Saturating S300 with JSOW

[theinmigrant]

Yesterday I was trying to saturate an s300 site with jsows so we can then shoot our harms and destroy the radars. To make the mission realistic I didnt put the exact coordinates of the units so the jsows would fly near them and we would need the harms to their jobs.

 

The problem I encountered is that the harms fly much faster than the jsows and I could not find a way to calculate (the hornet doesnt provide that info) the flying time of each one to account for it. The goal is to have all of them reach target area at the same time, otherwise the harms will be shot down.

 

Do you guys know a method to make both type of weapons reach at roughly the same time?

 

 

Thanks.

Edited June 20, 2019 by theinmigrant
spelling

[gekoiq]

Point of doctrine, but you don't want to use the JSOW as decoys... A HARM might destroy the RADAR only if it gets through, a load of JSOW *will definitely* destroy the entire site, including the RADARs if they get through.

 

The point of HARM is to suppress a SAM site, the JSOW A is for destroying the site. If anything you want your HARMs to be the decoy so all the JSOW can get in and completely destroy the launchers, RADAR, support vehicles, etc. Ideally you'd use several TALD as the decoys so that both HARM *and* JSOW can get all the way to their targets.

 

As for your question, you'll have to test and adjust but in the very limited testing I've done, I've had the HARM shooter ~10nm behind me (me as the JSOW launcher) I'd launch at 40nm to target and then my HARM shooter would launch when he gets to ~35-40nm to target as well (starting from ~10nm behind me). They would arrive within 30seconds of each other, HARM easily caught up and passed the JSOW then slowed down and stayed 2-3nm in front of them the rest of the flight. (This was not meant to be serious testing or anything, just messing around trying to see how much an SA10 and bunch of TORs could knock down.)

[theinmigrant]

Point of doctrine, but you don't want to use the JSOW as decoys... A HARM might destroy the RADAR only if it gets through, a load of JSOW *will definitely* destroy the entire site, including the RADARs if they get through.

 

The point of HARM is to suppress a SAM site, the JSOW A is for destroying the site. If anything you want your HARMs to be the decoy so all the JSOW can get in and completely destroy the launchers, RADAR, support vehicles, etc. Ideally you'd use several TALD as the decoys so that both HARM *and* JSOW can get all the way to their targets.

 

As for your question, you'll have to test and adjust but in the very limited testing I've done, I've had the HARM shooter ~10nm behind me (me as the JSOW launcher) I'd launch at 40nm to target and then my HARM shooter would launch when he gets to ~35-40nm to target as well (starting from ~10nm behind me). They would arrive within 30seconds of each other, HARM easily caught up and passed the JSOW then slowed down and stayed 2-3nm in front of them the rest of the flight. (This was not meant to be serious testing or anything, just messing around trying to see how much an SA10 and bunch of TORs could knock down.)

 

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

 

I know I should not use this way the jsows but until talds arrive maybe I will :smilewink:

 

Besides, JSOW A is bugged right now and doesnt do much damage

Edited June 20, 2019 by theinmigrant

[Demongornot]

I haven't fly DCS in a while so I might be wrong, but the hardest part might be to calculate the time to impact of the JSOW because depending on the glide slope they might have totally different speed while HARM having a motor that burn for a significant amount of time and reach Mach 2 will have a flight time depending on the target distance.

So maybe there is a easier method or we could do the maths, but here is what I'll do if I was to do it :

 

If you have time, just make some tests to write a table of basic time to impact depending on the distance for the HARM (because after burn out the time will change considerably and the velocity will decrease until reaching a final glide speed, so simple linear maths won't be enough) at low, medium and high altitude inside its launch altitude envelope.

And time to impact based on both distance and altitude (with more altitudes range than with the HARM) to get a graph showing the time to impact at different range/altitudes of the JSOWS.

I know that the carrier aircraft speed when launching those weapons also influence the time to impact differently for the two weapons, but the goal here is not to get an exact precision timing anyway.

