exactly which version is beam riding ? if you mean E-variant it have its own radar but is not beam riding the rest are passive radar homing and home on Jam and GPS-INS
HARM itself is Beam Riding, it ride on an emission from Radar, it does not need to be enemy radar, Active Radar ping can also guide HARM missile. I am not talking about passive homing.
and welcome trying to use that E3 for picking up a truck 150km away without that truck having any radar emission.
Dude, that just mean you just don't know how powerful E-3A radar is.
the 300-400km belong to aircrafts not tanks and certainly apachee cant pick up tanks even at 30-40km
the RQ4 being low rcs or not is debatable but have nothing to do with discussion , the airplane picked up by E/O system and then fired on without even turning on the radar so the countermeasure system on board was not activated at all
I am not talking about at range, I am talking about Radar can pick up ground target even if they are not emitting, by the way, Long Bow Apache can pick up a tank twice the range of Hellfire missile, which is 11 km away
RQ-4 is not low RCS, and no, again, just because they didn't react does not mean they didn't see it.
S-300 advertised to being able hit target 10-15m above the ground , being able to hit ground target always was with the missile , it just was not advertised .
ever heard of
flight mode?
lol Air Brust missile is not the same as ground attack, you can hit something above ground does not mean you can hit it ACCURATELY. Do you know what is the CEP on S300 on ground target? You dont because they don't have a CEP value.
Hence using S-300 for precision ground attack is an act of DESPERATION.
ask that from the people on P-8 that was tailing RQ-4 and they tell you how many missile was fired and if they were aware of any air defense system active in the area
Firstly, P-8 is not an Early Warning plane. It was a Maritime attack aircraft. It's main job is to detect Submarine and Naval Traffic.
Second of all, how do you know you have incoming if you turn off your radar? You need to have radar to know you have a bogey inbound, you are outside visual range, which mean unless you magically know there is an enemy aircraft coming, you will need to use the radar, and that is my point.