Syrian AA capabilities?

[hoolaman]

We can safely assume that the Syrian airforce will not get off the ground in any US invasion. This gives the US total control of the skies during CMSF.

With this in mind, does Syria, (or any other nation on earth) have any ground based anti-air assets that could seriously hinder US air supremacy?

Do they have weapons that could deny attack helicopters a free reign? Would it make a big difference to survivability of Syrian vehicles if only fixed wing aircraft came in for ground attack duties?

Do they have weapons that could make life difficult for fixed wing aircraft?

If you where the Czar of Absurdistan what mobile and fixed AA assets would you buy to prevent a NATO force from bombing you and your glorious force of T-55's into submission?

[rune]

Numbers of Syrian Equipment including tanks, artillery, and Surface to Air Missiles. Syrian Army

Rune

[Peter Cairns]

Almost certainly the cheapest and most effective thing would be western thermal sights for existing AA assets particularly 23mm.

Given that the slant range for a basic quad or twin 23mm is about 2,000m the ability to track and hit a helicopter at range day or night would greatly restrict the way the US could use not only Apache, but also the likes of Kiowa and ARH which do vital flanking recon for ground forces as they advance.

They'd also have the ability to engage Strykers in the ground role.

In terms of SAM's they should stick to IR because despite it's limitations it is passive and fire and forget. There is no way they can win the electronic battle so they shouldn't waste time and resources trying.

Cheap ground based decoys and IR or laser jammers would be useful, and as with the shell game, if they could adapt a standard $250 satellite dish to give of a signal similiar to a ZSU, then the could make the US fire off a lot of HARM's for no good reason.

Blocking local GPS is also worth doing.

Peter.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

a quote from "On Point", Center of Army Lessons Learned article:

The day [23th March 2003] closed with the 11th Attack Helicopter Regiment's unsuccessful deep attack against the [iraqi] Medina Division near Karbala. There, the regiment lost two aircraft (one to hostile fire), had two aviators captured, and saw literally every AH-64 Apache helicopter come back riddled with holes. Worse, the targeted Medina units remained relatively unscathed from the attack. The Army's vaunted deep-strike attack helicopters appeared to have been neutralized by the Iraqi air defense tactics.

Syrians have significantly better AA equipment than Iraqis (e.g. SA-18 Strelets, S-300), so i think Syrians have some chances at protecting the tactical airspace of key units.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by rune:

Numbers of Syrian Equipment including tanks, artillery, and Surface to Air Missiles. Syrian Army

that list requires serious updating.

[Beastttt]

this just invites a quick home on jam attack from any arty

Originally posted by Peter Cairns:

Blocking local GPS is also worth doing.

Peter.

[Peter Cairns]

Beastttt,

Out of curiosity how does a plane at 10,000ft know that the GPS bomb it's just dropped is going to be jammed at below 2,000ft.

And exactly what artillery is going to be used o fire accurately deep inside Syrian, that doesn't itself use GPS to aid terminal guidance.

Peter.

[dan/california]

The U.S. has a guidance package that specifically seeks out GPS jammers. They used several of them at the beginning of the current thing in Iraq.

The Israeli air force has operated has operated over Syria with near impunity since they shot down the entire Syrian air force in 82 and the Russians told the Syrians it would cash upfront for a new one. This includes a recent(last year or so) attack on a terrorist training camp near Damascus.

The weakness of the Apache in a dense small arms environment however is a fact. Helicopters are too easy to shoot down. But drones and aircraft operating at high altitudes can do a lot of the same work. The drones seem to be much more survivable because of the lower signature. And especially for the smaller ones, losing one or two to find out that you want to top the next ridge very carefully is acceptable. Dragging remote cameras through the streets just does not have much propaganda value.

It is trying to work a checkpoint in downtown Damascus after the fireworks show that is the problem. You just can't pick the bad guys out soon enough. But trying to sneak up on an armored column operating with permissive, shoot first type, rules of engagement is a very different problem.

Would some one from Battlefront please supply a little feedback, please, pretty please.

