Ozzy Blizzard
New Member
The effects on the ground during ODS disagree with you. The majority of the sorties launched during the 4 week air campaign in 1991 were directed against dug in armored formations, bombing from 10k+ft primarily Mk84's with radar assistance, rather primitive by 2009 standards. The effects were massive. That is a fact. I have a great RAND report on the effectiveness of high altitude bombing during ODS, i'll have to get it from work tomorrow.
That statement is in effect self contradicting. Acceptable losses are determined by political leadership. The politicians were unwilling to loose aircraft when they knew the political objectives could be achieved with minimal risk from high altitude, in which they succeeded in achieving. Surely your not claiming that NATO airforces were not capable of operating in the serbian airspace at low altitude i.e. the losses would have been operationally unsustainable. Remember this air formation was intended to penetrate East Germany, the most dense and heavily populated SAM belt history has yet seen at low altitude en mass. If there was an imperative i doubt NATO would have had serous trouble dealing with a second rate, tactical, GBAD centric ADS.
Yes but ODS says otherwise. The real question is which scenario is more more representative of an asymetric air campaign. Serbia was limited in length, had a limited political objective and crucially did not have a large land based element. The Iraqi army was forced to deploy to counter the threat of coalition units deployed on its borders and an inevitable land invasion. Even though the serbs were deployed in Kosovo they did not have to deploy in battle order in order to meet an armored thrust. The Serbs had the opportunity to disperse and camouflage their armored formations to some extent, and the terrain aided in this process. If there had been an armored corps poised to roll on Belgrade (and more time) the results of the air campaign would have been much more impressive.
If a major first tier superpower was really serous about fighting an asymetric war you could bet there would be a significant threat of a ground invasion and enough time to give any deployed units the proper treatment from air power prior to the initiation of ground operations ala ODS.
The Iraqi IADS was more dense, technologically capable and integrated than anything western air forces had seen since Hanoi. Without a shadow of a doubt Iraqs IADS in 1990 was significantly more capable than the largely tactical ADS NATO faced in Serbia, in aggregate terms the threat was far more lethal. Even if in some cases assets were poorly employed, aggregate capability was far greater.
Fighters provide air defense at a theater level, even the most super duper GBAD systems can not do that. Therefore in spending all of your money on GBAD without an airborne element there is in fact a false economy. If you were to procure GBAD assets to simultaneously defend the engagement envilope of a single fighter you would have to buy dozens of systems. Even if you blew a whole heap of cash on a few S-300 PMU's or PATRIOT's they are all LOS limited, so you would need a larger number of low altitude tactical SAM or AAA systems. An average fighter should be able to intercept a threat some 400nm+ from the point of launch (much more with AAR), that equates to a defended area of some 600,000 odd square miles. Even if you didnt have to defend every square mile with GBAD, to match the coverage every possible target at a theater level would have to be within the engagement envilope of a high altitude, high end, expensive radar guided SAM (aka S-300) and a low altitude tactical system. The cost of that would be much greater than a pair of fighters sitting on alert 5. This flexibility is why nations like Australia have invested so heavily in airborne air defense and have almost no GBAD.
Additionally I see a fundamental flaw in the strategic paradigm behind that statement. Whats the point of having an ADS? Or a military in fact? Hopefully it is to deter a conflict, and if there is one to defeat the other combatant. GBAD is a wholly defensive asset. It will not aid you in winning a war, it will just go some way to prevent you from losing one. In combination with other offensive assets such as tac air it can be very effective, but alone it is simply
a way to prolong the inevitable.
Obviously tactical level GBAD is going to be cheap and easier to implement that tactical air, its also far less capable. Its a wholly subjective decision.
As for modern systems performance vs a tier 1 threat? Well for long range radar guided systems unless you have state of the art ECCM, those systems are going to suffer when facing a tier one EW capability. Remember the problem with facing a tier one threat is they will always have much greater resources than the defender, and will without exception enjoy EW superiority (i.e. better ECM than defending ECCM). Relatively immobile wireless data-links at the battery level are very vulnerable to current gen ECM, and without integration radar guided SAM's are extremely vulnerable to tier one DEAD capability. This has been seen over and over again with asymetric air campaigns. Once those few high capability high altitude systems are gone you hand the enemy control of the airspace over your units, and if you have to deploy to meet a ground threat you are going to get slaughtered, aka the republican guard units deployed around Baghdad during OIF.
Talk about a rock and a hard place....
First of all that is totally subjective. And second it is the exact opposite stance of most western militaries, which are all geared towards power projection rather than territorial defense. Protecting the nations interests through power projection is in real terms often the primary objective of the military.
In any case offensive capability is often the primary method territorial integrity is maintained through deterrent, and tactical air power is going to provide much greater deterrent than wholly defensive GBAD. Thus offensive capability is often more effective at doing just that.
True, as long as it achieves the goals you have set it. If the primary goal is defeating potential adversaries than only acquiring GBAD in place of air power is no way to achieve that. Again its a false economy saving money on something that wont do the job you have set it.
Which nation are you thinking of? Iraq fits this scenario perfectly and they still needed to move large amounts of supplies out to the deployed formations, even within their own borders. Even Notrh Korea would need to move huge amounts of supplies to support high intensity operations, even defensive operations. How are you going to sustain a counter offensive without mobile supply? Realistically by foreword deploying all of your supplies and not relying on flexible logistical trains you limit yourself to a static defense, which is about as useful as the proverbial mamory glands on a bull in a contemporary conflict.
Really? Is that the way asymetrical air campaigns have been conducted in the real world during the last 20 years? Small packages conducting limited strike operations throughout the campaign in little ECM bubbles? Sadly no. The reality is that the only packages needing heavy ECM support are the initial waves on day one, that will kick the door in and decapitate and dislocate the IADS through striking C4ISR infrastructure, and then eliminate the high altitude SAM threat through DEAD operations. During ODS and OIF this phase lasted between 48 & 72 hours. After that coalition air power was able to strike, from altitude, anywhere at will and the capability of low altitude, tac SAM's had little effect on the campaign. Once the IADS is decapitated and destroying the high value, high capability, high altitude and usually comparatively rare systems becomes significantly easier. That has been the historical trend when tier one air power comes up against a GBAD centric (I)ADS, after 2~3 days the attacking power can strike at will, the only problem is identifying the targets which becomes much easier when the enemy ground forces maneuver to counter your own ground advance.
