Countering Western SAMs

kovona said:

So should this be a strategy used by the PLA, and would it be wise for the PLA to develop equipment and training for this sort of thing?

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chinese Air defence has always been built around a large fleet of interceptor, thats why the PLAAf has thousands of J-5 and j-6 for so many years. But now it can do that any more because 2 thousand J-10s is prohibitly expensive. Then when you factor in the the cost of mantaining all the planes, airfields and all those logistical system, its more economical. Also their is the psychology factor, SAM is like armor, and planes are like swords. You can defend urself by either having really sharp sword or really thick armor, and many people would prefer to have that layer of armor.


China is big enough to survive a western air campaign anyway, it only really need SAM to protect a few very localized area.

ABC78 said:

Simple Have a bomer with loaded with non leatha long range cruise missles to deploy massive heat and light flares. A long missiles with a bursts alumium confedee or metals that are easily picked up by radar. This mixed bag of party favors should blind any system like snow storm. It should not be about hiding planes but not letting them know how many are coming or where from.

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AWAC and phased array operators won't be fooled by aluminum bursts and heat flares... this isn't WWII. When they see target speed as 0 kts whats the point? They don't fire until they have a target solution and a probable ID on the target. They don't just shoot at any flock of birds that gets in the way. Your decoy system would have to be alot more original than that.

kovona said:

Of course, no matter what kind of high end hardware the Americans come up with, there is one weakness that would always be prominent.........sooner or later, a mobile launcher would run out of missiles to shoot at planes. If we can launch some kind of flying decoys before we enter the fighters, it could be possible to expend a mobile launcher's ammunition, hence rendering it useless against any passing Chinese aircraft. The main question is, how many missiles can a mobile launcher carry?

Would it be possible for the the PRC to manufacture aircraft loaded decoys (or any type of decoy) that would fool and empty out Western anti-air defense? Would it be economically and military feasible to employ such a strategy?

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The main question isn't "how many missiles can a mobile launcher carry?" the main question is, what type of decoy, if any will make the Americans waste their salvos? On a side note you must have air superiority to do this. It is American doctrine to control airspace not from the ground but from the sky. Pilots like myself in the USN won't make this such an easy concept.

So the question is what will fool phased array radar like AN/SPY-3 or AN/MPQ-65. It is important to note that naval systems ever since the Vincennes incident have incorporated superior target recognition algorithms. Since the Gulf War and all the PAC fratracide incidents PAC-3 has incorporated cutting edge target ID. The operators won't fire unless the decoy follows an attack path that is threatening. If you just launch dummy decoys that don't do anything your wasting your time. If you have a bomber on radar that suddenly has dozens of decoys coming from it, the operaters will see exactly what is happening. You have to understand the radar picture recieved from a phased array radar, it is 3D. You might as well be looking at it with Binoculars. If you do come up with a decoy it will have to be intelligent enough in it's flight path to fool radar operators to think it is a threat meaning the flight path and silhoutte of the object must be something that scares them.

What's the point of that decoy system?
To destroy the only one SAM battery after it has exausted all munitions or a whole regiment? What if you encounter layered area defence?

A terminally guided SRBM would much more effective with less what if's involved...

IDonT said:

All SAMs, both western and Russian, suffer from the same critical disadvantage; they always start their intercept at zero(0) speed and at zero (0) elevation. That is the main reason why US doctrine in air-defence does rely on air superiority fighter than the SAM. It is much easier for an air superiority fighter to destroy an enemy aircraft than a SAM, because it can manuever and any missile fired have an advantage in elevation and speed (energy state) when it is actually fired at an enemy.

The best way to gain air superiority over the US is to defeat its air force. This is infinitely harder than destroying the SAM sites.

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Kinetics favor air launched weapons over ground launch ones. That is obvious.

However, SAMs do get much better signal gain than AAMs. Which means it is a lot easier for them to lock on to targets better than AAMs.

Reasons?

First, SAMs need only to look up, not look down. So they do not deal with ground clutter issues, only the stark background of an empty sky.

Second, SAM recieving antennas are larger than AAMs. Again, that translates to longer range signal gain.

Third, SAMs are being guided by radars that are much larger in recieving arrays size and with much more powerful emitters than fighter radars.

If AMRAAM can't have 100% kill rate vs opposing aircraft, what do you think the much larger and less maneuverable SAM will be able to do.

