Shared equipment profiles is apparently a very real part of this. It is apparently quite difficult for Russian IFF to sort out a Russian MiG from a Ukrainian MiG. It was a problem in Georgia and it is still a problem years later in Ukraine.
Ironically Ukraine switching to a Western-equipped air force may actually help the Russians sort out some of their IFF issues. For Ukraine it could be like two or three steps forward, one step back situation.
The IFF systems I’m familiar with are cryptographic. And have been since the 1960s.
You put today’s secret codes into the airplanes and into the SAMs. The SAM radar system transmits “I challenge you with code ‘ABC123’. What’s today’s right answer?” To which the airplane with the correct secret code input this morning comes back with “I respond with code ‘QWE654’.”
If the SAM radar’s computer likes that answer, you’re a good guy. Anyone coming back with no answer or the wrong answer is not necessarily proven a bad guy, but they’ve moved up several notches on the “reasons I don’t like you” scale. Where you first picked them up on radar, where they are now, what they’re pointed towards, how fast and how high are they flying, how many aircrft do you see together, are all inputs into the “How much do I not like you?” decision. Accumulate enough bad guy points and win a SAM in the face.
Depending on doctrine and ROE, firing at any bad or non-answer to IFF may be totally standing orders. Or not.
The fact Ukraine and Russia share the same gear doesn’t matter as long as they’re not sharing codebooks. If Ukrainian intel has a pipeline into Russia’s codebooks, then Ukrainian airplanes could masquerade as Russian. But if Russia noticed that happening, they could (if competent) alter how they do their codes.
But that doesn’t appear to be helping the Russian planes…
There’s a whole lot of, “what’s air defense doing” when things go boom. Pressure is applied to do something, anything. Turn up the sensitivity on the scopes. Shoot first in case it’s a HIMARS, SCALP, STORM Shadow, smaller/slower drones coming FOR YOU. Figure in conscripts, training, drug and alcohol abuse. Russian pilots are just not feeling comfortable with their aircraft, maintenance, and anti-aircraft fire from both sides. The one day slaughter of 5/6 aircraft recently after the introduction of PATRIOT had to get the pilot’s attention. Now with ATACMS, even your airfield on occupied Ukrainian territory doesn’t feel safe.
Agreed at a large scale. Now that air defense includes the anti-missile defense mission for at least some missiles and drones, the problem is harder for them.
But nobody with a clue is mistaking an incoming volley of e.g. ATACMS for an incoming squadron of e.g. F-16s. Those are utterly disparate flight parameters and neither can impersonate the other with anything near fidelity.
One thing that’s pretty obvious is that Russian airborne ECM is no match for Russian SAMs. Or is simply absent. And that’s a very useful bit of intel.
I doubt we in public will learn too much, but I wonder what the overall success rate of Western SAMs is/are versus Russian airplanes, not including helos? Is our gear locating, targeting, and hitting to kill, or mostly flubbing the dub? And if flubbing, where in the kill chain are we dropping the ball?
Speaking of Russian air defenses:
Stripping their NATO frontiers (especially around Kaliningrad) of S-400s to replace losses in the Ukrainian theater means (a) the Ukrainian campaign to supress Russian air defenses is beginning to pinch, and (b) for all their whining, the Russians clearly understand that NATO is not the actual combat threat their comical saber-rattling would seem to indicate.
Yeah, but denying one’s opponents air superiority should be Ukraine’s mission, not Russia’s. Russia by rights, should have been trying the last two years to establish air superiority as their first priority. I guess we’ve learned a LOT about the Russian air force both in terms of doctrine and performance since Feb 2022.
It’s hard to know how seriously the Russians take air superiority doctrine. My recollection of 4th-hand crystal-ball gazing during the cold war would be that the Soviets would attain a semblance of theater air superiority by pure mass: having enough aircraft to absorb inevitable losses and still be able to degrade opposition air defenses.
They certainly never developed the almost fetishistic love of Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) that the US has. No US strike force goes into hostile territory until the Wild Weasels have stomped every known SAM site into smoldering wreckage, and always with a leading escort of air-to-air hunter-killers to conduct the MIG sweep.
The Russians have less effective use of Air Power than the Ukranians.
query: what are these, please?
Thank you.
I had heard that a standard Russian joke was about two generals who meet in Paris after (the European war that never came) and one asks the other, “by the way, who won the air war?”
If true, that kinda gives some indication of where establishing air superiority fell on the Warsaw Pact’s list of doctrinal priorities.
Russia has had 76 passenger planes seized by other countries in which they happened to be as sanctions took hold. There are still over eleven hundred in the greater fleet, but 76 seems like a lot of money.
Are Russian airliners now restricted to domestic routes? Will they be seized if they land on foreign soil?
I think that depends on which foreign soil they land on.
USAF aircraft with the mission of destroying enemy air defenses, the SEAD mentioned in gnoitall’s post above yours.
Initially known by the operational code “Iron Hand” when first authorized on 12 August 1965, the term “Wild Weasel” derives from Project Wild Weasel, the USAF development program for a dedicated SAM-detection and suppression aircraft. The technique was also called an “Iron Hand” mission, though technically this term referred only to the suppression attack before the main strike.[5] Originally named “Project Ferret”, denoting a predatory animal that goes into its prey’s den to kill it (hence: “to ferret out”), the name was changed to differentiate it from the code-name “Ferret” that had been used during World War II for radar countermeasures bombers.
Since the tactic is to act as a decoy hoping to get lit up by the anti-missile site then fire an air-to-ground missile to destroy it, the unit’s mascot is less than sanguine and the unofficial motto is You Gotta Be Shitting Me.
I think that one way this was used was have the airplane ‘light up’ the radar station, And fire a missile to high altitude and loiter on a parachute. When it locked in on a target, lose the parachute and zingo.
And get. The. Hell. Out. Of. There.
Ukrainian sniper sets world record, killing Russian soldier from 3.8 kilometers.
I don’t see this as much of a risk. Russia knows NATO wouldn’t invade Kaliningrad unless there was a compelling reason.
Guardian live feed
Who was the target? To be worth taking out from that kind of range, I’d expect it’d have to be someone important.
Unless the purpose is just to make all the Russians nervous?