Russian S-400 Surface-to-Air Missile System: Is It Worth the Sticker Price?by Peter A. Wilson and John V. Parachini
May 6, 2020In October 2018, the India Ministry of Defense concluded a $5.5 billion deal to buy four regiments of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missiles (SAM). Just over a year later, India made an advance payment of $850 million to expedite the deployment from Russia of the first regiment by September 2021. However, many countries do not fully appreciate that effective air defense requires a networked system and not just one missile system component. To get the true defensive value out of the S-400, there are additional components that add costs and complexities to the system.
To support U.S. government foreign assistance training for nations on how to comply with U.S. and U.N. sanctions, the RAND Corporation has examined open sources covering Russia arms sales around the world. One of the findings from the material contained in this database is that many countries with scarce national resources purchase weapons systems without fully appreciating the other equipment elements required to make the systems effective. Additionally, they do not adequately account for the full lifecycle costs of all the pieces of equipment needed; lifecycle costs typically exceed the original purchase costs in about seven years.
The Indian Armed Forces, like other national militaries seeking to boost their air defense capabilities, must sort through tremendous financial and technical challenges. India faces a diverse set of ballistic missile threats from its neighbors and no single system can solve this complex challenge. Even the S-400, a very high-performance high-altitude missile aerospace defense system (HIMADS), has important limitations.
At a basic level, the S-400's field of view for the search and fire control radar is limited to the horizon of the earth. Because of this common limitation, search radars are typically placed on tall masts to better see over the horizon. An even better solution is to position radars on specialized aircraft, airborne warning and control aircraft systems (AWACS), or on stationary tethered balloons known as “aerostats.” However, without over the horizon sensors, the S-400, and other powerful HIMADS system, are vulnerable to a low-altitude attack by cruise missiles, which, in large numbers, can overwhelm an air defense system.
To be effective against an array of missile threats, the S-400 regiments need to be tightly integrated with AWACS aircraft. Depending on the number of S-400's and the types of targets they are expected to defend, a military may need to expand the size of its AWACS fleet to provide nearly continuous coverage to the SAM sites. Yet, the cost of fuel and maintenance make it expensive to operate a sizable fleet of AWACS aircraft.
[More at link]
https://www.rand.org/blog/2020/05/russi ... worth.html
Expensive to cover AWACS with fighters, once those SAMS get hit. So the Russians or Chinese want AWACS flying about with hundreds of 5th-gens closing? What’s up with that? Russians need a suitable fighter in high enough numbers to fly a defendable AWACS in typical uses just to hold the airspace. If they can make S-400 effective too, fine. But that looks like a very limited tactical time-frame for availability of AWACS services. The cruise or glide weapon threat to heavy SAMs will be almost constant.
From this month …
Drone-Era Warfare Shows the Operational Limits of Air Defense Systemsby John V. Parachini and Peter A. Wilson
July 2, 2020While most countries struggle with the COVID-19 pandemic, the civil wars in Syria and Libya have become battlegrounds for foreign states backing different local sides. External powers have intervened in both civil wars supplying advanced conventional weapons that have intensified the conflicts, but not all the weapons have performed as claimed. Perhaps the most startling example of this is how ineffective modern Russian air defense systems have been at countering drones and low-flying missiles. In the face-off between expensive air defensive systems and lower cost offensive drones and low-flying missiles, the offense is winning.
In recent weeks, drones supplied by Turkey (PDF) in support of the internationally recognized Government of National Accord have reportedly destroyed the Russian Pantsir short-range air defense systems (SHORADS) that the opposition Libyan National Army (LNA) used to protect their forces. The inability of the LNA to protect their forces has turned the tide of the conflict and is a reminder of how difficult effective air defense is in an era of comparatively inexpensive armed drones and precision guided low-flying cruise missiles.
[More at link]
https://www.rand.org/blog/2020/07/drone ... f-air.html
Ru SAMs look outmoded against current attack tech, they struggle against 4th-gen using older technology, weapons and tactics. Without a comprehensive balanced but sizable 5th gen force at the core of the Russian legacy force I don’t see how the described structure can work for them in a real battle. Particularly to impose area-denial on an F-35-structured strikefighter force supporting 4th-gens with longer-range standoff and widespread support-jamming.
OTOH, Western forces look to be increasingly capable of imposing and extending area-denial against Russian or Chinese forces. They may get some BMs and cruise weapons through, but a lot of those won’t make it either. The main defense against the Western force is geographical distances, not their defensive tech, but longer-range cruise weapons, CFTs, new tankers, plus innate range increase of 5th gens is taking that away too. The larger Russian SAMS maybe make 5th gens fly more track-miles to get to a launch point, but only for as long as heavy SAM sensors function. Strong EA and tactics would put an end to that ‘area-denial’ effect also.
I am surprised how easily the Ru short-range systems fall over, it’s concerning, as I wonder if western short-range systems would similarly fail this easily? Losses may have been light but the way less sophisticated Iranian cruise weapons hit US bases (even with early-warning) suggests fielded point-defense systems were far from good enough and the non-kinetic options like EA were disappointing as a defensive capability, too. After all the time on the ground in the ME we should have produced comprehensively better point-defense systems against guided weapons by now.
Perhaps a large ground force can absorb a fair bit of that sort of attack, but a small highly integrated joint force needs all of the bits to survive to remain effective, so need a point-defense to work - almost perfectly. This I think is the real SAM problem for western forces now. We all need credible point-defenses, which can maintain joint initiative to eliminate an enemy force faster, with fewer losses and less degradation from harder to stop cruise weapons.
This would also serve to make A2D2 offensive weapons almost as ineffective as Ru defensive SAMS have become. Thus Russia, China, Iran, DPRK are just going to build and use more cruise weapons, until we make those affordably and credibly ineffective as well.
We seem to have more-or-less solved the SAM network defensive threat but have significantly neglected the offensive cruise missile threat. But are now thoroughly distracted by a much lower numbers hypersonic missile threat (much easier to see coming, if you can see it, you can hit it), but weirdly overlooked the biggest threat of all (to Russian and Chinese systems as well) to our own forces.
This threat somehow ended-up in the "to hard" file, we've developed a blind-spot to it for the past 2 decades (at least that's my perception, others may see it otherwise). We've presumed point-defenses will work in a multi-layered system. I don't see this as credible, I doubt military competitors do either.
This is the main reason why area-denial approaches still look formidable, our point-defenses against missiles have remained comparatively ineffective and lack credibility.
2c
12 Mar 2019, 12:24
