IAF Fighter Roles and Mission profiles --When and how will they be used ?

[indushek]

You are correct in the sense that this CAN be GAME changer. However it is a untested, unproven platform. To hit target from 200+ KM range requires radically complex technology considering the fact that SAAB AWECS will notice the missile streaming towards it. It will try and will evade the missile , if it is not possible to shake of the missile , then one of the excort fighters will try to destroy this missile or will try to sacrifice itself to defend a high value asset. However it will interesting to see what would happen in a saturation attack .i.e Su 30's launches number of NOVATOR missiles at its target.

However what you have shown is a way to neautralize the threat. But the question is how to fool the AWACS ? Is there a way to do it ?

Diversionary tactics come into mind --

AWACS always causes a problem for operating Air forces. True you might not hear everyone saying this, but this is true !! How ? Becauses it causes Air controllers to inspect every little Air intrusion/Air objects which otherwise it would have never inspect. If IAF or PAF can make multiple attempts to make the intrusion look real but back at the last moment -- this will cause a severe pain but still will not achive surprise...However i still am not sure how can we achieve tactical surprise if AWACS are present in the picture.

Only way i guess to achieve surprise for IAF or PAF is too drive the AWACS outside its operational range !!

Well my friend obviously we would not be launching a single missile and keep our hands crossed right?? so a salvo of atleast 6 to 8 missiles have to be fired due to the fighter cover around the AWACS

However i am unable to comprehend this fooling of AWACS statement by you, why do we need to fool it we want to shoot it. u see once such a high value target goes down air superiority is gauranteed right , i may also be wrong since i am not a authoritative source on air warfare am just a enthusiast with very little knowledge. So u can take this as my presumption.

I think launching a barrage of 10 to 12 missiles (though may sound redundant) is worth the effort when taking out "the eye in the sky".

Defence professionals could provide valuable inputs here as i am a bumbling baby by their standards.

 

[indushek]

For such a long range missile to work perfectly and achieve a kill, lot of factors are gonna play a part, the counter measures employed, the range at which the target is, the range at which the launching platform is, the target to be picked up by the radars and then to have a constant lock for providing the guidance to the missile till it reaches the point from where its own radar picks up with target etc etc etc.

PAF AEW&Cs major role would be to monitor & control Pakistani air space and have some what little bit of early warning of any intruding aircraft, for that, the PAF AEW&C can do the job by being pretty deep inside the Pakistani airspace, thus for such a missile to work perfectly, lot of factors as suggested above will have to be looked into.

Well said sir, as i have pointed out before i have very little knowledge in these matters, however i remember reading about this missile once when checking for anti-radiation missiles.

Even i have wondered on the same point of guidance, infact i would like to discuss this thing i mean i know of laser guided, heat seeking and satellite guided weapons (please correct me if i am wrong). In the first two cases the AWACS cannot be dealt with, the third one though effective could make the missile costly. So are there any other guidance systems which could be used in this scenario? please provide me with info on this if u have any.

 

[Justin Joseph]

How about this scenario:

SAM sites close to the border are destroyed with the help of ballistic or cruise missiles. Supported by AEWACS (which remain on our side of the border) the Su-30MKI's escort our Mirages on strike missions destroying key bridges, roads, radar installations and refineries to slow operations of the PAF and pakistan army. Pakistani missile silos should be taken out very quickly to prevent a nuclear retaliation. The Su-30MKIs engege and destroy any enemy fighters they encounter to gain and maintain air superiority. The Brahmos equipped Su-30MKIs can also be used to take out targets deep in Pakistan. High value assets like AEWACS and tankers are likely to be well protected and should be countered by Su-30MKIs attacking in waves and many novator missiles fired at once so that there is a higher chance of success. Another strategy will be to engage all PAF aircraft and bring down their numbers so that PAF will be forced to divert fighters protecting their high value assets for other missions. This gives the Su-30MKIs the chance to take down the PAF AEWACS with minimal loss. MiG-29s and MiG-21s will have a defensive role to prevent enemy aircraft from attacking IAF bases.

However, things become different if the Chinese decide to interfere. So, the attack on Pakistani bases has to be very quick so that we can afford to divert our fighters to defend against a Chinese attack. Our border with China should be heavily fortified. Since the Chinese have a clear advantage in numbers, the IAF may be forced into the defensive.

1. Also, 300 kms range Brahmos and 750 kms Shaurya will be utilized to destroy high value targets, command & control centers and nuke assets.

2. IAF's base at Tajikistan should be equipped with Su 30 MKI and Mig 29 and they should also use them in war.

3. We should make a deal with local warlords in Afghanistan and Pakistan promising them moon. And RAW and other agencies should have huge presence behind enemy lines. All of them including warlords should join us in the war.

Pakistan's only land link with china have to cutoff.

4. Attack should be in winters so that the china can't intervene as heavy snow will cut off Tibet.

5. Indian Navy should also attack with full force so that enemy's limited resources get diverted and destroyed.

6. Must keep our good old friends Russia and US of A in loop. We should also ready with some big carrot for USA to take them with us.

 

[Indiarox]

3. We should make a deal with local warlords in Afghanistan and Pakistan promising them moon. And RAW and other agencies should have huge presence behind enemy lines. All of them including warlords should join us in the war.

Justin i agree with all your points except this one last thing we want to do is support warlords see what happened to USA when they used same thing against USSR .International opinion matters in such conflict and helping warlords does not help with our international reputation besides using warlords against Pakistan is like a boomerang it will return to hunt us . so we do not need the warlords what we need is more bases like the ones in Tajikistan

 

[notorious_eagle]

For such a long range missile to work perfectly and achieve a kill, lot of factors are gonna play a part, the counter measures employed, the range at which the target is, the range at which the launching platform is, the target to be picked up by the radars and then to have a constant lock for providing the guidance to the missile till it reaches the point from where its own radar picks up with target etc etc etc.

PAF AEW&Cs major role would be to monitor & control Pakistani air space and have some what little bit of early warning of any intruding aircraft, for that, the PAF AEW&C can do the job by being pretty deep inside the Pakistani airspace, thus for such a missile to work perfectly, lot of factors as suggested above will have to be looked into.

Sir not only that, keep in mind the target for this missile will be maneuvering and cruising at a speed of around 500-600 knots. The jamming capabilities of an AWAC are extremely potent, it will definitely try to jam the missile of the enemy aircraft which is trying to lock on. IAF will most probably use their SU30MKI to launch the K100, due to MKI's large RCS it will be detected long before the missile is launched. If in the scenario the SU30MKI manages to sneak through and locks on the Erieye, the escort for the Erieye will neutralize the incoming missile with its heat seeking missiles. In conclusion, its not that easy to take out an AWAC. Either the other side must have complete superiority or a combination of extremely good tactics and luck to take out an AWAC.

P.S. Soaringphnx and Justin Joseph, extremely good scenarios . It will make a great Bollywood movie, i think Sunny Deol should be the lead actor. I am sure he can stop an incoming Ballistic Missile with his bare hands

 

[indushek]

Sir not only that, keep in mind the target for this missile will be maneuvering and cruising at a speed of around 500-600 knots. The jamming capabilities of an AWAC are extremely potent, it will definitely try to jam the missile of the enemy aircraft which is trying to lock on. IAF will most probably use their SU30MKI to launch the K100, due to MKI's large RCS it will be detected long before the missile is launched. If in the scenario the SU30MKI manages to sneak through and locks on the Erieye, the escort for the Erieye will neutralize the incoming missile with its heat seeking missiles. In conclusion, its not that easy to take out an AWAC. Either the other side must have complete superiority or a combination of extremely good tactics and luck to take out an AWAC.

P.S. Soaringphnx and Justin Joseph, extremely good scenarios . It will make a great Bollywood movie, i think Sunny Deol should be the lead actor. I am sure he can stop an incoming Ballistic Missile with his bare hands

Well my dear i think u have not read the info on the missile completely, kindly know that as far as my knowledge goes max detecting range of PAKISTANI AWACS is 450 km (please correct me if i am wrong)and the range of this missile is 400 km which means it can detect this missile however a barrage of missiles can beat the counter measures. As for the fighter cover the firing AC will be out of the reach of ur fighters wont it. However as MR.Taimikhan has pointed out there are multiple considerations to be taken into account for a success of such effort. It takes just one missile to down the AWACS.

 

[Markus]

P.S. Soaringphnx and Justin Joseph, extremely good scenarios . It will make a great Bollywood movie, i think Sunny Deol should be the lead actor. I am sure he can stop an incoming Ballistic Missile with his bare hands

Pakistanis just love Sunny Deol, don't they?

 

[TaimiKhan]

Well said sir, as i have pointed out before i have very little knowledge in these matters, however i remember reading about this missile once when checking for anti-radiation missiles.

Even i have wondered on the same point of guidance, infact i would like to discuss this thing i mean i know of laser guided, heat seeking and satellite guided weapons (please correct me if i am wrong). In the first two cases the AWACS cannot be dealt with, the third one though effective could make the missile costly. So are there any other guidance systems which could be used in this scenario? please provide me with info on this if u have any.

All 3 methods you mentioned are not effective in bringing down the AEW&C, satellite guidance is provided to mostly land attack missiles and bombs, for A2A it has not been used.

For AEW&C, first of all the launching platform has to find and track the aerial platform, and it would be a tough job to do so, but once done, then it will have to launch the missile, so now once launched, the aircraft which launched has to keep the AEW&C in its radar to keep the missile feeding the location of the target to an extend where the missile reaches and its own radar takes over, which i believe is mostly 50-60KM away from the target or so.

So problem now here would be for the launching platform MKI to keep a track of the AEW&C through out the traveling time of the missile, if it looses the track it won't be able to feed the missile where to go and the missile may go to the last location provided, from where the target may have moved on, MKIs can be attacked also during this time period and they may have to get engaged in dog fight thus the missile will again lose the location feeding, plus other such scenario can come up where the aircraft can lose the missile and the missile can go astray.

Anyway, here is some reading which can be useful in understanding how missile and bomb guidance work, both A2A & A2G or even SAMs.

Missile guidance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[TaimiKhan]

Sir not only that, keep in mind the target for this missile will be maneuvering and cruising at a speed of around 500-600 knots. The jamming capabilities of an AWAC are extremely potent, it will definitely try to jam the missile of the enemy aircraft which is trying to lock on. IAF will most probably use their SU30MKI to launch the K100, due to MKI's large RCS it will be detected long before the missile is launched. If in the scenario the SU30MKI manages to sneak through and locks on the Erieye, the escort for the Erieye will neutralize the incoming missile with its heat seeking missiles. In conclusion, its not that easy to take out an AWAC. Either the other side must have complete superiority or a combination of extremely good tactics and luck to take out an AWAC.

P.S. Soaringphnx and Justin Joseph, extremely good scenarios . It will make a great Bollywood movie, i think Sunny Deol should be the lead actor. I am sure he can stop an incoming Ballistic Missile with his bare hands

Yaar, i had initially thought to contribute, but after i saw some of the posts and the scenarios presented, i lost all hope, so now busssss keeping a low profile.

And yeah AEW&C is not an easy target as people think, even if they make a 600KM AWAC killer, there are lot of factors which it has to fully meet before making a kill.

But aab behas kaa kiyaa fiedaa, they have already made up their minds how they are gonna destroy us

 

[CONNAN]

i dont know about future wars but till now noairforce in the world had shot down an AWAC so it will be a laboured task to kill an AWAC

 

[TaimiKhan]

Pakistanis just love Sunny Deol, don't they?

Well he is the Iron Man of India, One Man Army, the Destroyer of Destroyers, Indian Deol Bond 007, our own Sultan Rahi is nothing infront of him.

And we like him for his hilarious anti-enemy (Pakistan) fights, over comes all odds.

 

[CONNAN]

i belive a whole squadron is needed to kill an AWAC and its escorts

 

[Jungle]

Yaar, i had initially thought to contribute, but after i saw some of the posts and the scenarios presented, i lost all hope, so now busssss keeping a low profile.

And yeah AEW&C is not an easy target as people think, even if they make a 600KM AWAC killer, there are lot of factors which it has to fully meet before making a kill.

But aab behas kaa kiyaa fiedaa, they have already made up their minds how they are gonna destroy us

Sir,

I would like to listen on how PAF will defend against the IAF with respect to its numerical superiority. And which aircrafts will be used for wat purpose and how effective u think they are against current or near future IAF aircrafts. The debate will be futile if it is one-sided.

P.S. Even you have to agree Pakistan doesn't have a counter to Sunny Deol.

 

[TaimiKhan]

Sir,

I would like to listen on how PAF will defend against the IAF with respect to its numerical superiority. And which aircrafts will be used for wat purpose and how effective u think they are against current or near future IAF aircrafts. The debate will be futile if it is one-sided.

P.S. Even you have to agree Pakistan doesn't have a counter to Sunny Deol.

hahahhahahahaha, yeah i thought Sultan Rahi may counter him, but alas he can't, no one can beat deol bhai from our side. He is the number 1.

And as for IAF Vs PAF, what i believe is that IAF will never use its full strength against PAF, as they would keep some assets in reserve, you can call it the China factor, China factor in the sense that China will not do anything on our behalf, but it will keep some of its assets away from the battle field to be safe for contingency as assets employed would be used a lot, operationally, some may get destroyed, damaged, in air, on ground, thus I believe IAF will keep some of its front line fighters away from the battle front as reserve.

Thus we may not see a full IAF onslaught, thus the number superiority might not be much but off course quality wise it will be there for now.

For PAF best option is to get a good radar coverage, and a LR-SAM system, which will take off much of the load from PAF fighters for area defence and free them for ground support as well as for other assignments.

LR-SAM which is mobile, more likely something on the basis of HQ-9 with minimum 150KM range, 200+KM would be another bonus. They should be mobile, thus hard for the enemy to suppress and destroy.

For now only MKIs are the major threat for us, which we need to counter asap, in shorter term, as mentioned a LR-SAM can do that, in long run, good quality 4.5 gen aircraft, F-16 Blk 52s, FC-20s.

And as for fighters, we currently have F-16s, majority of them would be used for aerial defence rather then deep strike missions, Mirages which are equipped for aerial defence as well as deep strike missions and F-7s which are limited to aerial defence as well as for ground support missions, JF-17s are just coming in, for now they are gonna be mostly for ground attack role cum aerial defence.

Cruise Missiles Babur & Ra'ad can be heavily used for attacking air fields to keep up pressure and after initial phase of war if PAF is able to deny air superiority to IAF, it can go on the offensive.

One thing which i see and as mentioned by some Indian members, IAF if sends its aircraft for attaining aerial superiority in initial stages gets some heavy losses, it may change the whole outcome of the aerial war, as it can have negative effects, so for me it would be necessary for PAF to down or damage as much IAF planes as possible in the initial stages of war, with as much minimum losses for PAF, so that IAF doesn't achieves aerial superiority. For this as said, a good LR-SAM is necessary as PAF alone can't achieve the results which i just said.

 

[gubbi]

If in the scenario the SU30MKI manages to sneak through and locks on the Erieye, the escort for the Erieye will neutralize the incoming missile with its heat seeking missiles.

An air-air anti-missile missile? Are you kidding me?

Are there any instances wherein an AAM has been shot down by another AAM? Its difficult as it is, to intercept an incoming BM with a conventional trajectory, and you are taking about intercepting an AAM with another AAM?