Cruelbreed
08-15-2008, 05:52 PM
From space.com , aviation.com
http://www.aviation.com/technology/080807-iran-and-s-300-missile.html
Israel's Red Line: The S-300 Missile System
By Dave Majumdar (http://www.aviation.com/php/php/contactus/author.php?r=ck), Special to Aviation.com
posted: 07 August 2008 04:18 pm ET
Four Israel Defense Forces (IDF) F-15I Ra’am warplanes skim along just 100 feet above the arid desert landscape, flying at just below the speed of sound. The four jets form just one of many Israeli strike packages on their way to strike Iranian nuclear facilities hidden deep underground all over that country.
But, as the strike fighters (http://www.aviation.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=071105-F15EStikeEagle) streak towards their targets, almost without warning the lead F-15I explodes as it is hit by a surface-to-air missile. As the rest of the flight desperately begins evasive manoeuvres, a second F-15 is obliterated before the pilots can bail out, and more of the deadly missiles are on their way towards the remaining Israeli jets.
This is the nightmare scenario facing Israeli military planners when Iran acquires the Russian surface-to-air missile system known in the West as the SA-20 Gargoyle. This deadly missile could be delivered to Iran as soon as September, according to Israeli news reports, potentially shutting the door on any Israeli air strike.
A nearly insurmountable obstacle
Although on July 9 U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates denied the possibility of Iran acquiring the missile — known as the S-300PMU-1 by its Russian designers — “anytime soon,” defense reporters have speculated widely that the operational deployment of the S-300 air-defense system would represent a “red line” for an Israeli air strike on Iran. This is because the SA-20/S-300 represents a nearly insurmountable obstacle for conventional aircraft, according to air power experts.
“For non-stealth aircraft, the SA-20 represents a virtual no-fly zone,” said retired United States Air Force General Richard E. Hawley.
Hawley, who served as the commander of U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command (http://www.acc.af.mil/) from 1996 to 1999, said the SA-20 possesses far better radar, much greater range, is far better integrated into the networked air defense system, and is generally much more lethal than previous generations of surface-to-air missiles.
Additionally, the SA-20 is much more resistant to electronic countermeasures that are typically used by strike aircraft to defeat such weapons and is capable of engaging targets with far smaller radar cross-sections.
The SA-20/S-300's capabilities
The S-300PMU-1 system is capable of engaging targets from altitudes as low as 30 feet to as high as 90,000 feet, against incoming targets travelling at a velocity of 9,000 feet per second, according to the Web site of the Almaz Scientific Industrial Corporation, the Russian company that builds the weapon.
Its horizontal range allows the S-300PMU-1 to attack targets as close in as 3 miles to as far out as 95 miles. In addition, the missile system is capable of destroying incoming intermediate-range ballistic missiles up to 25 miles out.
The SA-20/S-300 does all this while attacking six targets simultaneously, with two missile launchers each firing at a rate of one missile every 3 to 5 seconds. The system is totally mobile and can be networked into an air battle management system to provide even more lethal coverage and to ensure that the weapon is much more protected.
Hawley, a former fighter pilot with more than 3,000 flight hours and 438 combat missions flown over Vietnam, said the prospects for conventional strike aircraft would be grim when faced with the SA-20.
According to Hawley, the only ways to engage the SA-20 with conventional non-stealth aircraft would be to use stealthy cruise missiles such as the Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), fired from outside the range of the air defense missiles; or to resort to Vietnam-era low-level tactics.
The problem for Israel is that it does not have the JASSM missile — production of the weapon has only recently restarted for the U.S. Air Force (http://www.aviation.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=Thunderbirds) after a lengthy delay due to technical faults — and so its aircraft would have to use the low-altitude approach against the SA-20.
Low-altitude tactics — where jets skim the earth at treetop levels — are extremely hazardous and are of limited effectiveness, and an attacking force would likely face “very significant losses,” said Hawley.
New threats against low-flying aircraft
The idea behind attacking at low level is that the incoming aircraft would use terrain to mask their approach because radars cannot see through geographic features such as mountains, but while the tactic helps mitigate the threat of the long-range surface-to-air missiles, new threats are emerging in that arena.
This additional danger comes from lower-tier missile systems such as the advanced Russian Tor-M1 point defense system — delivered to Iran last year — and especially from air-defense guns. A little known fact is that most losses of combat aircraft in the later half of the last century were not caused by missiles but by anti-aircraft artillery, said Hawley. Even in the first Gulf War, most coalition aircraft losses were due to cannon fire from the ground hitting aircraft flying at low level.
The picture is further complicated by the fact that Russian air defense systems are networked, according to Hawley. All surveillance systems, missile systems and anti-aircraft artillery are interconnected to form an integrated air defense system and data from individual radars are transmitted to all the other defenders to form a coherent air-defense picture.
As a result, simply destroying a single radar or one missile battery does little to diminish the threat, making integrated air-defense systems the single greatest challenge faced by modern air forces.
Hawley said the most effective way to combat integrated air-defense systems was to operate stealth aircraft such as the F-22A Raptor (http://www.aviation.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=050907Raptor) or the F-35 Lightning II (http://www.aviation.com/technology/071221-f-35b-stovl-propulsion-system.html).