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Not necessarily. A larger missile can kill small maneuverable targets because it can carry a much larger warhead. With proximity fuse, you are looking at a much larger blast radius, which can be impossible to evade.

crobato said:

Kinetics favor air launched weapons over ground launch ones. That is obvious.

However, SAMs do get much better signal gain than AAMs. Which means it is a lot easier for them to lock on to targets better than AAMs.

Reasons?

First, SAMs need only to look up, not look down. So they do not deal with ground clutter issues, only the stark background of an empty sky.

Second, SAM recieving antennas are larger than AAMs. Again, that translates to longer range signal gain.

Third, SAMs are being guided by radars that are much larger in recieving arrays size and with much more powerful emitters than fighter radars.

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While you are correct on the advantage over air radar's problems of ground clutter you are missing something... AWACs datalinks They FAR outway any disadvantage stated. I will take an AIM-120D with an E-2 datalink over a PAC-3 using ground radar anyday.

kunmingren said:

chinese Air defence has always been built around a large fleet of interceptor, thats why the PLAAf has thousands of J-5 and j-6 for so many years. But now it can do that any more because 2 thousand J-10s is prohibitly expensive. Then when you factor in the the cost of mantaining all the planes, airfields and all those logistical system, its more economical. Also their is the psychology factor, SAM is like armor, and planes are like swords. You can defend urself by either having really sharp sword or really thick armor, and many people would prefer to have that layer of armor.


China is big enough to survive a western air campaign anyway, it only really need SAM to protect a few very localized area.

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You have to understand that China, even with thousands of J-6s, long recognized the vulnerability of her own air defense.

Which is why they initiated the J-8 fighter program, which to produce a fighter with greater range, endurance, the ability to use long range missiles, achieve high altitudes and supersonic speeds.

China also had traditionally has a very large and extensive SAM defense network. We don't hear much about it because it does not catch internet forum interest. But it is there. The main missile for this is the HQ-2 based on the SA-2 Guideline. Before the S-300, the Guideline was no doubt the Soviet Union's most deadly SAM. Even today, it has lost none of its teeth. It has no problem taking down high altitude U-2s, and you have to go extremes with designs like the SR-71 to get away from it.

China still makes HQ-2s but with modernized seekers (old missiles have since been upgraded) and have backed them with modern phase array search and fire control radars.

crobato said:

Even today, it has lost none of its teeth. It has no problem taking down high altitude U-2s, and you have to go extremes with designs like the SR-71 to get away from it.

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It has no problem taking down Ukrainian airliners either. Modern ECM are pretty effective against the SA-2 hence two more generations of SAMs.

Big-E said:

While you are correct on the advantage over air radar's problems of ground clutter you are missing something... AWACs datalinks They FAR outway any disadvantage stated. I will take an AIM-120D with an E-2 datalink over a PAC-3 using ground radar anyday.

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Excuse me, but I am talking about the direct fire control radar and the seeker radar. When does AWACS midphase guide an AMRAAM? Even datallink handover is still in an experimental stage with the USAF. An E-2 uses mechanically steered radar, how can the sweep times be faster and more precise than the phase array of the PAC-3.

Big-E said:

It has no problem taking down Ukrainian airliners either. Modern ECM are pretty effective against the SA-2 hence two more generations of SAMs.

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I am talking about the missile kinetics. The missile's own electronics can be upgraded over time to deal with ECM environments. The Russians have not updated their SA-2's but the Chinese have constantly upgraded their HQ-2 equivalents.

Let's add to that, that modern SAMs now have HOJ modes. If you successfully jam them, they go into HOJ and home in on the jamming emitter.

crobato said:

Excuse me, but I am talking about the direct fire control radar and the seeker radar. When does AWACS midphase guide an AMRAAM? Even datallink handover is still in an experimental stage with the USAF. An E-2 uses mechanically steered radar, how can the sweep times be faster and more precise than the phase array of the PAC-3.

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AIM-120Cs have had mid-course guidance since 1996. Only the cheap countries who opt for AIM-120Bs or still operate AIM-120As are unable to utilize this feature. JTIDS is available for all aircraft that have MIDS-LVT, even PAC batteries have them. The new E-2D contains the largest AESA in production, it is far superior to the old phased array of the Patriot.

Big-E said:

It has no problem taking down Ukrainian airliners either.

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What's that supposed to mean? Is this some incident I missed?