TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
I think everyone has had plenty of warning.
Syrian Crisis...2013
- Thread starter plawolf
- Start date
thunderchief
Senior Member
Tactically speaking , if Syrians manage to fire salvo of Kh-31s ( 6 or more ) on any US ship , that ship will be hurt badly (but not sunk). Kh-31 is smaller then SM-2 and I suspect more maneuverable . On the other hand , missile has relatively short range and small warhead . Standard tactics in employing such weapons is to have hunter-killer teams , with hunter aircraft flying high and far , detecting targets . Killer aircraft would attempt to fly very low , below radar horizon , get data from hunter aircraft , close-in and launch . In this case , targeting data could be provided from Russian fleet tracking US warships . On the other hand , US fleet would have ample cover from air (AWACS and CAP )
Now , looking at the current state of Syrian air force , I don't think they would attempt any such thing . Chances of success are minimal , potential hazard great and they know they don't have best equipment or pilots in the world . Kh-31s they have bought are primarily intended to defend themselves from smaller Israeli ships . Instead , they would try to conserve their force and wait for easier and less defended targets .
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Re: Persian Gulf & Middle East News & Views
On the contrary! I think all these insinuations that the PLA would somehow behave more brutally or treat POWs badly is pure BS and utterly without any basis or foundation. Name one single conflict where the PLA have treated prisoners badly since the founding of the PRC.
Even during the Chinese civil war, the PLA treated nationalists POWs very well, and that was one of the key reasons why the PLA not only won the war, but also the counter insurgency campaign afterwards. As the Russians, and to a lesser extent, the American have learnt to their cost, if you abuse prisoners and treat the locals badly, that just drives more people to take up arms against you.
The Chinese are one of the very few forces who has defeated a large, well manned, well funded and determined armed insurgency campaign and defeated it utterly. That experience, while maybe not entirely applicable to an Afghanistan/Pakistan scenario, would still give the PLA a huge leg up on the Americans and west, who didn't seem to have the first clue about how to win such a war when they first arrived in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The massive amounts of manpower the PLA could bring to bare and also the massive support China can expect from Pakistan in the event of a major terrorist attack on the mainland would all combine into a perfect storm against AQ and give China all the tools needed to eradicated them completely from Afghanistan, and that will be done as much with wells, schools, roads and jobs as it will be with bullets, drones and special forces raids.
On the contrary! I think all these insinuations that the PLA would somehow behave more brutally or treat POWs badly is pure BS and utterly without any basis or foundation. Name one single conflict where the PLA have treated prisoners badly since the founding of the PRC.
Even during the Chinese civil war, the PLA treated nationalists POWs very well, and that was one of the key reasons why the PLA not only won the war, but also the counter insurgency campaign afterwards. As the Russians, and to a lesser extent, the American have learnt to their cost, if you abuse prisoners and treat the locals badly, that just drives more people to take up arms against you.
The Chinese are one of the very few forces who has defeated a large, well manned, well funded and determined armed insurgency campaign and defeated it utterly. That experience, while maybe not entirely applicable to an Afghanistan/Pakistan scenario, would still give the PLA a huge leg up on the Americans and west, who didn't seem to have the first clue about how to win such a war when they first arrived in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The massive amounts of manpower the PLA could bring to bare and also the massive support China can expect from Pakistan in the event of a major terrorist attack on the mainland would all combine into a perfect storm against AQ and give China all the tools needed to eradicated them completely from Afghanistan, and that will be done as much with wells, schools, roads and jobs as it will be with bullets, drones and special forces raids.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Good post overall, but I think it would take more than 6 Kh31s to trouble a Burke.
I also seriously doubt the Kh31 is more manoeuvrable than an SM2, and even if it was, what of it? The Kh31s would be making a beeline for any ships it has been fired at, and has no self defence measures at all other than its speed. It can be 10 times as agile as an SM2, but it will still be flying in a nice straight, easily predictable course and heading when the SM2s engage because the Kh31s have no way of knowing that they have been engaged never mind when to use its agility to perform evasive manoeuvres.