[YankeeDog]

Originally posted by Peter Cairns:

Beastttt,

Out of curiosity how does a plane at 10,000ft know that the GPS bomb it's just dropped is going to be jammed at below 2,000ft.

And exactly what artillery is going to be used o fire accurately deep inside Syrian, that doesn't itself use GPS to aid terminal guidance.

Peter.

Actually, us GPS guidance systems have a secondary inertial guidance system that is specifically designed to counter this tactic. It kicks in automatically if the GPS guidance is jammed or goes haywire.

It was used in GWII to great success. In fact, it was use to take out some of the GPS jamming stations themselves. . .

The inertial guidance system is basically a bunch of very sensitive gyroscopes. Having to rely on it for part of the munition's flight does degrade accuracy somewhat, but overall the munition is still very accurate -- on the order of 10m circle of error, rather than 3m. . .

I don't know if they have the same inertial systems for artillery in addition to Aerial Bombs, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Also keep in mind that the US has many other guidance options in its arsenal. HARM systems would, of course, be especially useful against any kind of GPS jamming station (and keep in mind that current generation HARM systems "remember" the location of a radiation source if the emitter shuts off while the munition is in flight). And, of course, there's video-guided, IR-guided, laser-designated, etc., etc., etc. . .

Overall, if I were the leader of Absurdistan, I'd forget challenging the high-level stuff, and buy all the COTS night vision goggles I could get my hands on, and give them to 12.7mm MG crews hidden and scattered around low-level attack routes. . .

[Peter Cairns]

YankeeDog,

All of the above is interesting, but it still allows the inferior defender to play the shell game.

The hardware, and indeed the software, for GPs and other jamming may be quite expensive and sophisticated ( though not necessarily) but aerials are dirt cheap.

As anti GPS jamming, and Harm home on the omitted signal, then having a central unit linked to numerous remote dumb dishes or antenna, can draw US fire, repeatedly and effectively.

The problem for the US is that if it is transmitting the right kind of signal on the right frequency in the right area, they probably have to hit it to make sure.

It's not quite as easy as clipping some leads from a generator to a sheet of concrete reinforcing mesh stood on end, and hey presto you have a mock radar sight, but that's the kind of idea.

Peter.

[ May 12, 2006, 02:25 AM: Message edited by: Peter Cairns ]

[rune]

I have given feedback.

Rune

[Caesar]

Rune, how accurate is that list. From what I can see the Syrian equipment does not seem to be being updated at all, in fact it is getting cut back if anything. Yet I recall reading of their purchasing new equipment.

[YankeeDog]

Peter,

While I am no electronics warfare expert, by my layman's understanding it would not be easily possible to take a jamming signal generator, simply hook it to multiple antennas, and keep moving the signal from antenna to antenna to stay one step ahead of HARM and the like.

For starters, Military GPS is actually very hard to jam, because the guidance systems use a directional antenna that looks up towards the satellite. So the signal coming from jamming emitters on the ground is coming from the wrong direction, and is largely ignored by the guidance system. This means any ground jamming system needs to emit a much stronger, broader-band signal, and hope for signal bounce (off upper atmospheric layers, for example) to succeed.

The Russians claim to have developed some very small, even hand-held GPS jammers, and they've been shown be very effective against unshielded, omnidirectional civilian GPS systems. But that's like saying your .22 caliber rifle is very good at killing squirrels, and hoping it will do as well against a Rhino. . .

Personally, I'm skeptical the such a small, low-power system would do much at all against a hardened, directional-antenna, military grade guidance system over any distance, and especially against a directional antenna GPS system up in the air, *above* the jamming system, as for a guided bomb or missile -- in this case the guidance antenna would be looking almost directly away from the jamming source. In any event, the US Military isn't offering up any test systems for others to play with (though I'm sure they've done their own testing), so all of us without security clearances will just have to speculate about this one. . . I freely admit I'm making a SWAG here.

So my guess is that it would take a larger jamming system with lot of power to kill the GPS on JDAMs and the like due to all the above --something of a power level similar to that used by a large broadcast radio or television station. So you need a high-voltage generator, high-voltage power lines to carry the amplified signal to the antenna, a big antenna etc.

