Russia can now shoot down all but 200 US warplanes

You posted no source...you stated, "Aviation Week."

No link.

Then you accuse me of doing the same?

How is your alleged source any better...I never stated the Air Force report was classified...but as you posted no link to your source, I'm certainly not going to do your homework for you.

The shootdown was no more and no less than a missile battery being in the right place at the right time...combined with series of blunders including not varying the routes. It is known that the US didn't vary the flight paths of its F-117s, so their locations could be predicted to a certain extent. Serb forces also often received phone calls from just outside Aviano Air Base in Italy, alerting them when a NATO aircraft had taken off. Combining these two pieces of intelligence, it would not be too difficult to determine where an F-117 was at any given time.
Also, , Serbs monitored U.S. and allied radio comms on UHF and VHF frequencies (mostly unencrypted )

The missile was used as a point and shoot at an altitude of 8 km at a range of 13 km.

To quote a U.S. senior military officer

"'We think whoever did this won the lotto that night,''

This was 50% skill and 50% being in the right place at the right time; taking advantage of blunders.

The F-117 itself, has a stellar combat record with one blemish.

 

Do my homework for me? I think you mean you don't want me to google AvWeek and do your homework.

Anyone can search Aviation Week. Not everyone can get USAF reports even if they are unclassified reports.

But lets review your earlier post:

So if your comments are based on the USAF report, and you weed out the CYA and excuses and get to meat of it, the Serbs made their own "luck" and the shootdown was not a random act of violence.

 

My comments are based on the events, what transpired.

The Serbs disengaged the SA-3 radar, pointed two missiles at the sky at a point they figured the F-117 would be and one exploded near enough to bring it down. Several aircraft reported the same thing in subsequent attempts to bring them down, there was no alert a SAM had locked on to them as using the radar would draw HARM missiles from NATO aircraft...9 times out of 10 the missiles would miss the aircraft...they got lucky with the F-117. There was skill in setting up the scenario and taking advantage of various miscalculations...the F-117 opened it's bomb bay doors over Belgrade, picked up by Soviet radar used by the Serbs, which alerted the missile crews to look for the F-117 returning back to base.

You paint some sort of picture that the Serbs defeated this stealth technology, and they didn't. The stealth worked, it was purely by predictability they could estimate the general location...point a missile and shoot it. Radar can detect the F-117 during turns and when it's bomb bay doors open, which the Serbs used to full advantage, but that does not mean they found a way to defeat the stealth features...merely exploit a weakness by giving a brief glimpse where the aircraft was...estimating where it would be...firing missiles using point and shoot and not a radar lock.

Luck is a factor ultimately as there is no definitive radar or heat signature lock on the aircraft.

You still won't admit luck was a deciding factor and you insist on distorting the facts...

I'm done with you and the conversation.

I have given you the facts on what transpired.

 

A fair point, though I would like to point out that reactive maneuvers like dodging missiles is something a drone can do much better than a human pilot. Humans will always panic, no matter how well trained. The high Gs involved in a "break" maneuver will strain a human pilot greatly.

A drone can be programmed to automatically initiate evasive maneuvers as soon as it detects it's in danger; it does not need input from the human operator on the ground. Our technology now should already be sufficient; it can't be harder than landing on a moving carrier.

 

I can see you don't like the idea that an obsolete aircraft (your words) was defeated by some third world goon (or was it Russians?) who utlized good intelligence, the tools he had on hand, and exploited weaknesses in US technology and doctrine, even if it was just one incident. Learn while you have the time, closed minds are deadly in your business.

 

1,000 NATO aircraft were used in the Kosovo bombing campaign.

2 were shot down.

Yugoslavia capitulated.

More than 800 SAMs were reportedly fired at NATO aircraft, both manned and unmanned, over the course of the 78-day air war, including 477 SA-6s and 124 confirmed man-portable infrared missiles.33

A majority of the fixed SAMs were fired without any radar guidance. Despite that expenditure of assets, enemy fire downed only two NATO aircraft- the F-117 mentioned, and, later, an F-16- although another F-117 sustained light damage from a nearby SA-3.

In the final analysis , almost everyone acknowledged that the allied forces’ use of airpower in NATO air war for Kosovo in 1999 was a resounding success. The SEAD difficulty the Allied Force had, may have stemmed from an overconfidence in the Air Force’s SEAD capability. Remember the F-117 was used extensively in Gulf War I, flying over 1,250 sorties with no losses. Baghdad was protected by the heaviest concentration of air defenses of any city in the world after Moscow.

An F-117 was shot down as was an F-16, and it's only thing the Serbs had to show for it after a rather dismal showing by their own MiG 29s, which lost every air to air encounter they had with USAF F-15 and F-16 fighters. 4 MiGs were lost on the first night of the aerial bombing campaign. You won't hear the Serbs talk about that much...

