The Russian Approach to Defeating US Air Power

The stunning success of the US Air Force in 1991, followed by the 1999, 2001 and 2003 air campaigns, has been a double edged sword. While it validated the late Cold War paradigm developed by US Air Force strategists, and proved a wide range of doctrinal ideas, strategy and technology, it has also produced unintended and damaging consequences. The first is that it stimulated a nearly two decade long effort by Russian and Chinese industry to defeat advanced US technologies, an effort now resulting in competitive products. The second consequence has been an unwarranted sense of superiority and confidence in Washington, and indeed elsewhere in Western defence departments. The third consequence during this decade has been the large scale downsizing of US technical intelligence gathering and analysis capabilities, leaving US analysts more than often blind to technological advancements in Russia and China.



During the Cold War era, Soviet technological strategy was driven mostly by an overarching central plan, more than often crafted to meet strategic agendas and counter specific US capabilities. The new paradigm is entirely different, and driven by bottom up market pressures rather than top down bureaucratic directives. The former Soviet industry is now free to exercise its design creativity without hindrance, driven by profit motive and competitive pressures. The privatisation of much of the industry into Joint Stock Companies, and incessant takeovers of smaller manufacturers, has created a commercial hothouse environment in which new ideas and new markets thrive. The nearest comparison is the US industry during the Reagan era, where creative thinking was more than often handsomely rewarded with contracts. In Russia today the primary market for the most advanced products is the export market, not the Russian Armed Forces, who more than often are equipped with variants predating the export product.



At the end of the Cold War the US possessed several key and decisive capability advantages, and usually a monopoly on the technology involved. These included stealth technology – the F-117A, with the B-2 entering production and the F-22 development, a diverse range of sophisticated precision guided munitions including cruise missiles, and a large fleet of standoff Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) platforms including the AWACS, JSTARS, Rivet Joint, and U-2.



It should come as no surprise that the strategic imperative for nations not aligned with the US in the new multi-polar world is the defeat of these capabilities, and as a result these have produced distinct foci in Russian weapons development. Typically an equivalent product to the US design is on offer, or where out of reach, a product designed to asymmetrically deny use of the US capability is offered.



The issue of countering US ISR capabilities is a good example. The industry has provided the Chinese with assistance on their KJ-2000 AWACS system, based on the Ilyushin Il-78 airframe.



Of much greater concern is however the asymmetric development of ultra long range Air to Air and Surface to Air missiles specifically intended to destroy ISR platforms or deny their use. These include the Fakel 200 nautical mile SAM developed for the S-400 Triumf / SA-21 Growler system, and the 162 nautical mile Vympel R-37 and 200 nautical mile Novator R-127/K-100 AAMs developed to arm the Flanker family of fighter aircraft. A stated secondary role for these missiles is destroying US aerial refuelling tankers and standoff jammers such as the EC-130, EA-6B and EF-18G. By the middle of the coming decade all of these weapons will be well established in the global market, presenting interesting challenges for US forces.



In the domain of Precision Guided Munitions (PGM) and cruise missiles, the former Soviet industry has become a major global player, competing directly against the US, EU and Israeli industries. This presents another symmetric response to US capabilities, and one which is clearly having an impact. In guided bombs, the GNPP KAB-250, KAB-500 and KAB-1500 occupy the same niche as the US GBU-10/12/16/24/27 Paveway II/III, the GBU-15 and the GBU-31/32/35/38 JDAM series. The basic KAB-500/1500 bomb airframes may be supplied with penetrating, general purpose blast, thermobaric or gaseous Fuel Air Explosive warheads. No less interesting is that the same airframes can be supplied with an Electro-Optical (EO) correlation terminal seeker, modelled on the Tomahawk DSMAC, a datalink supported EO or thermal imaging seeker modelled on the GBU-15 or Walleye, a laser seeker very similar to the Paveway II, or a satellite inertial guidance package modelled on the US JDAM. The latter has twenty channels, capable of using both US GPS and Russian Glonass satellites. Another hot seller has been the 3M-54/3M-14 Club / Sizzler family of cruise missiles, now deployed by China and India on Kilo SSKs, and being marketed in an air launch configuration, ship launch configuration and land mobile coastal defence configuration. The land attack Sizzler variant, the 3M14E/AE, best compares to the AGM-109H/L Tomahawk MRASM derivatives.



Of much greater interest is however the asymmetric technological response to US dominance in smart munitions. Russian strategy is that PGMs and cruise missiles should be shot down in flight, and this has seen a large scale reorientation of development across a range of air defence weapons. The basic idea is that a deluge of US smart weapons will be countered with intensive missile and directed energy weapon defensive fire against these weapons. Of interest is that the US AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missile is a cited target type for every single point defence weapon now on offer.



In 1991 the Soviets were producing the Tor / SA-15A/B Gauntlet SAM and Tunguska / SA-19 Grison SAM/SPAAG system on tracked chassis, intended to defend Red Army land manoeuver forces against pop up helicopter and fighter threats. Both of these systems have evolved considerably since then, and their replacements are tasked primarily with defeating smart munitions, while protecting long range SAM batteries, early warning radars and fixed infrastructure targets.



