DISRUPTION
and Germany, if anything, boosted the
population’s will to resist.
So strategic bombing wasn’t the
disruptive technology it was pitched
to be. But there were other disruptive
technologies which affected the
outcome and had a marked impact on
what came later.
Think radar, the jet engine,
strategic rockets and first-generation
precision weapons.
In the 1991 Iraq war, precision
weapons came of age and US air
power dominated the battlefield,
so completely that it seemed
US dominance over traditional
adversaries such as the former Soviet
Union was assured almost indefinitely.
Yet, as air power analyst Dr Alan
Stephens of the Williams Foundation
observed, Israel also believed it had
absolute air supremacy over its Arab
neighbours following its stunning
victory in the 1967 Six Day War.
This one-sided victory led Israel
to assume its air power would always
triumph.
Six years later in the Yom Kippur
War in October 1973, Egypt launched
its assault over the Suez Canal and
Syria into the Golan Heights under
an effective ground-based air defence
(GBAD) system, comprising latest
Russian SA-6 and SA-7 missiles and
radar-directed ZSU-23-4 gun systems.
These proved highly effective with
Israel initially suffering unsustainable
losses. Ultimately Israel won, with a
combination of improved measures to
supress air defences and fast-moving
ground forces which overran Egyptian
and Syrian GBAD.
The enduring lesson is that for all
the superiority of Western air forces,
with their advanced aircraft, well-
trained pilots, knowledge advantage
and effective command, control and
support, enemy GBAD may again turn
out to be shockingly good.
How good? Until there’s an actual
conflict which pits western air power
against Russian GBAD, we won’t
really know.
Throughout the Cold War, the
Soviets talked up their capabilities.
So did many in the West, who didn’t
know about Russian capabilities and
weren’t about to say anything which
could have reduced their budgets for
new equipment.
Eastern Bloc GBAD worked OK in
Vietnam but was well outclassed in
later conflicts.
More recently Russia has used the
Syrian conflict to combat-prove some
of its newer equipment, including a
pair of S-400 Triumf anti-aircraft
missile systems.
Russia has been quite happy to
sell these to anyone with the cash,
including India, Turkey, Saudi
Arabia and also China, where
deliveries started in January. There’s
rising prospects that these will be
encountered in some future conflict.
S-400 features an AESA radar and
four different missiles with various
ranges out to a maximum 400km.
Russia claims it can hit anything in the
US inventory, including F-22, F-35,
B-1 and B-2, plus Tomahawk andballistic missiles. A single battalion
carries more than 100 missiles, which
is a lot of air defence.
In an article last May about
Turkey’s proposed acquisition of
S-400, The Economist magazine
described S-400 as one of the best air
defence systems currently made.
US commentator Scott Wolff went
further.
“Simply stated, of all the surface-to-
air threats being faced by coalition air
power over Syria, the Russian S-400
SAM, known as the Triumf at home
and better known to NATO as the
SA-21 Growler is the most capable and
lethal long-range air defence missile
system on the planet,” he wrote on the
fightersweep.com website.
Carlo Kopp on the Air Power
Australia website said the S-400 was
often termed Russia’s Patriot but it
was in many ways more capable.
“From an Australian perspective
the deployment of large numbers of
the S-300P/S-400 family in Asia is of
major concern. Rapidly deployable,
highly survivable and highly lethal
these weapons are especially difficult
to counter and require significant
capabilities to robustly defeat,” he
wrote.
“The US Air Force currently
envisages the F-22A Raptor as the
primary weapon used to defeat these
capable systems.”
Dr Kopp said no Hornet variant
or F-35 was designed to penetrate
S-400 coverage and their survivability
would be no better than legacy combat
aircraft.
So Russian GBAD could be
the disruptive technology of the
next conflict but there are other
possibilities.
On the plus side, North Korea – the
most likely venue for a major conflict- doesn’t have S-400 but it does have
China’s ‘carrier killer’ DF-21D
ground-launched ballistic
missile. CHINESE INTERNETThe Russian S-400, “the most
lethal long-range air defence
system on the planet”? NOSINT