If they sensed jamming ( a skilled operator will know their radar is being jammed ). Once the radar is down Strike Eagles could attack the battery and command trailer with Maverick and iron bombs. Now we would also use stand off weapons like JSOW. Over Serbia the Serbs seldom emitted, so Nato had to devote more sorties to the SEAD mission. Nonetheless the Serbs, using their radars sparingly lost most of their dedicated search radars and only managed to knock down two aircraft in the entire engagement. Effectively they had no defense against Nato aircraft, and Nato was able to use their airspace above 12,000 relatively freely.

man overbored said:

Rivet Joint located radars from afar while EA-6's and EF-111's jammed them so that F-16J's could attack with HARM. The Iraqi's did not shut down when they sensed jamming, If they sensed jamming ( a skilled operator will know their radar is being jammed ). Once the radar is down Strike Eagles could attack the battery and command trailer with Maverick and iron bombs. .

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Isn't the S-300 radar is quite mobile. IT not really a SAM site.
HARM? It's liable to be intercepted by missile also.