Let's say a country were to go to war with the US, matching the USAF in terms of air power would be extremely expensive and difficult, but could you deny the US complete air superiority if you invested heavily in anti aircraft? What would you need?
Stupid questions
Andrew Diaz
Luke Torres
>if you invested heavily in anti aircraft?
there hasn't been a single instance in history where SAMs were able to provide air superiority or even effectively deny airspace. even during the wars with egypt, the jews were still making strikes and conducting offensive operations
Cameron Roberts
Is that because of a technology gap? Do you a think a US grade SAM would do better?
Anthony Perry
>only 30
what about 100? 150?
Grayson Turner
It’s more a matter of the nature of aircraft versus static (or even mobile) ground systems. A target, even assuming it’s not designed to avoid radar detection, maneuvering in three dimensions at high speed will always be harder to hit than a stationary ground station that has to be emitting significant amounts of EM radiation. Especially these days, with integrated targeting data, you can geolocate missile and radar sites immediately before the attack, pass the data to your SEAD weapons, and eliminate them, regardless of whether or not they turn off their emitters once the attack begins (a common tactic to preserve SAM sites).
More specifically on the turning off emitters part, if the radar stops transmitting, the initial goal of the SEAD has already been accomplished and strike aircraft can continue on their mission, regardless of whether or not the site was destroyed. Allegedly, during the first Gulf War, Coalition pilots would periodically call out “magnum,” the brevity code for an anti-radiation missile, on non-encrypted comms without actually firing anything, causing the Iraqis to shut off their radars in the hopes of preserving them.
Joshua Russell
I don't think it would be possible to entirely shutdown and airspace from the ground. The Warsaw Pact had a ton of mounted SAMs, MANPADS, and AA guns and that kind of tech didn't save the states they sponsored from getting smacked by the USAF.
Xavier Walker
Well damn, that sucks. Is there any way at all to tackle a superior air force?
Oliver Lee
Really, the best way is to structure your organization in a way that isn’t particularly vulnerable to airstrikes in the first place. Insurgencies accomplish this by hiding in civilian areas where collateral damage is deemed unacceptable, making themselves hard to identify from the air by using non-military vehicles and structures, and hiding more vital assets like weapons caches in areas that are hard to strike with aircraft, like caves and jungles. There’s a reason the MO of most US wars since the invention of the JDAM is, like, a few weeks of conventional conflict before the regular military completely collapses. Of course, once the insurgency begins and that aerial advantage is less relevant, things tend to drag on into an endless quagmire.
Jayden Green
This. A ground based defensive system by its very nature is at a disadvantage because it's a reactionary and cedes all initiative to the attacking force. Doesn't matter if it's a S-400, Patriot, Sea Sparrow, Standard Missile, Buk, etc, etc. They're all at the same disadvantage. Any ground based system is also far more affected by radar horizon than a system in the air. There's also the fact that any long range SAM relies on radar, which suffers from the inverse square law in that anything that radiates will give away its position long before it can get a viable return, meaning that the attacker can either evade the radiation source or can set up a strike against it at it's discretion.
The best air defense is a comparable air force.
Levi Wright
>it’s reactionary and cedes all initiative
Yup. As much as “violence of action” and maintaining momentum is memed in modern military circles, it’s true. You almost always want to be the one dictating the fight.
Austin Thomas
Exactly. Of course you can do things such as SAM traps to increase their effectiveness, but then you give up a great deal of your potential range detection advantage. IR MANPADs can be quite effective, but their biggest problem is dealing with fast movers and anything at altitude. A squad of any 3rd or 4th gen fighters in an area will be more effective at contesting airspace than a spread out SAM battery.
Kevin Bell
there hasn't been a single instance in history where SAMs were able to provide air superiority or even effectively deny airspace. even during the wars with egypt, the jews were still making strikes and conducting offensive operations
Nigger what?
Specifically the Yom Kippur war showed that as long as the AA systems were setup as the Soviet advisers told the sand niggers, the jew airforce was being yeeted into oblivion. They had to punch through egiptian lines on land with tanks and fuck them up from the rear, up until that happened, any attempt on an airstrike meant the plane is not likely to come back.
Dylan Phillips
While Doogman 5 was definitely a case of SAMs temporarily preventing the acquisition of air superiority, it’s worth noting that this was 1973 and came before SEAD techniques were widely proliferated outside of the US’s experience in Vietnam. In fact, Israel’s first comprehensive SEAD strategy was produced immediately after the war in response to the difficulties they had.
en.wikipedia.org
Josiah Williams
>US grade SAM
American SAM are garbage.
Aiden Lewis
UAVs in '82.
