What will USAirForce and USNavy do if confronted with a competent Air Defence?

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Shaka of Carthage RE:What will USAirForce and USNavy do if confronted with a competent Air Defence? 6/25/2003 3:39:31 PM

I'll give this a shot. Air Defense, as I understand it, are the assets I use to protect my ground forces from the enemies air assets. The US Army and US Marines are almost totally depedent on the assumption that they have air superiority or at the worst, the airspace is being contested. Hence, very little resources are applied to air defense. Unless I have missed the mark, the US Navy Aviators and US Air Force "air-to-ground" missions concentrate on defeating any known air defense asset it could be faced with. Thats where the spend the bulk of the money. I think the only difference between a competent foe and a incompetent one would be how long it took and how many losses. And the "older" technique of throwing lead in the air (anti-aircraft artillery) won't do much good anymore, because of the stand-off PGMs.

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Kodiak RE:What will USAirForce and USNavy do if confronted with a competent Air Defence? 6/26/2003 4:19:12 PM

I agree with Shaka. For US forces with American Naval/AF strike aircraft with ever more sophisticated stealth, PGM's and ECM's (not to mention they will often be be covered by the F-22),high altitude strategic bombers, stand off solutions like JDAM's, JSTOW's, and cruise missles, and emerging technologies like UCAV's, direceted energy weapons (lasers, particle beams, microwaves, etc) and satellite based offensive weapons, the difference between US forces dismantling "competent" air defense arrays and incompetent AD systems will just be a matter of time and hopefully just a marginal amout of additional attrition.

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11b10 RE:What will USAirForce and USNavy do if confronted with a competent Air Defence? 6/26/2003 6:56:16 PM

Just a competent Air Defense would mean little change, unless there was an urgency to an operation that did not allow the USAF the time to attrit. the OPFORs to the point of US air surpremacy. If you were to add some decent interdiction aircraft,choppers and CAS aircraft into the OPFOR, the absence of a good US medium range,mobile, Surface to Air system would become glaring.The strange thing is the seperate components for such a system are available just not put together.I am thinking of the Humvee, AMRAAM combo that DOD was working on at one time.

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RomadBean RE:What will USAirForce and USNavy do if confronted with a competent Air Defence? 7/7/2003 1:15:26 PM

Air defense is a crutial issue when engaging any enemy. The extent of the defense determines what operations can and cannot be conducted at any given time. Now that the various branches no longer squabble and have been told to play nice, very real plans are available for dealing with air defense threats. In a close air support roll, any air defense systems are identified and engaged before armor and troops, thus insuring control of the skies in support of ground troops. High speed, low altitude attacks are made with standoff weapons to eliminate these threats. Missions of a more strategic nature are handled by interdiction missions. In some cases these are area wide interdiction where all ground threats are neutralized. In other cases, corridors are cleared for specific operations. In any event, air defense is a dangerous business to be in these days. You just never know if that aircraft up there is a decoy for a wild weasel mission or if that cruise missile is just cresting the horizon to ruin you day.

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Horse Soldier RE:What will USAirForce and USNavy do if confronted with a competent Air Defence? 7/7/2003 1:23:46 PM

I think the short answer to the question would be "Destroy it."

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Soviet Spetsnaz RE:What will USAirForce and USNavy do if confronted with a competent Air Defence? 7/7/2003 7:58:33 PM

The USAF/USN won't do much good against a decent AD. Remember Serbia, NATO has stultified it back there. Remember how many decoys were bombed. Now if NATO would face its possible future foes like Brazil, India or China, it would get a beating. The USAF/USN can defeat small 3rd world nations with 60's AD but modern decent AF's and AD's are a huge problem for the USAF/USN. Remember how the British navy nearly lost the whole fleet to 6-9 exocets with a range if about 40 miles. Imagine what could 10,000 Haiying-4's do. SA-19's, S-300PT's, S-400's something very dangerous for the USAF. Especially the anti-stealth systems Cochluga and VERA-E. E-3 AWACS don't do good against anti-awacs or long range missiles.

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jacques RE:What will USAirForce and USNavy do if confronted with a competent Air Defence? 9/26/2003 1:31:25 AM

The last time the us air force and navy confronted a competent air defense was over Former French Indochina. It was a disaster and they were complaining about French Air Force performance there 10 years prior to that (given the fact that WW2 had just ended and France had to get by with a lots less)

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B.Smitty RE:What will USAirForce and USNavy do if confronted with a competent Air Defence? 9/26/2003 7:50:37 AM

Soviet Spetsnaz, The US problems in Kosovo/Serbia had nothing to do with the Serbian AD. It had everything to do with identifying targets in difficult, wooded terrain. The British Navy took a beating in the Falklands but their air component only consisted of a handful of Harriers and a few long-ranged bomber sorties. That's not even remotely comparable to what the USAF/USN would bring to bear. Anti-stealth and anti-AWACS systems have not been proven in combat, so while they may pose a threat, it's impossible to predict their impact. Long-ranged SAMs are dangerous, but can be dealt with using modern munitions, stealth, and tactics.

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Dancing Johnny RE:What will USAirForce and USNavy do if confronted with a competent Air Defence? 9/27/2003 1:45:56 AM

This anti-stealth and anti-AWACs may look good on paper, but so did the GPS jammers, and we all know how those turned out. Until you see results from actual combat experience its hard to tell how effective a system will be. And this applies to both sides. Also, with the state of the Russian forces these days, I wonder what condition even their top of the line stuff is in.