For Israel that may not be an option. The earliest the IDF can acquire the F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter is in 2014 and not only is the F-22 too expensive, but also it is banned from export by the so-called "Obey Amendment" under US law due to the extremely sensitive nature of its technology.
http://www.aviation.com/technology/080807-iran-and-s-300-missile.html
Israel's Red Line: The S-300 Missile System
By Dave Majumdar (http://www.aviation.com/php/php/contactus/author.php?r=ck), Special to Aviation.com
posted: 07 August 2008 04:18 pm ET
Four Israel Defense Forces (IDF) F-15I Ra’am warplanes skim along just 100 feet above the arid desert landscape, flying at just below the speed of sound. The four jets form just one of many Israeli strike packages on their way to strike Iranian nuclear facilities hidden deep underground all over that country.
But, as the strike fighters (http://www.aviation.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=071105-F15EStikeEagle) streak towards their targets, almost without warning the lead F-15I explodes as it is hit by a surface-to-air missile. As the rest of the flight desperately begins evasive manoeuvres, a second F-15 is obliterated before the pilots can bail out, and more of the deadly missiles are on their way towards the remaining Israeli jets.
This is the nightmare scenario facing Israeli military planners when Iran acquires the Russian surface-to-air missile system known in the West as the SA-20 Gargoyle. This deadly missile could be delivered to Iran as soon as September, according to Israeli news reports, potentially shutting the door on any Israeli air strike.
A nearly insurmountable obstacle
Although on July 9 U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates denied the possibility of Iran acquiring the missile — known as the S-300PMU-1 by its Russian designers — “anytime soon,” defense reporters have speculated widely that the operational deployment of the S-300 air-defense system would represent a “red line” for an Israeli air strike on Iran. This is because the SA-20/S-300 represents a nearly insurmountable obstacle for conventional aircraft, according to air power experts.
“For non-stealth aircraft, the SA-20 represents a virtual no-fly zone,” said retired United States Air Force General Richard E. Hawley.
Hawley, who served as the commander of U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command (http://www.acc.af.mil/) from 1996 to 1999, said the SA-20 possesses far better radar, much greater range, is far better integrated into the networked air defense system, and is generally much more lethal than previous generations of surface-to-air missiles.
Additionally, the SA-20 is much more resistant to electronic countermeasures that are typically used by strike aircraft to defeat such weapons and is capable of engaging targets with far smaller radar cross-sections.
The SA-20/S-300's capabilities
The S-300PMU-1 system is capable of engaging targets from altitudes as low as 30 feet to as high as 90,000 feet, against incoming targets travelling at a velocity of 9,000 feet per second, according to the Web site of the Almaz Scientific Industrial Corporation, the Russian company that builds the weapon.
Its horizontal range allows the S-300PMU-1 to attack targets as close in as 3 miles to as far out as 95 miles. In addition, the missile system is capable of destroying incoming intermediate-range ballistic missiles up to 25 miles out.
The SA-20/S-300 does all this while attacking six targets simultaneously, with two missile launchers each firing at a rate of one missile every 3 to 5 seconds. The system is totally mobile and can be networked into an air battle management system to provide even more lethal coverage and to ensure that the weapon is much more protected.
Hawley, a former fighter pilot with more than 3,000 flight hours and 438 combat missions flown over Vietnam, said the prospects for conventional strike aircraft would be grim when faced with the SA-20.
According to Hawley, the only ways to engage the SA-20 with conventional non-stealth aircraft would be to use stealthy cruise missiles such as the Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), fired from outside the range of the air defense missiles; or to resort to Vietnam-era low-level tactics.
The problem for Israel is that it does not have the JASSM missile — production of the weapon has only recently restarted for the U.S. Air Force (http://www.aviation.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=Thunderbirds) after a lengthy delay due to technical faults — and so its aircraft would have to use the low-altitude approach against the SA-20.
Low-altitude tactics — where jets skim the earth at treetop levels — are extremely hazardous and are of limited effectiveness, and an attacking force would likely face “very significant losses,” said Hawley.
New threats against low-flying aircraft
The idea behind attacking at low level is that the incoming aircraft would use terrain to mask their approach because radars cannot see through geographic features such as mountains, but while the tactic helps mitigate the threat of the long-range surface-to-air missiles, new threats are emerging in that arena.
This additional danger comes from lower-tier missile systems such as the advanced Russian Tor-M1 point defense system — delivered to Iran last year — and especially from air-defense guns. A little known fact is that most losses of combat aircraft in the later half of the last century were not caused by missiles but by anti-aircraft artillery, said Hawley. Even in the first Gulf War, most coalition aircraft losses were due to cannon fire from the ground hitting aircraft flying at low level.
The picture is further complicated by the fact that Russian air defense systems are networked, according to Hawley. All surveillance systems, missile systems and anti-aircraft artillery are interconnected to form an integrated air defense system and data from individual radars are transmitted to all the other defenders to form a coherent air-defense picture.
As a result, simply destroying a single radar or one missile battery does little to diminish the threat, making integrated air-defense systems the single greatest challenge faced by modern air forces.
Hawley said the most effective way to combat integrated air-defense systems was to operate stealth aircraft such as the F-22A Raptor (http://www.aviation.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=050907Raptor) or the F-35 Lightning II (http://www.aviation.com/technology/071221-f-35b-stovl-propulsion-system.html).
For Israel that may not be an option. The earliest the IDF can acquire the F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter is in 2014 and not only is the F-22 too expensive, but also it is banned from export by the so-called "Obey Amendment" under US law due to the extremely sensitive nature of its technology.