Mozltov, or whatever.
>SAMs never deny airspace, Not in Vietnam, Falklands, Bosnia, etc
Then why are they always priority targets?
I guarentee the have secured air space in African civil wars.
Grayson Allen
Laughs in AGM-88
Daniel Morris
>Develop SAM systems
>Apaches fly at ground level pop up and destroy them
>US Airpower runs rampant on your shithole country
Chase Hill
The best defense is always the unknown (fog of war), any structures/plans your enemy knows about can be brutally exploited if they get a good counter going; while mobile forces will make him play it safe to stop hundreds of potential attacks, effectively paying off the equipment costs without even fighting. (And you can even use your forces to loot other countries if you have to.) Been this way since the age of cannon, where specialty weapons could be developed for any scenario given enough time: Constantinople's walls vs the Dardanelles Gun, anti-ship forts vs mortar ships, Maginot line vs a blitzkrieg force, SAM site vs 25 planes who already released the JDAMs on the SAM's coordinates.
Juan Davis
Its happening in Ukraine right now lol.
>jews were still making strikes
Challenging airspace doesnt mean you stop the other guy from making strikes. You make it CHALLENGING so he reduces the number of sorties below what he could otherwise manage, this gains you an advantage out of proportion with the cost of the surface to air missiles.
/thread stupid discussion
Henry Rogers
Shitty poorfag MANNPAD trap takes down your apaches?
Aiden Parker
>US grade SAM
We removed everything below patriot, i think national guard has some manpads but they are 2x refurbished and no new models are made.
Patriot itself is a below par anti missile system, its most advanced version is mobile S300 equivalent and most of the stuff we have stateside is not the better versions more S200 equivalent. Nothing we have matches S300PMU or S350 so there is another medium gap. Our more capable systems are SM3 and THAAD which are S400 equivalent.
We have nothing like their 10,000 missile stationary silo system around Moscow, mobile THAAD was proposed around Washington but LAWMAKERS LITERALLY REFUSED TO DO IT BECAUSE IT INTERFERED WITH THEIR SKYLINE LAWS. In washington there arent any tall buildings allows because it ruins the skyline for the politicians there.
Sebastian Gomez
lol your apaches are going to have to fly over IR SAMs and MANPADS to get in range of the radar guided systems you moron.
Matthew Ortiz
the problem with arabs is not the technology, but the fact that arabs are historically incompetent at war.
Levi Peterson
stingers are still in service, also last i heard the US is finally noticing that leaving all air defense to the air force and naval aviation is not a good idea and are looking to put AA defenses on the stryker chassis
Bentley Lopez
the flak track is fast, can transport up to 5 infantry units and deals splash damage which benefits when dealing with large group of air targets.
This bad boy will set you back 500 credits, or 375 if you have an Industrial Plant. They are fragile, but fast to produce.
Owen Bennett
No. Air defence is exactly that, defence. It guarantees the enemy the initiative. SEAD will win. It always does.
Aiden Gutierrez
Yom Kippur War was exactly that in the opening phase, what the fuck are you talking about?
Kayden Richardson
TEMPO TEMPO TEMPO
Jayden Davis
What is veitnam war?
David Nelson
>What would you need?
flak towers of course
Kayden Gutierrez
TEMPO TEMPO TEMPO
Caleb Moore
>What would you need?
A comprehensive, layered air defense network, with both radars and missiles covering the entire threat spectrum, and an extensive networking capability to tie the whole thing together.
Basically what the Russians would have if they weren't broke.
Justin Sullivan
You would have to change the physical nature of the conflict.
Highspeed 3d is always going to be better at maneuvering and take bigger missiles to hit than low-speed and 3d.
Lasers would reverse the equation. They don't care about maneuverability, and ground based lasers can have inherently bigger heatsinks and power plants than aircraft.
Christopher Nguyen
the war where more bombs were dropped than all the allied powers combined in ww2
not the best example of denying air superiority with mostly AA
Hudson Powell
A laser based system would theoretically be extremely effective, particularly if coupled with an IR tracking system. The biggest issue is that it's a line of sight weapon, so you cede the benefits of a traditional SAM in that you can launch over the horizon.
John Garcia
>UAVs in '82.
Not uncommon really . Ryan Aeronautics was famed for their UAV production going back to the 50s, they even had recon UAVs in the 60s.
>Then why are they always priority targets?
They can do damage. Would infantrymen ignore the MG nest next to the building they're ordered to take?
Brayden Robinson
>Challenging airspace doesnt mean you stop the other guy from making strikes
Causing attritional damage is not the same as air superiority or even making airspace contested.
