Maior

Ah, I read the introduction carefully and now I can understand your comments. Though I believe that the reasons for the war presented do not stray far from the truth, but it is presented in a rather strong fashion. You have to take into account that the focus of this study is Russia. In my opinion, from the data available, Georgia gave Russians the excuse they needed to invade. The way the invasion was led, it was not planned on the spot. It was probably planned for a long time. I still don't think it's over-politicised. But again, this is my opinion :)

Nah, I mean Quasars. Pulsars are good for short distances but they're small. The system with Quasars, is similar in a way to the measurements made from VLBI (very long base interferometer). And you wouldn't be able to blow a Quasar up. They consume space matter at the rate of 100 suns a year so, a pesky laser beam would only serve as a wafer thin mint ^^

yeah, I actually applied for a scholarship to work in the project that sadly was not accepted (well, my fault really), and so I missed the chance of working in it. It's an offshoot of Galileo that is basically aiming at a Universal GPS coverage. By Universal I mean the entire frigging Universe. Not Global. I actually met one of the guys responsible for the project who now teaches at my former University and, this guy is a dick! But he knew his business... You also had to sign a non-disclosure contract should you be accepted which I found pretty darn cool. :p Imagine, Quasar guided bombs. Another blow to science fiction... We need more imaginative writers as most tech depicted in science-fiction, is less and less fiction and more and more science. I mean look at the transponders in star-trek. Even the most recent movies. We live in a world where in 10 years time, the possibility of having cellphones integrated in a contact lens, is not really fiction. Graphene will be the new gold... Woops, got a bit sidetracked. ^^

politics is on the eye of the beholder. Usually, discussions revolving around facts tend to have little manipulation. Since 200 dead is 200 dead and there's no way around it. And that the Russians did achieve their main objectives in three days, there's also not much to be said about it. Politicized speech usually comes from people picking small details from a conflict and extrapolating them making them having a much bigger weight. Like an arms dealer trying to sell Georgia more advanced equipment since he can "show" that a certain unit with certain equipment achieved X and if they had more expensive and advanced optics and electronics, the end result would be different. While the result of any army in the same situation using the same tactics would suffer similar results no matter the equipment. Sure, they might destroy another plane and a couple extra tanks but, in the end, the result is the same. Those are the political quagmires to avoid and sometimes turn an army which is already quite capable into something inoperable due to excess spending in resources instead of education. The Japanese learned this lesson better than anyone. If you look at the war of 1905 against Russia, the Japanese had less ships and less modern ones as well. Yet, they ended Russian interests in China decisively. Most of it was due to their hyper aggressive-doctrine meant to seize initiative vs larger armies (which their main opponents had).

Well, the S-400 is supposed to get AESA RADAR to it's targeting system iirc. This will reduce the power output needed greatly reducing heat generation preserving the electronics. Also, those batteries are probably more mobile than what Iraq had. Like I said earlier, the Serbs had 12 second limit for each radar to be on. Couple that with actual information transfer and you got a very effective system even with old technology. It's amazing what good doctrine allows you. Well, I only work on the civil aspect of surveying systems, and let me tell you, I'm guilty of some "sabotage" (fixable things that I don't want to do) myself... But that's mainly due to the fact that sometimes, people feel that just because they bought a 20,000€ camera it's going to be of any use. Sigh...

exactly right man. This is what I've been telling for some time. You have to evaluate the whole SYSTEM not just one F-35 vs an Su-xx. It's the way all those systems are integrated into one providing the pilot with information about it's surroundings in a level no one has experienced yet. heck, even the F-22 is having trouble keeping up sensor wise with the F-35. It's going to be one very smart plane. Ah, and the F-35 can also relay info on targets to other assets. Satellite datalink is exactly one of the technologies routinely used. The Iranian shot drone, was controlled remotely by satellite. That's why it's felling was probably due to malfunction instead of Iranian uber tech. Though the usage of space platforms vs a superpower is unlikely as I have a feeling that if such a war were to occur, space assets would be the first casualties. That's why Europe is developing GPS based on Quasar's (already exist but usually long measurements to measure continental drift). Taking the satellite away from the equation and, no jamming is effective. basically, with four atomic clocks, you know where you are everywhere on the universe. And, you know the time as well. EDIT: apparently it is possible to rep too much. I'll rep you some other time.