And all of these components -- the generator, the power lines, are going to have an easily detectable radiation signal. The second you turn them on, you're broadcasting your location to every passive detector in the area. Sure, you could build multiple stations, but such things are expensive, and I'm sure Absurdistan would run out of big, expensive jamming systems before the US runs out of HARMs.

Furthermore, remember that GPS tracking and guidance systems are passive receptors; the satellites are emitting signal all the time; the tracker just reads it and so is undetectable in and of itself. Unless you detect the actual weapon release, you have to leave the GPS jamming system on for long periods of time, since you can't predict exactly when the bomb is going to be released. In contrast, since any such jamming system is actively radiating, countermunitions can home in on it passively -- you probably won't detect the incoming munition until it goes boom. You could use radar to detect the incoming missile/bomb/whatever, but radar is also an easily detectable active emitter, and the US has stealthy munitions now, too. . .

Overall, I think active guidance and jamming systems are becoming less and less survivable on the modern battlefield. Passive, or at least burst or narrow beam (and therefore harder to detect), is the name of the game.

More interesting to me is possbility of Absurdistanians piggybacking onto the very same signals that the US military is using. I wonder, for example, whether anyone in Absurdistan has figured out how to hook a COTS GPS up to the guidance system of a medium-range delivery system, and what countermeasures exist for this tactic.

COTS GPS isn't as accurate as Military, but I can go into my local EMS store, and buy a hiking GPS, accurate to within 50m, that's the size of a paperback. I'd be very surprised if everyone in Absurdistan didn't have access to this technology as well. 50m is plenty close enough for a big-warhead missile to cause a lot of damage. And as Iraq showed, it's quite possible to play the "shell game" as you put it, with truck-mounted missile launchers -- since they can set up and fire in minutes, it's difficult to nail them before they get the shot off, and often they can scuttle off and hide again wihout getting hit. Furthermore, any old truck with a length of sewer pipe on the bed makes a very good decoy. . .

So Absurdistanians could put hand-held GPS units in the hands of Spec Ops teams dressed as civilians. Let them wander around on donkeys after the leading US forces have passed through the area, looking for softer, more stationary targets -- command posts, ammunition dumps, vehicle repair facilities, etc.

Then, just calculate the exact location off the GPS, call it on a Satellite phone to the hidden truck mounted surface-to-surface units a couple hundred miles away, and let fly. . .

I'm sure many missiles would get shot down, but I don't think the US has the werewithal to put Patriot systems around every brigade-level command post, ammo dump, vehicle park, etc. At the very least, it would be very expensive for the US to have to field all those anti-missile defense systems, and harden every rear-area facility against missile attack. Forcing this would, in and of itself, would be a victory of sorts.

But it wouldn't surprise me if the US Military already counters to this tactic in play. The entire GPS system is run by the US Gov't, and they can just scramble it, or shut it down whenever they want; they might even have the ability to do so selectively over specific geographical areas, or encode the signal so only US Military units can read it; I don't know. . .

Cheers,

YD

[rune]

They have more modern AT missiles and more modern AA missiles. They also got some Howitzers from Bulgaria.

Rune

[Moronic Max]

As anti GPS jamming, and Harm home on the omitted signal, then having a central unit linked to numerous remote dumb dishes or antenna, can draw US fire, repeatedly and effectively.

You're not thinking nasty enough; put the emitters in civvie areas. You want to fire a HARM at the emitter, fine; hope you don't mind hitting a mosque when you do so.

[Peter Cairns]

YankeeDog,

But the point is that it doesn't have to actaully have to work well or even at all, the US can't take the chance that it does so it has to hit it.

The US purchaesd 19,000 HARM at almost $300,000 each, thats almost $6 bn. I don't know how many they have left but even if it's 10,000, a network of radar mimicing cheap antenna could take weeks to take out and tie down a huge amount of US airpower.

If you can't shoot them down or stop them firing HARM then getting them to waste as many as possible is the best strategy.

Peter.

[YankeeDog]

. . . and my point is that, I don't think a "radar mimicing cheap antenna" really exists.