Daniel Long
The US is considering it but they're looking more into laser options.
Now that the intermediate missile treaty is dead, we can probably expect a new generation of ballistic missiles. And if there's one thing US ordinance is, it's very, very accurate. Sure we kill civies at times, but that's because we mistakenly aimed it at them, not because it missed by a country mile. So at that point OP you have to weigh
>what is the cost of your missile system
>how much can it launch
>what is it's reloading time
>can it feasibly stand against an overwhelming assault by the US' seemingly never-ending supply of tomahawks and soon-to-come ballistic missiles and bomber-launched ballistic missiles/cruise missiles
The problem with air defenses at times is that you'll actually run out and have to reload, and that takes time, money, and trucks to move that stuff around. Unfortunately, money is something most countries lack in quantities enough to challenge a US invasion, time is against you when a carrier group or allied air bases are tossing up stealth fighters or other fighters for SEAD/DEAD, and logistics vehicles are a favored prey for US birds.
Really, you can delay the inevitable, but that's it. It only slowed things down for Libya and Iraq, but didn't stop anything. Even steady losses didn't actually STOP bombing in Vietnam, just made the US adjust accordingly and that was an era where we were too concerned by the USSR/China backing to just go full 1950s Korea and level North Vietnam until there wasn't anything over 2 stories left.
Also this, the US really doesn't invest in SAM much because, in general, the US HAS the sky.
TEMPO TEMPO TEMPO
The point isn't that they PREVENT airspace from being penetrated exactly, his point is that the air-defense bubble is always popped. They don't hold out forever; the fact that they are priority targets and immediately removed should discourage the belief that they are impenetrable.
Luke Cooper
This.
And lets not forget jamming, chaff, etc.
Air Superiority means an air force.
In total war (not vietnam style humanitarian police action bullshit) if you don't have an airforce you lose.
Carson Robinson
This. Lasers will change the whole game.
Ethan Cooper
Not a total war.
Vietnam had the US half ass fighting with limits on where they could target and this whole stupid idea of winning hearts and minds.
If the US went into Vietnam like they did Japan or Germany there would be no Vietnam today.
Even so. Militarily Vietnam got btfo. The Tet failed militarily, but the civilian and other casualties caused an outcry at home. Thats what won the war, politics. Not the military.
The scenario we are discussing is a modern total conventional war scenario, not a humanitarian police action.
Jackson Martin
why is modern war so gay and boring
Anthony Myers
Technically speaking, the US did win the Vietnam War.
They just decided not to join the Second Vietnam War a few years later
Grayson Green
En vietnam las areas controladas por corea del sur estaban libres de viet cong. USA perdió porque su ejercito peleo mal y perdio la ventaja tecnologica porque no supo como usarla a diferemcia de sus aliados. Repito, el sector controlado por los militares de corea del sur eataba libre de comunistas.
Christopher Miller
nobody likes you or your language
Jason Ross
fuck off beaner
Grayson Adams
The Falklands are British
David Evans
>What would you need?
You would need the relevant battle space to be enormous, with great depth and very broad. Also mobile. Vietnam was a sliver of a nation, Iraq kept its AAA in like, 5 locations, Syria in the 80s kept its AAA within a few blocks. These common factors meant that scouting out the emplacements involved comparitively small search areas and restricted strike zones to concentrate air power.
So a large amount of land area to make it difficult for force concentration and easy scouting.
You also need to constantly reposition your AAA, keeping them alive and presenting a threat. Producing fast mover casualties is nice, especially if you can produce them by the dozen, but it isn't necessary. Blasting away drones and helicopters however, is excellent useage.
Finally, and here's the most important bit. Offense. If Saddam had fueled his army up and invaded SA within 3 weeks of the American build up starting, he would have slaugthered the forces there. And if you can strike the Super Carriers and take their re-capture capacity out, you have taken the carrier out.
Disperse your AAA, keep it mobile, and use counter attacks against land bases and carriers.
Jace Campbell
Helicopters against defended airspace is a terrible, stupid idea. For fucks sake, some well used heavy machine guns are enough to fuck up their day.
Jeremiah Thompson
Right. The North violated their agreement and invaded after we left. The South was so corrupt and inept the North steamrolled them without us.
Then they slaughtered every half white baby the found.
Colton Mitchell
So long as the
Charles Adams
>If Saddam had fueled his army up and invaded SA within 3 weeks of the American build up starting, he would have slaugthered the forces there.
More details on this? This is pretty interesting, especially when all the hindsight views of the Gulf War are of it as a steamroll.
Grayson Hill
incredibly specific, the defenses are few, you are unconcerned with counter attacks and you have luxury of time. Otherwise? No.