It's nice to have a conversation on these topics with feedback in them. It's a refreshing change from the roll-eyes "what does it matter? And who cares" look. ^^ As I keep reading this document I appreciate more and more the necessity of a modern, capable, teaching system. The troubles the arms suppliers have to teach low education countries to operate certain systems... It's staggering. the problem is not the normal functioning and routine maintenance. The Main problem is when things fail, sometimes easy solvable things, and they do not know how to put the equipment back in shape. I'm betting computer systems were the most troublesome. In a way, it makes me appreciate my degree in a technological area more. EDIT: During the colonial wars, Portugal had the opposite trouble. There was one RADAR battery in which the operators felt the war was stupid and they had better things to do. it's main operators were recent graduates in engineering btw. Well, they found a way to short-circuit the system so that a fuse needed to be replaced. A fuse for which they had to submit an order to HQ for them to receive the fuse. Whole operation took around two weeks. After two weeks, they'd repeat the process :D Well educated people ^^

wow, nice snippets. :) It all goes to prove that there's a lot of juice to be squeezed out of the document. The conclusions they reach are very well balanced. All you hear about Georgian efforts fall in line with these conclusions. we all read about the brave Georgian units who inflicted more casualties against superior Russian forces. What most people fail to grasp is the resounding strategical successes Russia achieved. Most Russian attacks were design to keep Georgian is check and pin it's resources. Sure, they held out gallantly, however, the three tank corps (euphemism) that bypassed them in between were left free to roam on the Georgian countryside. The Georgians were woefully unprepared to face a full assault by Russia and that showed since, as the document points out, Russian achieved most of their objectives in three days. The low casualties are also deceiving since Russia managed to make much more units of the Georgian army unable to contribute to the fight due to the front advancing hundreds of miles in a brief period of time. Just look at the casualties, the Georgians had over a thousand wounded and quickly lost it's ability to fight. Pretty impressive. It just goes to prove that you cannot fight a war without supplies. Georgia lost a third of it's tank force... That's a blow. You mentioned limits to air power, well, this is not Russian-Georgian war but, it just shows these limits very clearly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sberCNmEjoQ&list=PLD45D8B1080349E21

Well, they were and they weren't. The problem was that the Iraqui and Iranian doctrines were not up to date in regards to aerial defence. The acquisition of long range high altitude systems was discontinued throughout the war and more focus on weapons that could provide a dual role as anti-air/anti-personnel was pursued for different reasons. One, they were easier to operate and they could form some kind grid without much trouble requiring little integration, two, gun based platforms could serve a role against ground troops and they were used extensively in this fashion. Especially since 23mm and 40mm cannons could be placed outside rocket artillery range being to suppress attack attempts. Again, pin point defence with no strategic linking due to a lack of technical know-how and a far too centralised system. One technical aspect that was outdated was the lack of spotting/listening stations. Their RADAR was always on trying to search for intruders which painted a very nice target for any ARM system. Plus, their long range high altitude defence was actually stationary. Compare it to the Serbian platforms which were mobile and had a 12sec max "on" window. Then, they were disconnected and moved to another location so that it could be used as a listening post and/or active post. The Serbians equipment was not superior technologically to the Iraqi one, it was just used with a more updated doctrine. So, in the end, their point defence systems acted like islands in a see of darkness in which simple procedures as communication between outposts was not even effective let alone any kind of data linking system. From my reading of the article, I got the impression that the Iran Iraq war was detrimental to Iraq on short term since in their experience, point defence was what kept aircraft at bay. Obviously because neither country had any form of airspace control. Iran was a bit better and used their F-14s as mini AWACS and that gave them more awareness. This made them a bit more flexible. Iraq's airforce on the other hand was so rigid a structure that their aircraft had perfectly lined uncovered Iranian aircraft and instead of taking them out, they tried to bomb the runways. Huge blunder but, you don't want to be the one to tell Saddam that you acted without his consent. This is fun :)

GLONASS coverage hasn't really changed much in the last couple of years. The Russian satellite model is at fault. It's cover has wide gaps due to incomplete orbital paths (4 orbital paths, six satellites each). You need 24 satellites to cover the whole world consistently. Russia only once managed to achieve that. The problems of the Russian army had to do with a lot of factors including 90% of their equipment being new. And their army only recently is going professional. So, you have new toys, no training how to use them effectively, and an army who didn't practice large formation operations more than once or twice a year. Again, I'm very curious as to what will follow. Russians were always very good at developing new doctrine. WWII battleplans for all nations were basically formulated by Mikhail Tukhachevsky (from Blitzkrieg to airborne troops). Let's wait and see.