Just make a mission with infinite ammo, one with the JSOW and the other with the HARM, keep constant speed and altitude and launch regularly weapons, then do it again at other altitudes, then analyze it with Tacview to get the time with launch time and impact time difference, it won't take you long to do and it don't require you to do any maths, and unlike calculating flight time you constantly have those data now, just don't forget to check time to target regarding your actual distance to target and not your previously launched weapon distance when you use it (I can imagine this is a easy mistake to do).

 

If you want to do the math yourself then you need to calculate the average glide speed depending of the slope of the JSOW and 3 different velocity for the HARM : Cruising, deceleration after burn out, glide velocity then add the 3 depending on the distance, maybe you want to do non linear calculation and compute the deceleration to get more precision during this phase or simply average it out.

[ShamrockOneFive]

Not sure if this is the correct procedure but I've started testing against a simpler SAM system (a Rapier) by firing a pair of HARMs about 10 seconds apart and then closing the gap to deploy JSOW as soon as I'm in the range circle.

 

 

Still trying to find the right altitude for the best dispersion pattern against a SAM site but I feel like a few JSOW should be able to wreck a site potentially.

[Harker]

I don't know if this will eventually exist for the JSOW, but the HARM PB mode should display a time-to-impact value.

[launchedsquid]

not sure what you mean by that, I routinely destroy sa-10 sites with jsow a's.

[Rick50]

Well, that's all good an all... but in real world S-300, components of the system can be spread across 80 KM... so that would complicate JSOW targeting. They don't seem to be spread over two football fields of space, except as a default setup in the mission editor.

[Hog_No32]

Well, that's all good an all... but in real world S-300, components of the system can be spread across 80 KM... so that would complicate JSOW targeting. They don't seem to be spread over two football fields of space, except as a default setup in the mission editor.

 

I‘ve never seen an operational S-300 site spread the way you describe it (you can find many on Google Earth). Sure an S-300 will be integrated into the overall air defense and therefore be „connected“ to EW radars which can be far away. But the S-300 components like TEL, SRs, TR will be within a few hundred meters of each other.

[theinmigrant]

80 kms is just impossible

[DeathAngel1]

Well, that's all good an all... but in real world S-300, components of the system can be spread across 80 KM... so that would complicate JSOW targeting. They don't seem to be spread over two football fields of space, except as a default setup in the mission editor.

 

LOL 80km?? Hope its just a typo...its not true of course, the components of every air-defence complex are placed at range between 50-100 meters.

[Tippis]

LOL 80km?? Hope its just a typo...its not true of course, the components of every air-defence complex are placed at range between 50-100 meters.

No, it's true. It's more that the components that can be 80km away generally aren't the one you'd target (in fact, in DCS they don't even matter).

 

The actual radar and launcher cluster is spread over upwards of 700m, but each such cluster can be situated 40km away from the command post, thus from one extreme end to the other of that whole setup, the different parts will indeed cover an 80km-radius circle.

 

 

The whole point of the system is that it's spread out and difficult to destroy, even with area-of-effect weapons, and that it's mobile so on the off chance that you know where to aim, by the time the ordnance gets there, it'll result in a half-miss anyway.

 

That said, in DCS missions a couple of problems arise: the CP serves no purpose so you want to go after the launcher clusters anyway and you end up with that small 700m (max) area target; the mission designer lets the attacker know where the target is so they can just plug in coordinates and fire away without having to get close enough to find it (and thus be in range of not just the site itself but also other layers of defences that will suddenly come to life); and that once the general area is found, the system isn't actually mobile so that targeting information will remain 100% accurate even in cases when it shouldn't be.

Edited June 22, 2019 by Tippis

[will-]

no where in that picture does it say you can have components 80km away...

[Tippis]

You'll notice that the CP isn't even in the picture…

 

If you have better sources than what's currently on wikipedia, feel free to update the article. You can start by reading through the extensive material found and linked here.

[Nospin44]

You'll notice that the CP isn't even in the picture…

 

If you have better sources than what's currently on wikipedia, feel free to update the article. You can start by reading through the extensive material found and linked here.

 

You just said yourself the CP is useless to target in dcs. So 80k is actuallly not a thing. That said. Like others have posted, going in with JSOWs and HARM at the same time kinda doesnt make sense. HARMS first for SEAD and the JSOWs after for DEAD. If the launchers target the HARMS its actualy a good thing. Clear path in for the JSOWs.

