Boogieman Posted August 22, 2019 Posted August 22, 2019 (edited) Recently I've been playing around with the air to ground side of the Hornet and noticed a few things: - The JSOW - a VLO/LO weapon - never seems to be engaged by larger/theatre level SAM systems like the S300 - The AGM154 is regularly engaged and shot down by the point defence SA15 - No GBAD systems seem to react to JDAM/GBU/dumb bombs at all This strikes me as perculiar, since the JSOW should have a smaller radar signature than a regular free fall bomb and therefore be detected and engaged later. Moreover, I would have expected theatre level SAM systems (with their much more powerful radars) to have the best chance of picking up and engaging a low RCS target like JSOW - better than a smaller point defence system like the Tor. Is this consistent with other people's experience or am I off base here? Happy to be corrected if so. Edited August 22, 2019 by Boogieman
raelias Posted August 22, 2019 Posted August 22, 2019 Thats consistent with what I observe, the TOR radar is very modern, there is a documentary on it on youtube that shows it detecting tiny stuff (as well as engaging free falling bombs) Win10 64, MSI Krait Gaming Z370, I7 8700K, Geforce 1080Ti FTW3 ,32 GB Ram, Samsung 980 EVO SSD Modules: Combind Arms, A-10C, F-86F, F/A-18, F-16, Flaming Cliffs, KA-50, L-39, P-51, UH-1, Christen Eagle II, Persian Gulf
Boogieman Posted August 22, 2019 Author Posted August 22, 2019 (edited) Thats consistent with what I observe, the TOR radar is very modern, there is a documentary on it on youtube that shows it detecting tiny stuff (as well as engaging free falling bombs) Right. I mean based on the RCS of the munitions and the power of the radar systems in question I would have expected: 1) S300 to detect & engage regular free fall bombs at the greatest range, then; 2) Tor to detect and engage regular free fall bombs next, then; 3) S300 to detect and engage JSOW, then; 4) Tor to detect and engage JSOW at the shortest range (if at all) ...in that order. (I guess you could argue for swapping numbers 2 & 3 depending on RCS values vs radar output but I don't want to overcomplicate things TOO much :smilewink:). Edited August 22, 2019 by Boogieman
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