Soviet/Red side AI does not fire SAHM ?

[Nicholas Bell 117]

I don't think the Luftwaffe bought into the Raytheon PIP (Product Improvement Program) which ran 3 iterations.  I would agree that by the early 1990's IHAWK was getting "long in the tooth" and was phased out quickly in the US Army for Patriot.  I think the Marines held on for a bit longer.  The "HARM down the throat" was always a tense scenario.  Shut down or attempt to shoot down the incoming missile....?   Even putting the radars in standby was not much help given the missiles "memory".  Thus my desire to have a deep slit trench within easy access.

 

Interesting information, Snailman.  I wonder if Soviet data networks worked as poorly as US ones when I was in.  Ours were all FM based - all very problematic equipment wise as most was very old.  When that failed we had to go to AM voice communications with the battalion TOC.  Useless in a fast moving environment with hundreds of aircraft in the air.  My plan was to go autonomous, fire off the basic load and then pack up and hide... <g>. 

 

I had the wonderful opportunity to participate with my unit (1/7 ADA) on 2 occasions in Red Flag exercises with the Air Force in Nevada 1983 and 1984 IIRC.  Quite an experience, and much more fun to be off-duty in order to watch the dogfights overhead.  Lesson one for the fighter jockeys is they needed to remember to turn on their IFF and use designated air corridors.  I suspect in a hot war there might have been a lot of blue on blue kills.  Maybe the USAF learned something from our participation.  I also had first hand experience with US ECM, which was not specifically tuned against my radars.  The fighter ECM was manageable, but the B-52 put out so much ECM I imagine it might be similar to the SPS-141MVG you mention.  The old bird came in NOE and popped up at about 20 KM and totally saturated the system with noise AND false targets.  I thru up my hands and stepped out of the control van to watch the monster approach and fly over at 100 feet.  I came to understand how the USAF thought they might be able to penetrate Soviet airspace. Given the ECM capabilities of the B-52 the PVO would be relying on guns and AAA.

[Snailman 517]

HI Nick.

 

AVR (Automatic Leadership System)  was connected to the SAM battery with either land line (100% reliability, no mobility) or  with Vector or Senezh (Mercury Grass) aimed microwave systems, on semi-mobile vans. Also included the GCI Interception role for air force. I guess it should have worked well since the entire PVO (and ours) was based upon that. Back up systems were the regimental EW radars like Spoon Rest, Flat Face or on the division level Tall King. Latter we still have operational, with NATO IFF and some digital modernization. These metric wavelength stuff are safe with ARMs, and can give network information to SNR and SURN (Mobile SNR, like Straight Flush). Thin Skin, SIde Net, Odd Pair and similar height finders were also important in the network to provide height info for the "three-point" firing mode. The latest Volkhov even had a dedicated range-finder, RD-75 in case the distance data was missing due to jamming.

The same way were connected all the mobile AAA and SAM batteries of armored divisions with command APCs. So the short range SAM and ZSU had access also to early warning data.

 

MVG was a self defence jamming pod measure for attack craft like Su-17/22. As much as I know it had group functions, deflecting, ground noise masking... etc. Later this was a build in device in MiG-27, Yak-38 and other attack craft. If you can reach a book on the Tu-16, there you find similar ECM beasts of the cold war.

 

Unfortunately I know little of the modern ECMs.... technology must have improved worldwide, and with technological gaps disappeared between east and west things are much more "interesting". Anyway... everything is "made in China"

[jeanba 1,920]

The Luftwaffe tests in early 90th showed an other picture. Improved HAWK was out of work, when jammed with SPS-141 or SPS-142. Perhaps the german HAWK system was different from american HAWK.

On the other hand the soviets had a line of excellent Anti Radar Missiles in the 80th. So a SAM operator should have been aware, that under cover of a jammer an ANTI-RADAR Missile could be on the way.

During one military show program on a "day of open door", i have seen in the Military Technical School Bad Düben (in the mid 80th) a simulation of SAM operator training which included the attack on enemy aircraft with HARM on the own SAM battery. It started with passive jamming on the radar screen, which became suddenly dotted with a lot of small dots, then a part of the radar screen became white (active jamming) and then appeared a small fast moving dot toward the centre of the radar screen. The operator handed over the guidance of a started SAM missile toward an other SAM Radar station and then switched of the radar.

Most western ECM / eccm systems basically have 2 modes : a "training" one, which is used during exercises ... and a "War" mode, the purpose being not to give all info top potential ennemies or competitors

example : during the redflag exercises between french and the US, because both may compete in selling some aircraft, they tend to "hide" some specificites

So, of course, when a system is defeated, the answer is "we did not use it up to full capacities"

Additionnally, yes, there are a lot of variants and costumization among users.

For instance, during Iran / Iraq war, the french ecm pods used by the Iraqi were customized to speciifcally adress the Iranian (US bought) defenses, which were very different from their expected ennemies (warsaw pact in Europe)