No B-2s were lost..and that remains in the USAF active inventory while the F-117 was retired in 2008.

No B-2 has ever been shot down, and I suppose that grinds the gears of the Putin fan boys who post in here.
In addition the F-15 fighter, an aircraft approaching obsolescence, has never lost an air-to-air encounter...ever. No F-15 has ever been shot down by an enemy aircraft. It has outclassed anything and everything it has ever encountered. It is a true MiG killer. The F-117 shoot down is all the commies have to brag about...in every war the U.S./NATO has gone against Soviet equipment, it has done so with resounding success.

 

We have almost no way to qualify this statement. There hasn't been a major aerial war in over 70 years and during the last one, we've already proven that even hardened veteran pilots can make rookie mistakes. A better example is in WWII, in the Pacific where American pilots were told from day one to never, ever, ever try to out-turn a Zero (there's even a video where Ronald Reagan hammers this point home). Yet even to the end of the war, you still have pilots trying to beat Japanese fighters in turning fights.

It's human nature. We all lose some of our logic and training when death is near. That is unless of course, you're a robot, or you're sitting safely hundreds or thousands of leagues away in a secure location, basically playing a video game.

 

I would submit a different perspective, may be a bit more comprehensive.

Starting from observing the evolution of global warfare in the last century we can say that

in early 20th century artillery became so effective to make chivalry obsolete [when WWI started British chivalry units had occasion to discover this being targeted by far artillery batteries without any possibility even to think to a charge]. In any case chivalry charges happened and the horse remained in the military equipment for years and years,

Earlier the introduction of the gun machine changed in a drastic way how troops fought on the land, and later WWI demonstrated this with the well known "position war". It was the development of tanks to change the context, allowing again to run a mobile war.

During WW I air force wasn't that effective, but WWII saw the increasing domain of air forces, overall thanks to their bombardment capabilities.

So ... WWI = tanks and long range artillery
WWII = air forces

After WWII global warfare saw the development of the helicopter as a basic tool for land troops and a more and more advanced development of missiles.

Missiles ... this is the state of art today: missiles are gaining advantage on air units.

Missile and anti missile systems will decide WWIII, if there will be one in the future.


So, we should wonder which air units are essential today. A part transport, refueling ... we can imagine that fighter bombers with stealth capabilities [to attack missile installation not to allow then to launch] are the most essential units for the future.

Personally I imagine that air to air combat will be quite rare in the next future [like chivalry charges in the last phases of WWI, we could make this comparison].

At the end, today missiles give the air superiority [and of course anti missile systems].

 

You're watching to much scifi if you believe artificial intelligence driven drones will replace human pilot anytime soon or even in your life time...

 

A few points:
1. There are degrees of panic. I think it's safe to say that all else being equal, a pilot on the ground playing a "video game" in which there is no life or death consequence for the pilot will perform with more serenity than someone actually facing death.
2. Sure, we all start wars with a large cadre of well trained, first rate pilots. This is an asset that any first rate military power can boast of. The US more so due to its extensive and recent experience. However, as WWII has shown, attrition wears on everyone. In the actual course of a war between major powers, replacement pilots will never be of the same quality as the prewar batch.

The bottom line is that while drones do have their drawbacks, there is absolutely no doubt that they are the way of the future. Both tactically, strategically, and logistically they are superior or have the potential to be superior to manned aircraft.

The drone arms race is hot and heavy at this point with both China and the US testing various models of lethal drones, some with extensive stealth capabilities, some that are almost fully autonomous and many that are designed for air-to-air combat. They don't get as much airtime in the media as things like the F-35 program because they're less politically charged, and also because the public still thinks of only the Predator when they think drones.

 

Thats not the issue, and thats not in contention either.

The only issue I am addressing is the fact that the F-117 shootdown was not some wildly random act but the result of an intentional effort which took advantage of flaws in the technology and failures in planning and tactics. It was a one time success in that "war".

As an offshoot of this discussion, hubris comes up. I don't know who said it first - the US always trains to fight the last war. The "last war" has been against stateless insurgents and third world warlords. The lesson the US has learned is that everyone else is weak and stupid and small. The US has the best counter insurgency and special warfare capability in the world, but its at the expense of the rest of the military, and special warfare won't win a classic toe-to-toe war with a major nation.

In the air, the US has been unchallenged since Vietnam, shooting down a Libyan Su-22 in 1981 all the way to shooting down a Serb or a Syrian Mig, doesn't mean much. Thats like the New England Patriots going against Wake Forest, the Patriots are going to win and its a little embarassing to even brag about it.

People are not stupid, other nations are quickly catching up in terms of technology and tactics. Stealth isnt the magic it once was portrayed to be - and losing that helo getting bin laden was a major windfall for our future opponents.

