@kinetic I would be very careful about insulting people, some of whom are or may have been posters on here. This kind of conduct is unacceptable and incurs the wrath of the moderators very quickly. Don't let this happen again, or your future on here will be highly suspect.
It wasn't intended as an insult to be begin with, not even sure why are you warning me.
You're cherry-picking examples. Both Ukraine and Saudi Arabia are less than competent operators. Would you expect the same outcome if the US took Saudi Arabia's place? Additionally, while the Houthis have done surprising things with very little, this isn't something that would be fixed if the Saudis were to deploy SAM/SPAAG regiments integrated into their mech formations. Hell they can't integrate their infantry into their APCs, so the level of incompetence here is utterly staggering.
I'm not cherry-picking examples. It just so happens that air-centric IADS is incapable to properly handle C-UAS, C-RAM and TBMD tasks, end of story. In Debaltsevo Operation in 2015 the Russians were keeping ~800 tactical reconnaissance drones in the air simultaneously, showering the Ukrainians with about 1000 metric tonnes or artillery & rocket ammunition per day. I'm not even talking about the fact that the drone swarm attacks the Russians are lolnoping in Syria with disturbing regularity would have given the American air defenders the same amount of trouble they gave the Saudis, ultimately producing the same sort of outcome — knocked down Patriot batteries, penetrated defences.
Again, the doctrine is tailored to the threat. The US has faced TBMD threats in conflicts, including ODS, and did handle the threat adequately. An air-centric IADS does not mean 0 GBAD. It means that GBAD plays second fiddle to airborne assets. And I dare say destroying the launchers is better then shooting down the inbounds, which is why the US prioritizes the way it does. Russia, in Syria, is of the same opinion, carrying out surgical strikes initially against those it thought were responsible for launching the drone swarms against Khmeimeem, and eventually launching an entire offensive in northern Hama and southern Idlib, to (among other things) eliminate the staging area for those strikes.
Here's the difference: a strike like that might have worked against the US once or twice, but the US (unlike the Saudis) would have rapidly taken steps towards dealing with the threat, possibly pickets with anti-drone weapons on likely approach paths, possibly powerful ELINT and EW combos to drop the drones (one of the main ways Russia does it in Khmeimeem by the way), possibly using helos as anti-UAS platforms, and likely, eventually, a dedicated set up to protect bases from UAV swarms.
Assuming there are 300 targets to be found.
How many times the United States Military has to find itself irrelevant on the contemporary battlefield to figure out that this is wrong assumption?
Please provide examples of times the US military has found itself irrelevant in the face of hostile airpower, due to lack of GBAD.
You have repeatedly made very strong claims regarding the relative lack of GBAD in NATO countries. When asked to provide evidence in support of those claims all you've done is shown how 1) a country with ample outdated GBAD but incompetent planners and operators (Ukraine) got hit hard by a massively superior opponent and lost, and 2) how a ridiculously incompetent operator with fancy toys is getting slapped around by a motivated and creative opponent who has fewer resources. When I attempt to engage you on the evidence, you dodge and change the subject, ignoring the parts of my response that you don't wish to engage with, and providing less than complete answers to the rest. What you have shown is that GBAD has a place on the modern battlefield, and near cutting edge systems in the hands of competent operators can make a significant difference (Russian IADS in Syria), and that Russia has drastically improved their use of UAVs over the past decade. None of this proves or even adequately backs your claims about NATO IADS, "creative suicide" or the medical problems of those involved in its planning and deployment. Instead you simply restate your original claims in slightly different words.
@kinetic
Okay, it sure seems like we have some kind of gross misunderstanding on our hands. I'm not really sure how to proceed because on the one hand, going into much detail might hopelessly derail the thread, while on the other hand, bringing it to PM means robbing the audience of potentially valuable content no matter that it is only tangentially related to the topic of discussion.
For starters, i'd like to unreservedly apologise for this whole shit-show which seems to have been caused by bad choice of words on my part. It happens to the best of us, especially those who learn English by the ear ever since getting acquainted with the basics of the language from reading the Russo-English military phrasebook.
There are multiple ways to prove my claim. For the sake of simplicity i'll be using the least 'educationally demanding' one, featuring the imprecise employment of the oversimplified method of calculating the necessary amount of means and forces that must be allocated to achieve air superiority on theatre to have a hope to actually succeed in that endevaor.
No offense, but so what? What does the fact that a bomber design from the early 1950's (first flight in 1952) is no longer expected to be able to penetrate a modern IADS employed by peer or near peer-level nations have to do with the Su-57, which is the actual topic of the thread.
You seem to be assuming that the Soviet forces were the ones on the defending side. AFAIK it was in fact NATO who were anticipating entrenching their position(s) as Soviet armour poured through the Fulda Gap. Changes the math somewhat...If the 'verified defence pro' badge of yours indeed means what i think it does, you should undoubtedly know the classic rule of the three. I mean the one that says that to effectively defeat an entrenched enemy force in offensive combat the attacker has to bring at least three times as much military strength to bear against defender. To the surprise of those completely unfamiliar with the theoretical military science behind air defence, the said field of knowledge also has a variant of such a rule.
Here it is:
S (axis X) — Balance of power(strength) in particular place in specific time, friend:foe(свои|пр-к respectively)
Э (axis Y) — Effectiveness of defensive counterair combat operations by defending force
Имеется централизованное управление (red line) — The centralized control is present
Потеря управления, войска ведут самост. БД (violet line) — Centralized control is lost
In air defence the strength is measured in combat aircraft and targetting channels of SAM systems integrated into the system of air & missile defence on theatre(area), where one aircraft = one targetting channel.
For your information, in late 80's the Chief of Air Defence of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany had 2800 channels available to him at any given time, provided by the forces and assets of the Soviet(!) Army(!!) which were stationed in just Germany(!!!) on permanent basis(!!!!). I'd like to hear from anyone willing to dispute my claim by what means precisely the NATO was 'anticipating' to achieve air superiorioty against a foe it didn't have the numbers to effectively combat, because 5500 fixed-wing + 1500 rotary-wing aircraft the NATO had in Europe in that time period(if memory serves) barely sufficed to ensure that land forces of the NATO won't be getting bombed into oblivion by air power of the OWP.
Sort of. Soviet forces were to be accompanied by massed anti-air formations on the move, one of the reason why the S-300 (including the V variant) has such a short deployment time. Things like Shilkas/Tunguskas/Strela-10 were incredibly common. Density of Soviet GBAD was beyond insane, especially in Europe. Soviet ground forces would have to go very far, very fast, to end up without significant organic GBAD.
It actually doesn't, because air superiority is achieved through effective execution of Defensive AND Offensive Counterair ops, which must be performed simultaneously.
Thank you, the Moderators will take this into consideration.
Impenetrable defences don't exist, but it has to be mentioned that the current force structure of USAF is lacking the capacity to support a conflict against either Russia or China(see
CSBA | AN AIR FORCE FOR AN ERA OF GREAT POWER COMPETITION p113 doesn't say the USAF "is lacking the capacity to support a conflict against either Russia or China" it just highlights the vulnerability of current HVAA and proposes a move to a more distributed ISR network..?