 

In a perfect world these would be two seperate flights. But can make do with a single F18.

[ebabil]

call in a buddy with a tomcat and don't waste usaf's money :D

[Tippis]

You just said yourself the CP is useless to target in dcs. So 80k is actuallly not a thing.

That wasn't the question, though. The claim was that “components of the system can be spread across 80km”, which some doubted and countered with them being crammed within 100m. My point is that the 80km claim is correct, whereas the 100m claim is not.

 

How that translates into DCS mechanics is a completely separate matter (but it can be simulated with a bit of scripting). Indeed, the lack of simulation in this area ensures that 80k very definitely is a thing, even for components that it shouldn't actually apply to. If you want to build JSOW-safe S-300 site to screw with the poor guy running the mission, the game will happily let you,. Granted, at that point, you probably still don't want to push the full 80km since the overlap will start to suffer.

Edited June 22, 2019 by Tippis

[Rick50]

Look, I'm no expert on S-300, I was just going off the claims from the Wikipedia page, suggesting that components can be 40km from a central point, thus I suggested my interpretation that some components might be 80km from each other, opposite a center point.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_missile_system

Components may be near the central command post, or as distant as 40 km. Each radar provides target designation for the central command post. The command post compares the data received from the targeting radars up to 80 km apart, filtering false targets, a difficult task at such great distances.[6] The central command post features both active and passive target detection modes.[7][8]

 

First paragraph.

 

Now keep in mind... this is Wikipedia. And while I do generally trust it's content, there's no absolute guarantee of perfect information accuracy. Sometimes mistakes are made, sometimes missinterpretations, poor memory, deliberate falsehoods for specific reasons (military secrets and all that), and I'm very far from anything resembling an expert on this stuff.

 

But I still maintain that I find it VERY unlikely that S-300 in the real world, would be so tightly parked as to all be within 100 or 200m of each other, perfect for a single JSOW A or a couple of clusterbombs. Just doesn't make sense to me. If that HAD to be that close, the Soviets would have seen that as a near-fatal flaw in the design and engineered solutions back before 1980 for the then-new S-300. Remember, it was developed from 1967, and first versions fielded in 1978, and continued development improvements through 2005 (presumably then development then shifted to S-400 ?).

 

 

Look, JDAM and JSOW are good options to deal with S-300, but not all by themselves with just a couple units dropped. I think it needs the addition of HARM's, cunning sneaky attacks from low level (pop up from behind a hill, drop JSOW from say 8 miles maybe?), get some TALD decoys to confuzernate it, maybe get F-117 stealth to laser it, and Tomohawk it, and so on. Thing is, it probably wouldn't be alone either: TOR and Tunguska units may help defend the S-300 too, from sneak attacks and slow bombs. Maybe someday EW such as jamming or spoofing may show up in DCS.

 

I'm just suggesting it's a little much to expect a single Hornet to render an S-300 useless in a single pass, on a routine basis, whether you can do it in DCS or not.

[theinmigrant]

Out of curiosity I tried setting up an sa10 with the launchers, search radar and track radar very spread out like 15nm. Apart from the fact that it does work, I came accross something I now wonder about RL:

 

My RWR told me that the lock on signal was coming from my right but since the launchers were so far to the left the missiles were actually coming from my left. Is that something that could happen IRL?

[Cytarabine]

call in a buddy with a tomcat and don't waste usaf's money :D

 

Well the F-14 does have a huge RCS so it should help bait some of the missiles away.

[_mu110_]

Out of curiosity I tried setting up an sa10 with the launchers, search radar and track radar very spread out like 15nm. Apart from the fact that it does work, I came accross something I now wonder about RL:

 

My RWR told me that the lock on signal was coming from my right but since the launchers were so far to the left the missiles were actually coming from my left. Is that something that could happen IRL?

 

This seems like a realistic situation. The RWR doesn't know anything about the missile itself (unless I missed something and the S-300 uses active radar missiles), the only thing it detects are the radar systems, meaning that if you have the various components of the SAM site spread far enough apart, the location of the radars could be totally different than where the missile is being launched at you from.