The modern world, and especially the modern battlefield, is a cluttered EM spectrum. Miltary radar detection and countermeasure systems are already designed to recognize the difference between a weak, unfocused radio signal that is probably unimportant, and a powerful, focused one, such as what would come from a radar or GPS jamming station.

Do your really think a circuit board hooked up to a couple of 12 Volt car batteries and an amplifier is going to fool US ELINT? I doubt it, at least not very often. In order to make it look like a radar station or GPS jammer to US ELINT, you're going to have to more or less build a radar or jamming station. In the case of radar, you can certainly save some cost by omitting the return signal processors etc., but any way you look at it, pumping out a Megawatt signal is going to cost money. . .

Furthermore, the US probably wouldn't use the expensive $300,000 HARMs to take out GPS jammers and run-of the mill radar. The HARMS are for the really dangerous radars that are hard to get close to, like SAM guidance stations. These have distinctive signals that are easy to differentiate. Once these high-value systems have been neutralized, the stationary, easy-to-detect stuff is just going to get taken out with cheaper JDAMs, LGBs or whatever. . .

Overall, you might be able to make a viable dummy GPS or radar jamming station for less than the cost of the US weapons system that takes it out, but not all that much less. . . and I really don't think you're going to bleed the US coffers dry that way. $50 RPGs taking out multimillion dollar tanks and attack helicopters, maybe. But a $50,000 dummy radar station getting taken out by a $300,000 HARM is probably an expense ratio that the US is more than able to float. . .

Cheers,

YD

In order to create something that the US even cares about enough to jam, it's going to cost a lot of money. Maybe not $300,000, but at least tens of thousands

[ May 15, 2006, 09:16 PM: Message edited by: YankeeDog ]

[dan/california]

Well, were the Iraqis really that stupid, or does the U.S.A.F. have some toys its not talking about? It has to be one or the other.

I did read a comment in another forum from someone who claimed to be a military E.W. guy, and all the cautions about this kind of info apply. But he said "what exactly do you think we do all day" or words to that effect. His implication being that they think about these things all day everyday.

And have some answers too.

[ May 12, 2006, 05:42 PM: Message edited by: dan/california ]

[YankeeDog]

Heh. My cousin is a US Navy officer, works ELINT, currently stationd in Baghdad.

Of course he doesn't tell me anything he shouldn't, but it's clear from what he has said that the US has more than a few ELINT gizmos they're not sharing with the rest of us.

In fact, it's what he has told me is that has lead me to draw the conclusions above. . .

[hoolaman]

From what I can tell, the Absurdistanis would do well to buy a whole pile of SA-18's or other man-portable missiles, possibly along with their complement of fixed and mobile 23mm AA guns, with upgraded fire control systems.

But what about a modern SAM network? How do you shoot down an F-16 these days? What about a B-52?

I don't know anything about this stuff, but I am looking forward to playing with some spiky Shilkas.

[Lee_DiSantis]

But what about a modern SAM network? How do you shoot down an F-16 these days? What about a B-52?

Well, the Serbians got an F-16 and an F-117 back in '99, both with the SA-6. This is a radar guided system of 1970's vintage. You can bet the Syrians have plenty of them.

On the other hand, the USAF learns lessons well, and the loss of two aircraft against an entire (supposedly decently integrated) country's air defense system is not disastrous by any means - except perhaps the loss of the F-117. That incident raises serious questions about the vulnerabilities of our aircraft, including stealth aircraft, to newer air defense radars and missiles. If an F-117 can get hit by an SA-6, is it unreasonable to speculate that perhaps a B-2 could get shot down with an SA-10? It may be, for as I said, the USAF learns its lessons well, and there were supposedly multiple flaws in the planning of the lost F-117 mission over Kosovo.

As far as shooting down a B-52...I suspect it would be quite easy. They presumably wouldn't operate at all over Syrian territory in any conflict, but rather launch stand off missiles (cruise or otherwise). One could speculate that the B-52 could move in for low level operations after complete air superiority has been achieved, but the merits of this are few. There's a reason they've added the hundreds of millions of dollars in defensive upgrades to the B-52 over the last 15 years: it's an extremely vulnerable airplane. They now have huge flare stores, towed decoys, and sophisticated ECM equipment...but how well that would all stand up to an unseen 23mm AA gun is another subject.