Its great to be confident, but its asking for defeat to be overconfident.

 

The Tomcat is a great plane. And it was not "obsolete", as much as it was a high-maintenance aircraft which was retired because it was to expensive to maintain.

Seeing and tracking "stealth aircraft" is not as big of a deal as most would think. Even Saddam "saw" and "tracked" our F-117 in the 1990-1991 Gulf War.

The problem was that they were not able to get enough of a return to accurately fire missiles at them. Modern missile systems need a decent RADAR return in order to track and home in on their target.

Not to mention the fact that all anybody has to do is blanket the area with RF interference and the drone will loose all communications with the control center. Drones require good 2 way communications, something likely to be hard to find if facing a sophisticated adversary. Human piloted and manned aircraft do not suffer those problems.

Not really. Dogfighting still goes on, it is not all that "obsolete".

In the Gulf War, there were 39 dogfights. There were 5 dogfights in the Balkans War. The only reason you have not seen much of it is that in most modern conflicts, one side has quickly claimed air dominance so air to air combat has been relatively rare.

Actually, missiles are not the be-all end-all of modern warfare. The systems are large, bulky, can not operate where you have friendly air forces operating, and are visible from a long distance off.

They are good at defending logistic and other facilities well behind the main edge of the battle, but not real good as they get closer to where the battle actually happens. And they are really not all that hard to destroy if you have the right weapons and are willing to take some losses to do so.

I have high doubts that missile systems would have all that much of an impact in modern warfare as you are saying. While they will be used to protect the commanders and facilities behind the lines, they will have little impact on the front lines themselves. That will be the deciding factor, with good old fashioned ground forces like infantry, tanks, and artillery.

 

I see you miss something.

Think to the trend of the operative strategy of the last real wars. Focus your attention on the decisive phases of those conflicts ... the first days.

What can you note? That the composition air units / missiles of the first strikes are tending to see a decreasing presence of planes and an increasing presence of missiles.

The first reason is economical: a mass attack of modern fighter bombers is well more expensive than a mass missile attack [and in case the enemy shows a great defense, to replace missiles is quicker and cheaper than to replace planes].

The second reason is strategical: since last generation planes are present in a small number to risk them when the defenses of the enemy are still at a good level of efficiency is a kind of extreme measure [or a test, in case you face a well inferior enemy, like it happened in the last years], better a healthy rain of missiles!

The third reason is tactical: a carrier has got a limited number of planes on board and its capability to launch them is limited as well [a carrier cannot make 20 planes take off in the same time!]. A missile assault warship can carry about 100 missiles and it has got the capability to launch a well wider attack in a while [for example the Arleigh Burke class has got 12 vertical launch modules].

Then, once the missiles will have done the dirty job, last generations planes will have the possibility to show how they are efficient ... [a kind of advertising in favor of the producers!].

 

Let me point you to my actual career from 2007-2012.

US Army, Air Missile Defense, PATROIT missile operator. With a combat deployment and the patches to show for it.

You think you can "focus my attention" on those phases of conflicts? Dude, I lived those "phases of conflicts". Sorry bro, I lived in those phases.

The war is not won in the first phases, it is won in the last phases. You are basing your concepts on the fact that we have not faced an enemy since 1990 with a sizeable air threat. If we ever have to face an enemy like say Russia or China or even France, it will not be so easy.

Stop focusing on the last 20 or so years of warfare, and instead focus on all of the potential enemies and what their capabilities are.

 

May be I'm a "dude", but if US military academies teach to wait for the last phases of a war to win it, I begin to understand why after the first phases US forces are not that great in getting territorial control [they keep on waiting for the last phases of the conflict!] ... anyway this is a detail, probably your vision is less comprehensive than what you think [I would say you've got a fractal perspective].

Just serving with PATRIOT you should have realized that a matter is to defend your territory from an attack of 100 incoming planes [in case they are not stealth it's a kind of shooting gallery and if they are stealth, you have to rely on particular techs to guide you missiles ... hoping they work!] and a well different matter is to defend it from 1,000 incoming missiles [a good missile costs 1/10 of a good plane, or even less, so that their actual pace of usage in battle is potentially at least 10 times the pace of utilization of planes].

But ... you can manage not to allow to enemy missile batteries to get enough closed to your territory.

You can send your Air Force or your Navy [which uses missiles as well, from surface or from underwater].

And what do you expect if you send your Air Force against a country with a very effective and massive missile weaponry?

This begins to remind me the chivalry charges against the machine guns ...

This said, to make the matter more realistic, statistics tell me that Italy, despite an increasing involvement in regional conflicts, is reducing its air fleet [increasing quality with stealth units], preferring to invest in mobile platforms [carriers] to project power and in missile tech. There should be a reason for this, I guess ...

