Persian Gulf & Middle East Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

plawolf said:

You will have to be stupid to operate SAMs on automatic mode in peacetime.

Even in wartime there is hardly any reason to ever operating in such a mode. Not unless you are in so much trouble that you know turning on your radar is pretty much a suicide mission, so you set the system on automatic mode and high tail out of there before enemy SEAD/DEAD assets obliterate the SAM site, and just hope it managed to fire off some missiles and shoot something down before it was toasted.

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: D

The USA military operated the patriots in fully automated mode up to / during the iraq invasion and for several years afterwards.

They started to consider to switch off the automated mode around 2004, when they shoot down too many USA/British aircrafts : D



Since then the Patriots can switch the launchers to automated mode only with an approval from the central command.

However this means if an early warning radar detect an incoming missile it is only a move of a switch to engage it .

Reports of a successful Yemen Army ballistic missile strike against the Saudi Aramco site at Dhahran, on the eastern Persian Gulf coast of Saudi Arabia (1100-1200km from Yemen border).

Yemen Army press release states this was part of a larger operation (Operation Balancing Deterrence) which involved 8 ballistic missiles and 14 drones, and targeted multiple sites in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia usually fires 2-5 U.S. Patriot missiles per ballistic missile. Each PAC-2/3 missile costs $2-3 million. I don't remember exact numbers, but I think KSA has an inventory of up to 1000-1500 missiles (a huge inventory).

Lets assume, conservatively, 2 patriots per missile, and 1500 inventory. 100 ballistic missiles fired by Yemeni Army into Saudi Arabia (to date, Yemeni Army has already fired more than this amount at Saudi Arabia) would require 200 patriot missiles - a full 13% of the Saudi inventory!

Also note that a large amount of this stockpile is much older PAC-2 missiles, and only a smaller proportion of the overall inventory is the newer PAC-3 missiles. In addition, Patriot systems do not offer 360 degree coverage - so each battery is limited in operational capability.

So we can say that in the case of full-scale conflict with Iran, for example, Saudi patriot missiles, would be of limited utility. If Saudis fire 5 interceptor missiles for each (more advanced) Iranian missile, their entire inventory will be depleted after 200-300 Iranian missiles. And that is without Iran directly targeting launchers and radars with anti-radar missiles/suicide drones and cruise missiles.

US would likely supply further missiles in case of such a crisis, but this would take time and be very expensive.

Most likely Iranian ballistic missile systems would be Fateh class (Fateh-110/330), Zolfaqar, Dezful and Qiam - these are said to cost from $0.2-0.4m and have already been produced in very large numbers (thousands). Even 2 patriot missiles for each Fateh class missile would cost $4m for a $0.2m missile - 20x the cost of the attacking missile! If Saudis fire 5 interceptor missiles, that is $10m+, more than 40x the cost for Iran. Although Saudi's wealth cannot be denied, this ratio is not sustainable for any conflict (but would still be less than accepting the economic/psychological damage of not intercepting the missiles, so still the logical path for Saudi Arabia).

Note that the above is just basic analysis of a hypothetical scenario and not something that I hope happens.

I also forgot to mention in the above: Saudi Arabia's strategy against Yemeni UAVs is mostly to conduct flight patrols near key border areas, to identify and intercept hostile UAVs using AAMs (much cheaper than Patriot missiles).

However, if we consider the cost of flying a F-16 is $30,000+ per hour, and more flights = more maintenance and more repairs, and that these costs will be much larger for Saudi Arabia (as an importer) than the USA, even the relatively primitive Yemeni UAV attacks (which continue almost on a daily basis for the past 5 years) are incredibly expensive and degrade Saudi's capabilities.

Hypothetical numbers: 5 F-15/F-16s patrolling average of 10 hours per day = 5 x 30,000 x 10 = $1.5 million per day. 1 AAM interception per day = $0.2 million (very conservative estimate). Additional repair and maintenance and other costs = $0.1 million. So total cost per day is almost $2 million.

That is a cost of over $650 million per year, just to deal with very basic Yemeni UAVs. In comparison, Yemeni drones are unlikely to cost more than $20,000 each. So even 5 per day is $100,000 cost for Yemen - 40x ratio of defence vs offence cost. Another example of the cost-ineffectiveness of Saudi Arabia's defence against Yemeni attacks.

NB. This cost-ineffectiveness is not exclusive to Saudi Arabia - it exists as a general problem many countries face in countering low-end threats (e.g. suicide drones). Systems like the Russian Pantsir are designed to be a cost-effective method of dealing with this issue.

Confirmation of successful drone and missile strike by Yemeni Army against Saudi Arabia:

Khalij e Fars said:

Hypothetical numbers: 5 F-15/F-16s patrolling average of 10 hours per day = 5 x 30,000 x 10 = $1.5 million per day.

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That equation means you have 5 aircraft each flying 10 hours on CAP every day... That's not how CAP works. If you put 10 hours of flight time on a Viper in one day, it would take that F-16 out of action for over a week. Vipers need 12 hours of maintenance for every hour in the air. Also, CAP missions don't happen with odd number of aircraft, it's usually a two ship or four ship patrol.

You probably have something like 6 two-ship CAP missions a day, with a 30 to 40 minute sortie each, with multiple squadrons on rotation. That'll be around $220,000 per day for fuel and maintenance. What you'll need to add to that is the cost of all support assets in the air (Refuelers, AWACS, ECM, UAVs etc.) not to mention extra costs for a higher readiness rate in general.

Mohsin77 said:

That equation means you have 5 aircraft each flying 10 hours on CAP every day... That's not how CAP works.

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I just gave very rough estimate numbers to illustrate the point of cost-ineffectiveness of defending against such attacks by reference to the Saudi-Yemen example.

Were any interceptors were fired? It doesn't look like it from the posts

silentlurker said:

Were any interceptors were fired? It doesn't look like it from the posts

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Yes - the Saudi regime claimed to have intercepted most of the ballistic missiles, and there is footage showing one interception.