Yeah. One of the things this document keeps reiterating is that there was a lack of thecnological understanding on how to operate efficiently with air defence. Both countries went to a more close range point defence system since it was easier to coordinate since it involved fewer "parts". The lack of effectiveness using long range systems effectively both technically and in doctrine, meant that when the US led coalition attacked in 1991, the Iraq air defence network was no match for an organised assault since short and midrange weapons are not much of a threat to F-15E, F-16 and F-18s dropping presents on you from far, far away. If you compare it to the way the Serbs handled themselves... It's like the day and the night. And the Serbs didn't have top notch equipment. Their doctrine was up to date however and they knew better than to leave their air search RADARS on forever so that everyone could see them. Saw some statistics the other day, the coalition in Serbia managed to destroy less than 100 vehicles in total. Pretty impressive for such a small country.

Well, the system for cars, usually entails double GPS/GLONASS receivers to compensate for the lack of GLONASS coverage. Glonass was only once a complete constellation when the Americans helped Russians put their satellites in orbit fast enough. However, Russian atomic clocks were very sensitive and have a short life span. It was not uncommon for one of the watches to be a complete loss after the rigours of launch. When coverage is available, GLONASS is a nice complement to GPS and allows you to correct some ambiguities. Pretty small difference though and not really an alternative at the moment. As for the article, it's pretty much in vogue with what I have read from other sources and it seems to be a bit too dismissive of Russian command from the excerpts you posted. Lack of precision ammo is one thing but the use of wave tactics is effective if you're willing to pay the price. It's very hard to resist an armoured spearhead and the speed of advance won them the war by completely seizing initiative. It's principle is basically the same as that used in WWII and it's not called massed columns, it's called Echelon formations and Deep operations. The idea is to have force in echelons and keep advancing them as you meet resistance. If the opponent has less troops than you do, either he withdraws immediately or he'll be locked in combat and, once the front is broken, he'll be outflanked at the same time. Plus Russian advantage in artillery has been around since Peter the Great. Stalin called artillery "The Red God of War!". As one of your snippets says, the initial shelling was more than many could stand. I mean airstrikes come and go but an artillery bombardment can go on for hours and hours. As for these operations Imagine German Blitzkrieg only instead of a small area push, it's push is with a whole front. Very impressive. The Germans certainly felt so. Army Group Center went bye bye with one of these. It's funny, in a way this war shows signs of the deep changes in the Russian army conflicting with what is available to them. The Russian army restarted this year frequent mass exercises at brigade level iirc. This will increase their operational readiness and I don't doubt that in the next engagement, their equipment will be much better suited to their more up to date tactics.

http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/9005lessonsiraniraqii-chap13.pdf This is an interesting read on the Air part of the Iran-Iraq war raging from 1980 to 1988. The lessons taken from this war in terms of air combat are considered important by many and still studied. This is probably the sole example of an air war where one side's strength was not overwhelming. Sure Iraq had more planes in the end but for most operations it was pretty even. This is a period when lots of information are becoming available every day and is the era that will shine in DCS in the future. Enjoy the read.

Well, of course they are. All the money the US spends on researching miniaturized tracking systems and then all the maths linking them to the missile inertial frame and trade info with the launching platform in the meantime is just there because they have to show a budget. AMRAAMs are actually filled with concrete. It's not like an AMRAAM can pull 40Gs or anything :music_whistling:

And let's not forget the now serving TerraMax (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9ggv4I4q6g) This truck can literally drive itself. Heaviest drone around. The US are also developing cheap underwater drones with passive SONAR to create a submarine detection grid. Submarine technology has become mainstream apparently and a nation can cheaply a fleet of small diesel-electric subs which are very hard to detect underwater. These Drones will create an acoustic grid to give increased chance to detect submarines.

Well, I advise people to watch CBS' NOVA episode on Drones. UAVs are already used throughout the world. More or less advanced but they are doing it. The advantages are obvious. They still cannot be fully autonomous though. They are 3x more likely to crash than a human pilot simply due to situations where the computer didn't learn how to counter. The advantages are in G forces, smaller size and, cost. Cost especially is one of the driving forces since a relatively cheap platform can be devastating. Heck, an electric powered drone in the 3Kg class costs $300. You incorporate a 3G board on it to triangulate with cellphone towers and have precise positioning. Fill it with Anthrax and send it on a mission over an enemy base at night. You cannot detect it with RADAR, can hardly see it and by the time it opened it's bays, puff. You're done. One got intercepted? spend another $300 and get another one. Better yet, spend $3,000,000 and get 1,000 of them. Send them all at once only need one to go through.