Lucas Evans
True. I remember an interview where Swarzkropft said as much.
Caleb Powell
The coalition forces had almost a year to build up their forces in Saudi Arabia, so when they attacked they had overwhelming force. Of course, at the time Saddam was more interested in trying to negotiate a way to just keep Kuwait and had no real interest in trying to take on the rest of the middle east
Caleb Lee
I think he means the build up during Desert Shield. Before we had sufficient forces there.
Levi Morris
Sorry, but those cannot even deal with a few blimps.
Liam Gutierrez
yuri BTFO forever
Grayson Hill
>Vietnam had the US half ass fighting with limits on where they could target and this whole stupid idea of winning hearts and minds.
The stupidity and bullshit of the Vietnam War tore the country politically asunder to the point that only the most diehard retards continued to advocate staying there.
>If the US went into Vietnam like they did Japan or Germany there would be no Vietnam today.
Uh....no.
>Even so. Militarily Vietnam got btfo.
No they didn't. Our guys vs their guys was even. South Vietnam+America+Other Allies such as Australia and South Korea vs North Vietnam and there allies? The casualties were damned near 1-1.
>The Tet failed militarily, but the civilian and other casualties caused an outcry at home. Thats what won the war, politics. Not the military.
Senile old Boomer. The US Army from then on retreated from more land than it took and held. It was one retreat after another, because nobody wanted to do it.
>The scenario we are discussing is a modern total conventional war scenario, not a humanitarian police action
Given how high the butchers bill already was, and how hard it was just to occupy the part of Vietnam that had SOME friendly Vietnamese of other ethnic gropus?
China wouldn't have to pull a Korea again. Just keep dumping arms and armaments from their factories and keep shipping them stuff from the Soviets.
Hell, I'm pretty sure a 2nd American Civil War starting from a mutiny would be more likely than American managing to successfully occupy all of Vietnam. Shit man, thats half a dozen operations Torch movements, or a slog all the way up to the Chinese border.
In the second one, without time as a luxury, infant SEAD fails, Helicopters become even more horrible deathtraps, and it will get to the point that American and allied forces have to choose between moving with any sort of speed or using significantly less firepower. And every square mile of ground gained requires additional occupation forces.
Xavier Torres
>Senile old Boomer. The US Army from then on retreated
Someone here is a boomer alright
Carter Collins
Yep. But Saddam didn't do that, and its likely his forces would have found a way to bungle it somehow. And in the long run, all that happens is that forces gather in Egypt/Israel instead and destroy Iraq outright instead of just driving them out of Kuwait.
Jose Ramirez
Ground based nuclear powered liquid cooled laser turrets!
Grayson Young
billions of years in mspaint
Jace Roberts
stupid questions thread? Whatever, there's no QTDDTOT. Anyone know of a free online course to get a certificate for a CHL in Oregon? I've found a bunch of paid ones but you'd think someone would put up a free one
Jackson Jackson
>enemy attacker uses their earthquake gun to destroy the facility
>now your soil is full of radiation
Elijah Roberts
Stingers are not in service anywhere but with NG units and reserves. All of the ones in service receive gas refills and new batteries every five years but are the same items, no new stingers have ben built since 1999. No deployed troop has a Stinger for example, especially in Europe where its against policy.
As for Stryker you are thinking of the Canadian ADATS which we WERE going to join but pulled out for SLAMRAAM which never went into service either.
John Watson
Jaxson Garcia
Laser batteries but those aren't viable yet. When they are though the air supremacy game will change dramatically. Imagine being able to destroy any aircraft you have lime of sight of.
Andrew Smith
>Stingers are not in service anywhere but with NG units and reserves. All of the ones in service receive gas refills and new batteries every five years but are the same items, no new stingers have ben built since 1999. No deployed troop has a Stinger for example, especially in Europe where its against policy.
ADA here. You are 100% wrong. We've SHORAD batteries all over now, especially Korea. Avenger batteries are going to become standardized elements within BCTs. FAAD packages are already going onto Strykers and Bradleys as we move from COIN and are looking to challenge near peer adversaries.
Doctrine finally is being updated to include SHORAD components in combat theaters after countless trails at NTC showed only a few opfor ABTs were capable of rendering entire BCTs combat ineffective in just a few sorties when air superiority was not in effect. Sentinel+Avengers in particular are going to be the off the shelf answer to drones in combat.
David Ortiz
Funny because in the 80's the army went overboard with Stingers where everyone had a stinger team attached, even cooks
Camden Bell
Aircraft, missiles, possibly triggering bombs even.