 

It's not CHIVALRY charge... It's CAVALRY charge. CHIVALRY was in the middle ages with knight in armor. Cavalry are mounted infantery. Today's cavalry are using helicopters instead of horses.

Missile can be jammed and evaded. You can't jamed or evade a determined human being. More so when you have "wild weasel" airplane in the sky who are specially equiped and trained to destroy your missile batteries the moment you activate your targetting systems.

 

Chivalry - cavalry ...
It has to be my historical attitude [on historical forums I'm know for my love for medieval age].

Again, you don't grasp the point:

quantity VS quality.

You can destroy all the batteries you want [thanks to our unstoppable special planes, within the limits they are really so unstoppable, but this is a different matter which I don't discuss on the net] ... in relation to the suitable planes you can deploy. And we go back to the matter of fact that more and more attacks are conducted with an increasing usage of missiles.

Why?

We go back [I'm getting bored to "go back"] to the other little matter of fact: NATO armies in the last decades have faced enemies with outdated defenses [let's be honest, the most advanced defenses we have faced were the Serbian ones and ... what a coincidence, in a way or an other they found a way to destroy a stealth bomber ... I know the tale of the failure of the stealth unit ... anyway they destroyed it].

Recent [recent for our intelligence] hypersonic missiles leave no room for imagination, it will be more and more difficult to make a navy battle group get close to enemy coasts enough to launch our very expensive and beloved planes.

The range and the accuracy of these missiles will be more and more impressive and counter measure more and more difficult to develop.

As I'm trying and sustaining [but probably you work for a US industry which produces planes, boh ...] the evolution of the missiles will be faster and more effective than the evolution of the planes.

With nostalgia you won't win the wars of the future ...

But don't fall in love with missiles: rays will substitute them in the "within horizon" range; and not in a so far future.

Stay tuned.

 

Wow, this entire post is a shotgun blast all over the place. No cohesive thread anywhere in it, just a tangled mess of mess.

Let me know when you want to have an actual discussion instead of throwing around random statements and insults.

 

No, actually you do not get the point. It is not an either-or discussion, quantity or quality. You actually need to have both, or you will loose.

Otherwise, why not make up an Air Force composed only of Stealth aircraft? Yea, it may only be 1/8 the size it is now, but they are all stealth! So that matters, right?

And no, the Serbian batteries were not the most advanced. In fact, they were so un-advanced that they were able to fire missiles in a manual mode, that is how antiquated they were. It was a 1960's era system that actually relied upon tube technology.

Not facing an enemy without outdated equipment with our unstoppable planes? Were you asleep during the 1990's? The Iranians in 1990 had some of the best equipment on the planet believe it or not, and we took them apart with what you would primarily consider "antiquated" aircraft. The F-117 could not attack other aircraft, they could only operate as light bombers. Iraq had the MiG-29, one of the most capable aircraft in the world at the time, as well as the SU-24 and SU-25. And the US actually went in with F-4 and F-111 fighters.

It was not the aircraft that won that phase of the battle, it was primarily tactics, as well as quantity. And the same thing happened on the ground. Numbers were actually favoring Iraq, with coalition forces only outnumbering them 3 to 2 (traditional strategy states that you should only attack with a 2 to 1 superiority or higher). But their tactics were horribly dated and they had fallen into a strategic trap that left their back door wide open to be plundered.

So sorry, almost everything you are saying is dead wrong. Our "unstoppable airplanes" actually made very little difference in the 1990 Gulf War, but they did achieve a great deal of surprise, and unsettled them.

And here is the real secret. Every air defense system is "antiquated", 2-4 decades old or more. Then again, by the same token every rifle is "antiquated", really changing little in the last 70 years. And aircraft carriers have not noticeably improved since the end of WWII when the Royal Navy developed the angled flight deck. So I really have absolutely no idea where any of this is going.

 

I call it the layman skating marathon...

They keep adding supposition and scifi thinking in the hope of overtaking the cold hard reality...

 

Within the airlift community, on a five-hour flight, you may actively fly the airplane for less than 45 minutes total. Most of the time the autopilot is engaged. Also, in most cases practice emergencies moved to the simulator and are not permitted to be done in an aircraft. Outside of tactical maneuvers, everything is procedure driven with two things in mind, keep the flight legal and safe.

We did not look to spice up an exciting flight with hot dogging on an otherwise dull mission...dull missions were our stock-in-trade.

 

I find it particularly funny when they are trying to dispute people who actually know what they are talking about.

Claims like "the most advanced missile system in the world" being a Yugoslav made copy of the SA-3 make me want to smack my forehead into the ground. I mean, does this look like "the most sophisticated air defense system in the world"?



That makes even the HAWK system look modern, and we stopped using that almost 20 years ago.