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Aussiegunner Soviet Spetsnaz. 9/27/2003 4:10:31 PM

"Remember how the British navy nearly lost the whole fleet to 6-9 exocets with a range if about 40 miles." The Argentinean navy had a total of 5 air-launched Exocet missiles, two of which hit their targets. This hardly qualifies as "nearly the whole fleet". Most of the British losses (which included 1 freighter, 2 destroyers, about 3 frigates and 2 landing vessels, definately not the "whole fleet"), were due to attack by Argentinean Skyhawks and Daggers. As others have alluded to on this thread, the British sustained these losses in the context of a far weaker air defence than the US navy would be able to muster, and still managed to win the war. If anything, the Falklands operation proves what a professional Western force can do, even when inadequately equipped, and simply suggests that given the right kit it will usually come up tops against a lesser trained foe. "Imagine what could 10,000 Haiying-4's do." If a Haiying-4 costs anywhere much as a Western anti-ship missile(+ or - 500 thousand US, depending on the type), I can't imagine anyone having 10,000 of them. For that matter, I doubt anyone has enough aircraft capable of launching a fraction of them, during the span of your average war.

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Worcester RE:Aussiegunner - Down South 11/26/2003 8:58:19 PM

Sov may not have the Falkland details to hand. The Falklands is a good "yardstick" for naval air against land air - 200+ Argentinian land air against 27 Brit Sea Harriers; threat reduction (range and poor Argentine maintenance) got that down to a max sortie rate of 30 per day. As you say, out of 87 ships deployed (40+ in the fleet RARO and landing areas) to lose five is good. In the 6 months prior to embarkation RN 801 Squadron took on the US Aggressor Sqn (Heyford) and an F-15 Sqn (Bittburg) and racked up kill ratios of 5-0 and 4-1 ; USAF couldn't handle the Sea Harrier. The Argentines admit 16-0 air-to-air. The "Black Buck" Vulcan raids at least kept people awake; but recent Argentinian reports show they kept at least 1 fighter squadron over each mainland city because, so they claim, they thought the Brits would bomb Buenos Aires or Cordoba, esp if they lost a carrier. All the Brit losses and damaged (except Sheffield and Conveyor) were within SIGHT of land and succumbed to fighter attack from land. Its all about balance: you KNOW your landing ships and escorts of the Amphibious Group will be close to/surrounded by high, broken land which gives them almost zero reaction time for guns or SAMs. You must keep fighter cover over them but you cannot risk your carriers because the enemy KNOW your carriers must be close by and the Argentinians were recording the radar tracks of Sea Harriers in order to get the carrier positions. The real lesson (again) was AEW - airborne early warning radar, but NOT as much as the Hawkeye community claim; even with airborne early warning, you still need CAPS on station and you wouldn't pick up and intercept all of those 30 tracks coming in below 50 feet over the land/islands/water. Lesson: if anyone does any opposed amphib landing against a land-based air force which is still effective, you'll lose ships. Exocet is now so old the Brits decoy electronically - they say they can make it do aerobatics! A Brit T42 destroyer shot down 4 Chinese Silkworms in under 2 minutes at 18-25 mile range in GW1; guess pratice makes you good!

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Worcester RE:Aussiegunner - Down South #2 11/26/2003 9:18:34 PM

Should have mentioned Sea Wolf missiles - awesome. Only two Brit ships had them - Brilliant was attacked 1 mile from land by 4 Argentinian Sky Hawks, line abreast, wing-tips almost touching, skimming the water...shot down two, third crashed into sea avoiding a Sea Wolf and fourth turned and ran like hell; all at 4-6 miles range. Brits seem to have them on every ship now. Trialled with US Navy and shot down a 15 inch shell from USS New Jersey in flight! But way too expensive and "foreign" - so we've still got the crappy 40 year-old Sea Sparrow!

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ChdNorm USAF over North Vietnam 11/26/2003 9:32:41 PM

"The last time the us air force and navy confronted a competent air defense was over Former French Indochina. It was a disaster and they were complaining about French Air Force performance there 10 years prior to that (given the fact that WW2 had just ended and France had to get by with a lots less" I'm just wondering what the disaster was? It seems like if I remember things correctly .. It was "bombing the north back into the stone age" that forced the North back to the conference table. Not that it spelled voctory in totality ... but far from a disaster.

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WDDavenport Thomas, your anti-Americanism is showing -- competent is an innuendo 11/29/2003 12:46:06 PM

Thomas, your anti-Americanism is showing -- "competent air defense" is an innuendo, implying that the USAF and USN only fight incompetent air defenses, such as Fatty Goering's Luftwaffe in 1943-45. If you continue making sneers such as that against American armed forces, Americans at strategy Page will stop taking you seriously. The question is too broad and vague. One must define "competent air defense" more specifically. I'll suggest a more specific question: how would any foreign air force deal with a SAM system such as the Patriot GEM2 and PAC-3 air defense equipment used in Iraq in 2003? Please, replies such as, "A Eurofighter Typhoon would outmaneuver a PAC-3" are unacceptable in the absence of any detailed evidence or technical reasoning."

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ChdNorm RE:Thomas, your anti-Americanism is showing -- competent is an innuendo 11/29/2003 2:02:33 PM

"I'll suggest a more specific question: how would any foreign air force deal with a SAM system such as the Patriot GEM2 and PAC-3 air defense equipment used in Iraq in 2003?" Thats really very simple WD, send in a task force of LeClercs and Merkavas to destroy everything single handedly..... havent you been reading how things are done around here?

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