Ethan Reed
They were expecting the Warsaw Pact to send a tsunami of steel that was also flying.
Xavier Reed
Soviet rotatory wing threats were all too real so there was a good reason for it. The Steel Wave pouring through the Fulda Gap was NATOs worst nightmare.
Logan Gutierrez
Fulda Gap gone hot without nukes means helicopters fly into battle and never come back. Too much AAA, too mobile, across a battlespace that is too large and deep, and a war with a strict timetable for SEAD to really work or mean much.
Jordan Cruz
>means helicopters fly into battle and never come back
This was the Soviets we're talking about. That was essentially their doctrine. Conflict was just a meat grinder.
Robert Lewis
It applies to NATO forces too in the Fulda Gap scenario. Only the B-2 Spirits and the Nighthawks have a chance of getting back alive.
Christopher Adams
Hear me out here. With enough people and expertise, you could easily make a cheap remote controlled jet power plane with guns, bombs, and rockets. The planes would have a live feed going to a tv in a remote location where the pilot would be controlling it. This is popular with quadcopter racing. With a large enough concentration of these RC planes versus a few $100 million+ military jets, you could potentially gain air superiority long enough for the Army to realize you aren't fucking around
Xavier Thompson
>We've SHORAD batteries all over now, especially Korea.
Two battalions. Mostly on base defense.
Daniel Butler
How much would they cost?
Evan Sanders
>remote controlled jets
>FCS for the remote controlled jets
>ordinance
A lot
Jeremiah Garcia
Even if every able bodied man carried a MANPADS (Igla, Strela, Stinger etc) I doubt you could deny air superiority without aircraft of your own
Anthony Hughes
Probably around $2000. Sounds like a lot but this of how much a normal jet costs. Plus, they are smaller there are like 30 in the air
Isaac Scott
Because we have pretty much achieved world peace. As much as all the big powers like to posture and saber-rattle, they all know it'd be pointless to risk their positions in order to fight a war that can just be solved with money and politics.
Brayden Wood
If someone with knowledge of radios and circuitry was involved, then they could easily make a one stick controller like in a plane for cheap. I think the most expensive thing would be the jet engine or the materials for the ordinance and that can be had for pretty cheap too if you use recycled parts and don't buy everything new like a retard
Jackson Martinez
TEMPO TEMPO TEMPO
Hudson Rivera
Not really, stingers can only reach ~10k ceiling. Rotary wings would be SOL but most fixed wings aren't going to have issues. SHORAD is a very important asset to have but a limited one.
Asher Long
you got rectal ravaged in the last thread you tried this in.
Aaron Russell
aircraft will always have the advantage over AA. in order to deny the enemy the sky, you will need aircraft of your own.
Jordan Wood
In short, no
A well designed SAM and AAA network is never going to remove air superiority - its goal is to be a blocking measure in the same way that FlaK batteries caused the allies to choose less well defended sites to attack
They work increasingly well if your opponent is not willing to take some air attrition but if an opponent is committed then a good AA network is a delaying tactic until you can secure your primary objectives via concentration of force
Daniel Wilson
Against any opponent worth a damn, no with a but.
If the enemy want wide engagement angles then they need the radar sites for the theater wide defense missiles in the open, satellite recon will locate those for opening volleys of ALCMs
Those ACLMs will weaken the radar network and trigger defensive interceptors to protect the radar as best they can - this shows the launch sites of several for the next wave which targets them and the airfields
Once this is done high level recon flights like the U-2 become uncontested allowing for better target recon
Semi hidden targets of SAM sites can now be located by the U-2s, these then have initial deep penetration strikes, any radar spike is logged for intel later in SEAD missions
The enemy can then be made to use only mobile SAM assets opening corridors by having Strike forces backed up by both CAP overwatch and Wild Weasels tasked with DEAD (Denial of Enemy Air Defenses) rather than SEAD eroding defenses further
All of this is tasked and coordinated before hand with areas selected to be assaulted suffering a mission tempo that is faster than their replenishment rate
Samuel Collins
Again it did so in Ukraine, rebels who stole surface to air misiles from regular army stockpiles and smuggled a few in from abroad were educated and trained enough to form an IADS that managed to shoot the Ukrainian air force out of the sky. In terms of quality and quantity their air force was on par with UK or Germany, and superior to 80% of our NATO allies.
Cooper Carter
If theyre operating LPI you arent going to see them. Even legacy dish radars have been upgraded to be LPI. This makes ARM missions difficult if not impossible.
Jeremiah Ross
>but could you deny the US complete air superiority if you invested heavily in anti aircraft?
>complete
Yes.