Well, if it is a low energy dogfight, it may be used for that. High AoA means you can pretty much pont your nose anywhere. i for one am really looking forward to see the bug on DCS.

I'd say it's the minimum required. There would be no way they could deliver a faulty product to a customer. They have the obligation to do this.

If you bother to read the post directly before yours, you'd notice the link was already posted.

Lol. Nice catch. 2 minutes thirty not three minutes thirty. :p

http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline//2013/02/more-details-about-lockheeds-c.html Read the brochure details. Second bullet point on Key design features. Multi-mode seeker. LM is developing this: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/LockhMart_Tests_JAGM_Tri_Mode_Seeker_999.html So yeah, radar and other sensors at the same time. Also, the missile will have a lob trajectory so that further expands range and it's fuel is used at bursts unlike the AMRAAM. The missile is lighter (It'll probably weight less than half the AMRAAM does) and the engine has a higher percentage weight comparing to the AMRAAM. Interesting information from a guy that actually participated in missile development: http://elementsofpower.blogspot.pt/2012/12/the-mysterious-lm-cuda-missile.html It clearly shows that the missile can have superior range to the AMRAAM which falls into line with the "expands BVR environment" line. Question is, will it be replacing C (100 Km), or D (180 Km)?

You can probably narrow down the search area but as the receivers get further away, the longer you will have to wait for the combined data. For example, if three sensors detected a sound, one at 15 the other at 20 and the other at 50Km away, in order to get a triangulation you'd need to wait for the sound to reach the 50 Km one. That means you'd have to wait around 150 secs to have all the data. That's 3min 50 secs. By which time the aircraft would be far away. Not to mention that if you have an opposing wind sound would be even more muffled. The only practical idea would be to develop some kind of laser microphone who could detect movement of air particles but again, if lasers are in question, a LIDAR system painting the sky would be your best bet. That way, you could pretty much pinpoint the aircraft if he's visible to the naked eye. You just couple that with the LIDAR Reference frame and you'd get the exact position of the aircraft and it's speed due to Doppler shift. Plus, they can shift their frequencies and if you have several overlapping systems you'll get a pretty accurate picture. At 1Km height, public domain LIDAR systems can have centimetre resolution. If you have more lasers in it, you can even increase resolution and get 360º coverage constantly. Also, there is no system at present that can detect and provide direction to directional EM systems coming from space. And VLO platforms are design to be EM silent. This is especially true now that AESA RADARS can be used to send and receive communications being able to replace datalink which is much "louder" by comparison.

Not to mention the most basic point, if the aircraft is supersonic, he'll reach you first than the sound it produces. Plain and simple. If an aircraft is travelling at Mach 2, the sound will only reach the sensor after the aircraft has passed it. Not much of a purpose now is there? If you consider that the speed of sound is 333 m/s (approximate, let's not consider that the speed varies with altitude and that the sound wave is refracted as it propagates through mediums of different densities), a Mach 2 AC is doing 666 m/s so, if the sensor has a 100 Km radius (pretty huge for sound based sensors) and supposing that the wind is right, not blowing in the other direction, the sound waves would take 300 seconds to reach the sensor. In 300 seconds, the AC would be 200 Km away... So basically, If you detected the sound off the coast of Dover (using WWII) the aircraft would have bomber London and be over Dover again once they were detected (Dover-London distance is about 105Km)... Not much use in that...

This is the same bloody problem everywhere. Because some people still feel that science is a matter of opinion and expect people who actually take enough INTEREST in an area to actually research and study the problem or even work in it , just "take it easy" and just say that "It's cool man, let's just shoot our mouths off and spread half baked opinions about any subjects and if you disagree, just say it and be done with it". I hope scientists in Slovenia don't think like that otherwise, you have a very serious problem.

It's multiple seeker. And the difference in size is due to smaller explosive warhead (or lack of it) and lack of proximity fuse. This accounts to a lower weight, lower cost and greater "miles per galon". The calculations are precise enough to hit the target. This is all the information available and several defence specialists who actually work on the thing say it is enough. This missile is all aspect and improves the BVR envelope. Again, this is what's publicly known and the experts in the area with inside info agree this improves all capabilities of a plane. The holes in the upper section are apparently thrust vents to give the missile faster manoeuvre rate. EDIT: Ah, the microelectronics available are smaller than those on the AMRAAM and your diagram is completely bogus as no cutout of the CUDA missile is available. You're just assuming that everything remains the same with that pic of yours...