nelson_p@apollo.com (05/23/91)
From: nelson_p@apollo.com As a result of the Gulf War I am left with a number of questions about our own air-defense capability. Granted, the Iraqi Air Force was never a major threat to Allied surface targets except for their Scuds, but a future adversary might be. Our bombing of Iraqi forces showed how effective air power can be against military forces on the ground. 1. Wouldn't the Patriot system be a sitting duck for HARM -type weapons? 2. Is there any reason to assume that our own air-defense would be any more effective against modern aerial attack than the Iraqi air-defense system was? Are our SAMs or AAA considered significantly better or less vulnerable to countermeasures than the Soviet-supplied systems the Iraqi's used? 3. Is there currently much work being done on *passive* AAA or SAM guidance systems? One thing the Gulf War showed was the effectiveness or antiradiation missiles. Often the Iraqis wouldn't even turn their radars on for fear of drawing fire. But it seems to me that modern sensor technology such as that used in LANTIRN systems combined with modern image-processing, which ought to easily be able to distinguish the shape of an aircraft from that of, say, clouds or contrails, would allow AAA to be guided without emitting. In fact, I suppose a passive IR system could "illuminate" its target area with occasional magnesium, thermite, or other high heat-output shellbursts, requiring no particular accuracy. 4. Does anyone employ radar decoys as HARM countermeasures? It seems to me that you could build radar transmitters, requiring no particular frequency stability, quality, or good antenna *real cheap* (If it were me (N1CHJ) I guess I could do it for $1K apiece, the Army might spend an order of magnitude more but that would still be cheap.) ---Peter