No, trying to make the Kh31 agile would have just been a waste of resources, all the Russians cared about when they built the Kh31 was speed. That is the missile's primary defensive and offensive strategy.
If the Syrians do decide to fight, they cannot poke at the USN with small forces, that will only serve to drip feed the USN their forces piecemeal. No, if they want to make a fight out of it, they need to pretty much go all-in and send everything they have left for once hellmarry play. That is the only chance they might have to penetrate the USN's defensive perimeter far enough to get into Kh31 range, and also fire enough missiles to trouble the USN's defences.
Needless to say, most if not all of that strike package won't be coming back, but if they can take out a Burke or two and/or even put a few holes in a carrier, that might be enough to break the already fragile will of the US in fighting this war of choice that few Americans care much about.
Lets be real there is nothing that the Syrians can do if attacked by the Americans. Even if they have the planes and missile's their pilots haven't been training a lot over the past 2,5 years. I'm sure if the decision comes to attack Syria the Nimitz carrier group won't stay idle in the Red Sea. And now they are already talking about expanding the strikes against Syria. Rather then to just punish al-Assad they want to give the rebels the upper hand on the ground from the air attacks. And considering the ease that the Israeli's can strike at Syria i doubt that the Syrian air defenses are going to be too much of a challenge to the US. But what will be a challenge is for the US to find their targets. Since al-Assad knows the attacks are coming he has already removed personnel and sensetive documents and equipment from those possible target sites. The strikes if they come will cause a lot of property damage and collateral damage but might miss its intended targets and effects. And the Syrians will get help from the Hezbollah that are masters in avoiding air strikes since they have been doing it for more than 20 years against the Israeli's. If the attack against Syria will come and if they want to help the rebels to win on the ground. Then it will be a air campaign short on losses but could be long in duration.
thunderchief
Senior Member
You are wrong about Kh-31 . Did you notice that Kh-31A has range of about 50+ km , and Kh-31P around 100+ ? And yet both have basically same body except sensors . What do you think Kh-31 A does with all that extra fuel ?
In reality , Kh-31A does not fly straight , or even predictable . It is capable to do various flight profiles with violent terminal maneuvers (some say up to 15 G !). If Syrians manage to fire 6 simultaneously , I'm willing to bet at least 2 will hit their target .
They will have to form strike group with at least 15-20 planes , divided into teams of 3-4 planes coming from different directions . Also , they would need to have detection platform , and 8-10 decoy group which would fly high and fast in order to be detected and to lure off some of the US fighters in the CAP .
Overall , I agree that they don't have neither means nor guts to attempt that .
asif iqbal
Lieutenant General
I think everyone is jumping to gun here and getting too much into weapons capabilities in theory
Before all of that I don't even think Syria has any pilots, commanders or leadership to successfully carry out a attack on a warship at sea using using anti-ship missiles, it takes years and years of training to establish a attack naval squadron, it takes even longer to translate that training into a actual war zone attack, do the Syrians even know the location of the targets?? Probably not
And even if they did have all that in a war zone the priortys and threats change very quickly the good pilots are the one who in the midst of battle can adapt and change their tactics and come out on top
This is not about flying and plane and launching a missile, we are talking real war time scenario here
Before all of that I don't even think Syria has any pilots, commanders or leadership to successfully carry out a attack on a warship at sea using using anti-ship missiles, it takes years and years of training to establish a attack naval squadron, it takes even longer to translate that training into a actual war zone attack, do the Syrians even know the location of the targets?? Probably not
And even if they did have all that in a war zone the priortys and threats change very quickly the good pilots are the one who in the midst of battle can adapt and change their tactics and come out on top
This is not about flying and plane and launching a missile, we are talking real war time scenario here
plawolf
Lieutenant General
The Kh31P is an anti-radiation missile, and as such, carries a smaller warhead than the anti-ship Kh31A. The launch conditions and flight profiles of the two missiles are also extremely different. The Kh31P is designed to be released at medium to high altitude and adopts an almost ballistic trajectory towards its target. The Kh31A otoh, is designed to be dropped at extremely low altitude and adopt a sea skimming cruise profile to minimise detection range. Just look at the massive difference in fighter range figures when they adopt a Hi-Hi-Hi flight profile compared to a Low-Low-Low profile and its not have to see where the range difference between the two missile variants comes from.
