Wild Weasel/SEAD against soviet/russian SAMs

Think of it in terms of measure and countermeasure.

SAMs must have been effective or perceived as being effective enough to warrant the cost and effort of developing aircraft with the dedicated role of defeating air defence forces that the US calls wild weasels.

Of course the makers of SAMs have not been asleep either and they have developed features for their systems to reduce their vulnerability to SEAD and DEAD aircraft types.

In the conflicts with Israel and the Arabs it was found that systems like the SA-6 were very capable but had distinct features that could become vulnerabilities. When first revealed the SA-6 was very effective because no existing countermeasures worked.
The first tactic was because of the shallow climb of the missile a roll over and dive could evade the missile but brought the fighter down to a lower level where other systems like MANPADS and ZSU-23-4 systems could then engage the aircraft. The use of decoy UAVs got the SA-6 operators to turn on their radars which were then engaged from standoff ranges with ARMs. Once the radar vehicle of an SA-6 unit was destroyed then the missile vehicles were vulnerable because they could not guide their missiles without radar and were sitting ducks even to fighter bombers with dumb bombs.

The immediate solution was an upgrade to add optical guidance, but that was just a patch, the real solution came with BUK (SA-6 is KUB), which has a guidance radar on each launch vehicle so you can't take out the whole unit by destroying its radar vehicle.

Also the SA-11 and later model versions (SA-17 etc) have the ability to engage incoming ARMs so taking a BUK battery out with HARMS would actually be rather difficult. The newer missiles also have longer range which makes engagement from standoff distances much more difficult.

Other vehicles like TOR and Pantsir-S1 are also designed to defend larger SAMs from anti radiation missiles and bombs and other weapons used by SEAD and DEAD aircraft and can even engage targets while moving.

To penetrate Russian airspace you would need hundreds of dedicated SEAD aircraft and like the NATO attack on Kosovo even after months of conflict there is no guarantee that on the last day the airspace would be any safer for aircraft than the first day.

No use to talk about war with Russia.

When talking about US air forces and wild weasels you are talking about money and attack. Such things work very well against third world countries because such countries don't have the money or the resources to fully develop a capable integrated air defence network and also have an airforce and army and navy to protect that network.

I mention Russia because it is one of the few countries that has actually spend money at a comparable rate (note I said comparable... not equivalent) so that their defences can more properly be compared with the US attack forces capability.

I am not suggesting the US will attack Russia... such an attack would be suicide for both sides.

In comparison we can look at Libya that was defeated largely with about 120 cruise missiles because its old SAM network could not handle multiple low flying targets at one time... launch three cruise missiles at a large SAM site at one time and odds are at least two of those missiles will hit it and take out its primary radars leaving it vulnerable to conventional air attack. Once all the large SAM sites are taken down you hit comms sites and command sites and the defence structure falls to pieces and then you can send in groups of fighters and bombers with Wild Weasel escort to deal with any remaining air defence systems which will be much less effective working on their own.

Mobility, and the sheer number of operational systems in Russia make that very unlikely to be successful... especially taking into account that the comms centres and HQs and major SAM sites in Russia are defended by systems that can defeat ARMs and are likely to be much more difficult to defeat.

hence Russia does not fear any country in the world.

Russias nuclear weapons only makes it safe from rational opponents... an aggressive collapsing west might not be that rational...

Remember everyone was rational and sensible just before being dragged in to WWI because of binding defence agreements and a fool with a pistol.

Does optical guidance be jammed ?

In this case the missiles don't have optical seekers, it is a way for missiles to be guided without using standard radar systems on the vehicles that would otherwise be jammed. Optical guidance can be jammed in the sense that optical guidance uses optics for tracking the target but the system still needs to transmit course corrections to the missile to make it hit the target being tracked by optics.

It doesn't make a SAM unjammable, but it greatly complicates the job of the Wild Weasel aircraft as there is rather less warning of an engagement as the SAM site can use radar information from other sites to locate the targets and then use optics to track so the first warning of an attack will be guidance commands from the SAM site to the missile launched at the aircraft...

Why cannot we use laser to guide missile ? Is it fiseable ? Is it to expensive ?

Lasers, like optics are limited in range and weather, so they are generally used for short range missiles or in the case of optics as a backup guidance option.

, I have more confidence with gun, instead of missile.

Both have good features and problems. Missiles are expensive, but they have much better range features and also higher kill probability per shot.

Why instead of developping Sam 10, Sam 12 -now codenamed S300, S400, ...- Russia did not develop a special anti aircraft laser gun ?

Lasers are of relatively low power and enormously expensive per shot... now and in the near future. Missiles are much cheaper. Russia has developed anti aircraft lasers... and anti missile lasers.

The President-M system fitted to Ka-52 helos has laser dazzler turrets near the main undercarriage to defeat IR and optical and laser guided anti aircraft missiles.

I mean a more sophistaced Oerlikon.

57mm S-60 was replaced by OSA (SA- many years ago, and will in turn be replaced by the TOR as they enter service.

The Russians have never abandoned guns and 23mm Shilka and 30mm Tunguska have been in continuous service and likely the new large calibre IFV gun for the new BMP vehicles will most likely have laser guided shells to make it an ideal replacement for Tunguska... in 45mm or 57mm calibre.

A laser as a weapon would need some sort of search and tracking system to find and follow its targets so the laser can be directed at them, which would most likely be radar based for best all weather and long range capability. Wild Weasels would be as effective against such radar as with a missile based systems radars.

The laser would need to be very powerful and therefore would be very expensive and have a limited number of "shots".

Right now missiles are cheaper and easier and much "cleaner". (lots of toxic chemicals involved in lasers).

however wouldnt it be better to have some kind of laserpoint defence gun that almost never missies rather than a gatling gun that sprays hundreds of bullts with very little chance to hit?

The problem is that for each accurate laser shot you are likely spending 20 million dollars, while a burst of cannon shells might cost a few grand.

The laser has a huge advantage of speed as the amount of time the laser beam takes to get from the laser to the target is so short the target will not have moved very far at all so a slight aiming off should ensure a hit. With cannon shells that travel orders of magnitude slower and actually get slower as they move through the air the problem is that the time from launch to impact is much longer so the target has more time to move or speed up or slow down or turn or even stop in some cases. This means that a burst of shells covering an area allows for minor changes in speed and direction by the target between the time when the shells are fired and when the impact the interception area. A spread of shells from a gatling gun is actually a good thing and makes a hit on target more likely rather than less likely.

Just like using a shotgun against small fast moving targets improves your chances of a hit. A super accurate rifle is much less useful against small fast moving targets because there is only one chance for a hit.

This is an article that questions the effectiveness of soviet/russian SAM systems against US Aircrafts?

READ THIS:

http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-SAM-Effectiveness.html

The material reality is that newer generation SAM systems such as the S-300PMU1, S-300PMU2 Favorit (SA-20), HQ-9/FD-2000/FT-2000 and S-400 Triumf (SA-21) are in terms of basic technology and performance very close to, if not better than the US MIM-104 Patriot series, and importantly, have never been challenged in combat by Western air forces, these including the formidable Israeli Air Force.

Tells you already enough of Auspair...