The new Tor M2E / SA-15D is road mobile on a hardened 6 x 6 MZKT6922 vehicle, and the new Pantsir S1E / SA-22 Greyhound is carried by an 8 x 8 KAMAZ-6560. Both systems have digital processing and a phased array engagement radar, in the SA-22 it is directly derived from Phazotron's Zhuk-MFE originally built for the MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter. There are no direct Western equivalents to either the SA-15D or SA-22, either in capabilities or mobility.



The drive to counter smart munitions has also seen the development of the Fakel 9M96E1/E2 interceptor missiles for the Almaz-Antey S-400 Triumf / SA-21 Growler system, these weapons being equivalent to the Patriot PAC-3 ERINT interceptor. Unlike the PAC-3, these designs were built from the outset to also kill smart munitions targeting the missile battery. While the S-400 is mostly designed to provide outer layer long and medium range SAM and ABM capabilities, as demonstrated by the inclusion of counter-ISR and point defence missiles, it is much more than its predecessors, the S-300PS/PM/PMU / SA-10 Grumble and S-300PMU1/2 Favorit / SA-20 Gargoyle. The latter SAM systems have been exported to China in large numbers, and form the basis of the Chinese HQ-12/15 SAM systems. The S-400 is a fully digital design, and has been reintegrated on new MZKT, BAZ and KAMAZ vehicles for improved road mobility. The system's 55K6 command post is designed to also control legacy missile systems such as the S-200 / SA-5 Gammon.



Directed energy weapons are another capability which is seen by the Russians and Chinese as critical to defeating massed attacks by US smart munitions and cruise missiles. The Russians have been marketing the 500 MegaWatt Ranets E pulsed microwave beam weapon, using a mobile beam director dish on a 8 x 8 MZKT-7930 truck. This system will be electrically lethal to aircraft avionics and guided munition electronics at a range of 7 nautical miles or greater.



The status of High Energy Laser weapons is less clear at this time. Almaz-Antey developed the Soviet 100 kiloWatt plus class carbon dioxide chemical lasers, and built a system comparable to the US THEL/MTHEL, but highly mobile on an 8 x 8 MAZ-7910 chassis.



This plethora of diverse and capable air defence weapons all share the important attributes of high mobility and deployment and stow times of minutes, to facilitate 'shoot and scoot' operations. Defeat of highly mobile air defence weapons remains a problem, as demonstrated in 1999. While 743 HARMs were fired, only 12 percent of Serbian mobile 9M9 / SA-6 Gainful SAM systems were destroyed. Networked with digital radio links, and equipped with low sidelobe agile beam phased array radars, the current generation of Russian air defence weapons will be much harder to kill than the 1970s SA-6B.



Countering US stealth capabilities has been a high priority for Russian manufacturers. The symmetric response has been the development of a range of radar absorbent coatings and laminates for use on legacy aircraft. Russian sources claim the absorbent coating used in the Su-35BM Flanker will reduce engine inlet tunnel signatures thirty-fold in the X-band. We have yet to see the new PAK-FA stealth fighter, so assessment of Russian progress in airframe shaping techniques is not yet feasible.



The asymmetric aspect of Russia's counter stealth effort is far more visible. It is centred on the use of two metre or VHF band radar technology, and the networking and integration of other sensors, including passive emitter locating systems.



Most recent Russian effort in the development of early warning and surveillance radars has been in the two metre band. All of these new radars, and upgrade packages for legacy Soviet era radars, are digital and mostly solid state designs. Many include sophisticated adaptive processing techniques for rejection of ground clutter and jamming, a technology to date seen mostly in recent US radar designs.



The focus on the two metre radio band, used primarily for TV broadcasting, is that it largely defeats stealth airframe shaping techniques designed for the decimetre and centimetre band radar. The Russians are adamant that US stealthy fighter aircraft will appear as beachball sized radar targets in the VHF band, rather than marble sized targets. Raleigh scattering regime physics support the Russian view.



A key development is the emergence of new technology VHF designs, built for high mobility to support mobile SAM batteries. The NNIIRT 1L119 Nebo SVU is the first ever VHF band Active Electronically Steered Array (AESA), and is accurate enough to provide midcourse guidance for a missile. Russian thinking on counter-stealth technique is to fly the missile close enough for its seeker to lock on despite the stealthiness of the target, using datalinking from a stealth defeating sensor. This radar can be deployed and stowed in 45 minutes. The new ByeloRussian KBR Vostok E wins the mobility game with an 8 minute deploy and stow time, using a hydraulically folded and elevated antenna. This new VHF radar is also fully digital, solid state, and employs an innovative "Kharchenko" square ring antenna element design. Defeat of US stealth is a primary claim by its designers, who state the ability to track an F-117A at 190 nautical mile range.



The effort in VHF radar is paralleled by developments in Emitter Locating Systems, specifically the networked 85V6 Orion/Vega and Topaz Kolchuga systems. Users of the earlier Tamara / Trash Can system claimed the ability to track the position of US aircraft with emitting JTIDS/Link-16 terminals. Other counter-stealth technology includes a VHF band multistatic radar being developed by NNIIRT.



Other important developments include the 20 kiloWatt class N-035 Irbis E hybrid phased array radar for the Su-35BM, which outperforms all US legacy fighter radars, the APG-79 in the Super Hornet, and APG-81 in the F-35. Russia's first AESA radar, the Zhuk AE, is being scaled up for the Flanker, and promises performance in the class of the latest US APG-77(V)2 and APG-63(V)3 AESAs.