As a side note: the USAF recently made the quiet announcement that it is withdrawing the F-117 stealth fighter from service, and will be completely stood down by 2009. The first F-22 squadron has reached initial operating capability at Langley AFB; they will soon begin participating in east coast homeland air defence missions.

[Peter Cairns]

Lee_DiSantis,

A ZSU has an effective range of about 8,000 ft, less than that verically, so anything above a mile (5,000 ft) is effectively safe.

The B-52 can fly and accurately bomb from over 40,000 ft ( 8 miles high). The Syrians may have some older twin 57mm guns and even some old heavy ani aircraft up to about 100mm. but nothing that will bother a B-52.

B-52's would be able to cruise at will and even if they were deployed from Diego Garcia would have ample loiter time.

The only issue might be overfly rights, but as the CM:SF scenario involves international support, if you could use Turkey and Saudi Arabia, you could quite literally have them on call on station above advancing Stryker units.

Peter.

[Lee_DiSantis]

It's true they can use smart bombs up high, but they are still extremely vulnerable to high altitude SAM threats. Kosovo showed us that even after a significant SEAD effort, an SA-6 sight can still be hiding somewhere. I'm not sure of the effective altitude of the SA-6 (I think it's pretty damn high), but I know other SAMs could easily reach the B-52s operating altitudes. Even an SA-2 could still shoot it down, theoretically. So I don't think B-52s would be operating very much directly over Syria a la Afghanistan. B-1s, though, are another story. But those have their vulnerabilities too.

[YankeeDog]

Good points in re: the B-52.

While there are SAM systems out there that can reach up to 40,000 ft and take out a B-52, I'm not sure if the Syrians have any of these, and in any event, such systems are large, and much more easily detected than smaller, short range SAM systems. It was exactly these systems that the US Air Force spent a lot of its time figuring out how to detect and neutralize during the Cold War. If they Syrians actually have any, they'd be very high up on the target list for the opening stages of any US air campaign, and be targeted by weapons systems they can't themselves take out, like TLAMs.

So, at least by mid-stage of any US-led air campaign, I am of the same mind as Peter, that B-52s would be able to fly high loiter with near impunity.

B-52s are also much more effective now from 40,000ft than they used to be. A fair amount has changed since GWI, when the JDAM wasn't in service yet. In addition to being very accurate and all-weather, JDAMs are actually pretty cheap when compared to other precision guidance systems; at less than $20,000 each, they're peanuts compared to what most US weapons systems cost.

If I ran the circus, I'd put B-52s loaded out with something like 40 500-lb. JDAMs flying continuous cover at 40,000 ft. over my advancing forces. . . a single flight could then drop a customized pattern of 40 individual impacts, probably within minutes of the call from the ground. While it sounds like an oxymoron, Precision Carpet Bombing is now well within the capabilities of the USAF. . .

I don't know; if you managed to keep a high-altitude SAM system unknown to US intel by putting it in deep hiding -- hiding it in a deep natural cave or or something for example, I suppose you might be able to deploy it after the initial stages of the air campaign, when the USAF wouldn't be as focused on neutralizing such systems. Maybe you get lucky, catch the JSTARs operator sleeping, and get a single shot off before getting blown up.

Even on the relatively lumbering B-52, though, such a shot would still by no means be a sure thing, -- as noted, the B-52 does have countermeasures. And in any event, that's a huge amount of resources to put into getting a *chance* of shooting down a B-52. I doubt it would really be worth it, even though the propaganda value of such as success would be pretty high. Better, I think, to focus your effort on cheap weapons that can harrass the low and slow stuff; you'll definitely degrade their effectiveness, and sooner or later, you'll get one. . .

Cheers,

YD

[Peter Cairns]

It sort of takes us back to the shell game to try to get the B-52's to hit something worthless, staying close to civilian areas as much as possible, and the giants belt.

Peter.