That link Witch put up shows one - wonder if they have type 86 trailer
as well?
Just cos concordski was a poor copy does not mean the sa-6 wasnt a good
copy.
Just because it was semi-active homing doesnt discerne good or bad.
But virtually all 70/80s AAA radars/missile systems were semi-active it
most certainly wasnt a soviet exclusive tech. Difference was they had a
lot more of em. I never saw a single uk base with them (frighten the
locals I guess showing them they are living next to a target - says
someone living 5 miles from main naval dockyards up here. Still perhaps
if they scots get their bloody independence the English will be smart
and move it down to Pompey or devon).
It was a wonderfully sophisticated system for its day but then SA-6,
hawk, bloodhound systems were probably all similar range and
effectiveness, chaff would have limited effect on bloodhounds doppler
guess the same for them. As for avoiding a missile, would love to see
how a bomb laden phantom, F111, tornado, jaguar or a6 will out manoeuvre
one. Same for a su7/9/17/backfire against western system. Later era
maybe F16 and 18 but they should be taking on SA19 and 400s in any more
modern conflict.
they were good performance in 50s and 60s and probably for the 70s (I
hope so Germany was full of em). Get to the 80s with extra
manoeuverability of planes, add in standoff missile launches, more
capable ecm and the rest and becomes more of an issue. Was not really a
rapidly mobile system (the armies may have been but not sure when they
was mothballed). You had a fixed klystron frequency so it was pretty
easy by then to interfere if you got close enough. Replacing the
klystron and retuning was not really an option (certainly not a quick
one, 2/3 hours offline).
I thought it good because the ground radar (type 86) target illuminator/
missile guidance was interesting to work on - and more so because we
were servicing down to component level, and were <40, and could still
fine tune antenna positioners in a snow storm, rewire a valve in sub
zero temperatures in the dark, climb, crawl and solder a transistor to a
pcb whilst balanced on your shoulders/head whilst getting a kick out of
succeeding (not necessarily whilst we were doing it). Individual valves,
trannies, resistors etc and for some of the more modern addins chips.
But you are still looking to 80s components not whats around now.
Circuits for amplifiers, discriminator, phase detectors and mixers,
suppression circuits, nowadays those things barely exist as a circuit,
get a chip that does it all. Get analogue lna chip for receiver first
stage, another chip amp, then its digitised and it all turns to basic
maths performed by more chips. The ESCAN stuff highlights that to the
nth degree. You got 1-2000 boxes 0.25" by 2" by 6" everything else is
digital (even the psu ffs).
The missile link to the radar would have held up hopefully(cos updated
it for RAF), but it needs to have a target picked out. (Royal) we did
update it as a private venture, actually Dave Mackenzie and Norman
Murphy did. Both sadly passed now (Dave was younger than me) built a
solid state 30GHz version but the company wasnt interested. Of course we
didnt have a missile but we could have produced a modern system quite
cheaply. But government wouldnt have been interested, we have no
country AA missile defence bar rapier now, and if thats defending you
its pretty much too late.
SEAD never really existed until after the yom kippur when it became
apparent how effective soviet defences had become. Americans never
really learnt that from the vietnam war for some reason - took the
Israelies to show them. Then they had to rapidly shoehorn the mission.
The other point is, if cold war went hot and soviets came across, the
likelihood was knocking out air defences would have been a soviet task,
we would have been too busy slowing tanks, knocking out aircraft and
bridges whilst defending our airbases and ground forces. SEAD is more a
static position tactic as in the gulf war when you have air superiority
not so much a rear guard action. Once again online war does not even
come close to reality.
For who ever asked:
In my view DCS barely models radar, frequency bands, prf, pulse widths,
pulse polarisation, back scatter, SAR and SLR, side lobes, water
response, clouds effect and modulation effects - they cant, youd need a
super computer to do it. Its just a mechanical maths for range and may
give a beam width. Then hi prf for fast moving, low for long range - ha
ha, its a not a radar, its a switch buzz lightyear. And the unfailing
NCTR capabilities they give F18/16s and others - dont make me laugh, its
just a cunning way to give a gods eye view like 70s computer games had.
ECM its not even close (and my knowledge ends with 80s sky shadow) but
at least it does not try and pretend. All they do is give the "burn
through effect". That could get our Vulcan bombers through american
defences in the 60s but doubt it beyond the 70s. Sensible ECM is never
going to happen, much like ww1 sims flying on TS, modern sim combat
never simulates these effects because it simply is not possible. Even
the IFF works flawlessly (even if many dont bother from the amount of
friendly kills you hear of).
TTFN
Stickz
On 21/06/2021 22:14, 56RAF_phoenix wrote:
I thought you reckoned Bloodhound was good, Stickz?
Looks very similar to Colin's bane, SA-6.
56RAF_phoenix
On 20/06/2021 18:16, tim foster (Redacted sender silverwings.stickz for DMARC) wrote:On 19/06/2021 11:10, 56RAF_phoenix wrote:
I think some late Cold War might suit me, but they need lots of planning, particularly SEAD.
yet we have virtually none available. F-14B qualifies. M-2000 on the basis its in sevice date was just before the wall dropped. The viggen - although not sure game version in-service date post dated that.
Mig21bis, mig-29 and su27 plus the F5E are probably the only late cold war combat planes.
Hind, gazelle, Hip and L39 are (very)late cold war. All else is much later (or too early).
I think the key thing is how realistic are the SAMs and their radars. Do they have that Soviet thing of being semi-active and command controlled by the Fire Control Radar, do they lock-on-jam, does the game model these things? Just chaff and flares doesn't really represent reality (hint to Colin, SA-6 (Kub) should be defeatable by chaff and manoeuvre even without good ECM).
Why soviet semi-active, our bloodhound was same as was the american Hawk system - same era (bloodhound stretching it a bit but I was still working on them on 1991 to deliver to RAF).
HOJ - meh got no range information, missile had to hit the target. Mainly a "looks good in the specs thing".