[ebabil]

Well the F-14 does have a huge RCS so it should help bait some of the missiles away.

 

I meant that they can launch some talds' but yeah this also can be a solution :)

[DeathAngel1]

No, it's true. It's more that the components that can be 80km away generally aren't the one you'd target (in fact, in DCS they don't even matter).

 

The actual radar and launcher cluster is spread over upwards of 700m, but each such cluster can be situated 40km away from the command post, thus from one extreme end to the other of that whole setup, the different parts will indeed cover an 80km-radius circle.

 

 

The whole point of the system is that it's spread out and difficult to destroy, even with area-of-effect weapons, and that it's mobile so on the off chance that you know where to aim, by the time the ordnance gets there, it'll result in a half-miss anyway.

 

That said, in DCS missions a couple of problems arise: the CP serves no purpose so you want to go after the launcher clusters anyway and you end up with that small 700m (max) area target; the mission designer lets the attacker know where the target is so they can just plug in coordinates and fire away without having to get close enough to find it (and thus be in range of not just the site itself but also other layers of defences that will suddenly come to life); and that once the general area is found, the system isn't actually mobile so that targeting information will remain 100% accurate even in cases when it shouldn't be.

 

 

Are you mad? 80 km??? Where did you see 80 km in this picture? Have you ever seen air-defence complex? Because i served my military service in SA-3, and Im more familiar how they works for sure.

[Cytarabine]

I meant that they can launch some talds' but yeah this also can be a solution :)

 

Good point - 5 targets instead of 1 (the Tomcat carries 4 TALD right?)

[Tippis]

Are you mad? 80 km??? Where did you see 80 km in this picture?

Right down in the lower middle. That lighting symbology signifying the C&C datalink, connected to the Flap Lid with a line that doesn't even have a range number attached. The units listed there are older ones that aren't even in use for the S-300, but where the listed range sits in the 15–30km region if you go by other sources. Even if you look at older, less capable command systems, many of them list transmission ranges of 40km over radio link, 15km over wire, so it would be pretty silly to assume that an even more modern one would have any less. This is further confirmed by the comments in the article posted earlier (the one being used as a source for the 40km/80km claim in the wikipedia article).

 

A radius of 40km means you end up with a potential 80km dispersion between elements.

 

If you've never seen an S-300 complex, I would suggest reading this as your first basic orientation (there's also an earlier article dealing with older systems).

 

But I still maintain that I find it VERY unlikely that S-300 in the real world, would be so tightly parked as to all be within 100 or 200m of each other, perfect for a single JSOW A or a couple of clusterbombs. Just doesn't make sense to me. If that HAD to be that close, the Soviets would have seen that as a near-fatal flaw in the design and engineered solutions back before 1980 for the then-new S-300. Remember, it was developed from 1967, and first versions fielded in 1978, and continued development improvements through 2005 (presumably then development then shifted to S-400 ?).

You're quite right. As the illustration shows, it's about a 250m circle for the tracking radar + launchers; the search radars can be separated as much as 750m, and again, the CP can be upwards of 40km of… and these are for a 1990s era system — it has been developed further since.

 

But the main problem is that the system as depicted in DCS lacks mobility — early versions were, if not exactly shoot and scoot, then at least shoot and slowly-waddle-away. This was something that saw definite improvement over later versions. Along with the increasingly spread-out nature, targeting a site with stand-off weapons should be pretty fruitless and targeting it with area weapons should only be semi-efficient.

 

Another problem (that can only be scripted away so far) is the lack of actual suppression in SEAD: a common point of reference is the Balkans war, and the HARM vs. SAM back-and-forth going on there. The general outcome of that was that neither side really managed to kill anything — HARMs rarely hit and destroyed the more modern systems, but those systems also rarely hit and destroyed anything because the HARMs did their job of actually suppressing the search- and tracking radars. This is an element that is completely lacking in DCS, as are the developments that happened subsequently: anti-radiation missiles that could hit (stationary) switched-off radars, and radar systems that can simply move out of the way should one of those missiles come their way. The SA-15 sort of achieves this by accident at times, but it's part of a wholly different movement logic.

Edited June 23, 2019 by Tippis