What you are talking about is pre-programmed terminal evasives designed to thrown off gun based CISW. The SM2 will not be engaging the missiles at such extreme close range. At the range the SM2 will engage the Kh31s, they will still be in cruise mode, and they will be flying straight and level and won't be doing any sort of evasives. That's just how the missiles work. As such, any talk of agility is entirely moot, and the only thing that matters is the speed of the missile and its RCS.
And just exactly what is that production based on? Personally, I don't even think the Russian makers of the Kh31 would dare boast of such performance.
That's the absolute worst thing they could do. An Aegis Burke has no blind spots. Attacking from different directions offers zero advantages against Burkes and USN crews. The only weakness the Burkes have, which the Syrians might be able to exploit to breach their defences is the limitation of the illuminators those SM2s depend on.
The exact number of targets each illuniator can paint simultaneously is restricted info for obvious reasons, but I would not expect more than half a dozen maximum under the best possible conditions. That means if the Syrians focus all the efforts on one specific point, there is a chance they might be able to overload the illuminator responsible for that area and overwhelm the ship's defences that way. But with co-operative engagement and the carrier's CAP, even that is a slim chance at best.
Attacking from multiple directions would just allow the USN to use multiple illuminators to direct more missiles at more targets at the same time.
Again, bad idea. The USN isnt going to fall for such an obvious ploy. Flying high would just make them easy targets for the surface group's SM2s, and also give the USN advanced warning and allow them to get more CAP in the air earlier.
Far better for the fighter escort to stick close with the strike package to remain undetected for as long as possible. Then, when the USN finds them, the fighters would push ahead of the strikers and keep the quick alert standby birds occupied while the strikers make a mad dash to get into firing range.
Jura The idiot
General
thunderchief: During MA-31 sales pitch Boeing said 20 g ! and
By the way I went through most Russian servers describing AS-17 "Krypton" (see my previous post if you care, #236 here) and it's interesting to see generally they say the overload is 10 g, and don't mention a sea-skimming profile ... recently I've heard here about War Reserve Mode (WMR); is this an example?
Sorry, no. The AEGIS system was designed to defend precisely against saturation attacks, and has gotten better with time at doing that against attacking missiles of all profiles.
You are talking about a force of five AEGIS ships, all of which will be linked in cooperative engagement. And a Horizon class anti-air destroyer complimenting them. No force of 20 SU-24s or Mig-29s with sixty missiles is going to breach that defense if (and this is the really critical part) the AEGIS vessels know they are coming and are prepared for them with the kinds of info they will get from their AWACS/AEW and their own sensors, and likely with a significant CAP of modern US and French aircraft prepared to intercept those aircraft.
Again, the Kh-31, no matter what variety does not outrange the SMs. Maximum range for Kh-31 (and I do not think the Syrians have these missiles ) is about 140+km. It is more likely that they have the 90-100 km variety. Maximum range for the long range anti-air SMs carried on AEGIS destroyers (RIM-67 and RIM-174 latest variants) is 200 km. Those aircraft, even if they get past the CAP, are going to have to fly deep into the SM envelope to launch their missiles. IMHO, very few would get to do so.
The SM was designed to hit a missile, the Kh-31 and other SSMs were designed to hit a ship. They are maneuverable, but that maneuverability is not designed to perform drastic defensive maneuvers against individual attacking missiles.Thunderchief said:
Agree 100% here.Thunderchief said: