Armchair
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How will you counter Manpads that will be present in very large quantities among you enemy???
Hi Haris, please allow me to answer in points:
1. Existence of manpads do not negate CAS missions any more than existence of ATGMs making tanks obsolete
2. If you follow Syrian news, you will notice manpads have largely been unsuccessful against fixed wing, but relatively more successful against helicopters dropping barrel bombs from height. This is because fixed wing is faster, shrinking effective ranges of manpads and having the ability to maneuver away more effectively
3. The standard NATO method, during the Cold War, when not only did they expect manpads but entire Soviet layered IADS. The method is to fly nap of the earth, pop up, fire, scoot. This is what the Harriers, A-10s, AMXs, etc were designed to perform.
4. I could further use DIRCM, which have become cheap and compact. Flares. Use drones to supplement and complement the CAS aircraft, distracting the enemy and overloading his ability to differentiate targets.
5. I could use the time of day and position of the sun. Manpads have a hard time when fired in the direction of the sun.
6. I could use altitude / distance and use standoff laser guided munitions.
7. I could fly at an altitude and drop cluster munition
8. I could drop mines in projected enemy vectors
9. I could use net-centric assets like VT-4 and Sh-15s to provide detailed data of enemy positions, real time, so artillery and other assets can take them out
10. I could use an onboard artillery spotting radar to find were the enemy artillery is, flanking their main force, take out their artillery
11. I could distribute my CAS and UAV assets sparsely along the entire Eastern front, thus avoiding large clusters and high frequency of flights in specific geographical areas, thus making it difficult for the enemy to predictably locate ingressing aircraft.
12. I could keep juggling tactics and strategies. For instance, I could randomly increase or decrease tempos and diversify vectors.
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