“We always found ourselves ‘on their tails’ as the pilots say, which means victory in a dogfight.” Just the latest chapter of Russia’s hybrid warfare in Syria?
Close encounters between Russian and U.S. aircraft over Syria are nothing new. What’s new is the way this close-quarter Russian/U.S. shadow boxing incidents are reported from both sides: two incidents, one on November 23 and another one on December 13, made headlines in Russia and the U.S. with differing accounts of the nearly identical incidents and the reasons they happened.
For instance, dealing with the first one, according to the Russian version, a Sukhoi Su-35S was scrambled after a U.S. F-22 interfered with two Su-25s that were bombing an Islamic State target and chased the Raptor away. The Russian account was denied by the U.S. Central Command, that in an email to The Aviationist explained that there was no truth in the allegation:
“According to our flight logs for Nov 23, 2017, this alleged incident did not take place, nor has there been any instance where a Coalition aircraft crossed the river without first deconflicting with the Russians via the deconfliction phone line set up for this purpose. Of note, on Nov 23, 2017, there were approximately nine instances where Russian fighter aircraft crossed to the east side of the Euphrates River into Coalition airspace without first using the deconfliction phone. This random and unprofessional activity placed Coalition and Russian aircrew at risk, as well as jeopardizing Coalition ability to support partner ground forces in the area.”
Dealing with the second incident, U.S. officials told Fox News that a USAF F-22 Raptor stealth fighter flew in front of a pair of Russian Air Force Su-25 Frogfoot attack jets near Al Mayadin, Syria, “an area off-limits to Russian jets based on a long-standing mutual agreement”. In an attempt to force the Russian aircraft to change course, the American stealth jet cut across the front of the Russian jets, and released flares (a tactic known as ‘head-butting,’ meant to send a strong warning to an opposing warplane).
Needless to say, this time it was the Russians to deny the version of events: according to the Russian MoD the Su-25s were escorting a humanitarian convoy on the western side of the Eurphrates and it was the U.S. aircraft that crossed the deconfliction line. “A Russian Su-35 fighter jet, performing an air cover mission at an altitude of 10,000 meters, swiftly approached the F-22 from the rear, forcing the American aircraft to leave the area.”
“We saw anywhere from six to eight incidents daily in late November, where Russian or Syrian aircraft crossed into our airspace on the east side of the Euphrates River,” Lt. Col. Damien Pickart of the U.S. Air Forces Central Command told U.S. news outlet CNN recently. “It’s become increasingly tough for our pilots to discern whether Russian pilots are deliberately testing or baiting us into reacting, or if these are just honest mistakes.”
On Dec. 29, the state-run RT media outlet reported:
Russian pilots always managed to get behind US-led coalition fighter jets they encountered in the skies over Syria, a Russian ace said after receiving a state award from President Putin at the Kremlin.
When meeting our partners from the Western coalition in the air, we always found ourselves ‘on their tails’ as the pilots say, which means victory in a dogfight,” Russian Airspace Forces major, Maksim Makolin, said.
The so-called ‘lag pursuit’ when the nose of an attacking plane points at the tail of the opponent’s aircraft is considered the optimum location in an aerial fight. It allows the plane at the back a range of options, from increasing or maintaining range without overshooting to freely attacking, all the while remaining concealed in the blind spot behind the defending aircraft.
Makolin became one of the 14,000 Russian servicemen who received state decorations for their courage and professionalism during the two-year-long Russian campaign in Syria.
We have already discussed these close encounters, the tactical value of supermaneuverability vs stealthiness, the ROE, etc. In this case it’s only worth noticing there is no attempt to ease tensions, quite the contrary, as if certain statements were part of a hybrid warfare made of actual aircraft, as well as cyber warfare, proxy forces and propaganda. In this respect, if you are willing to learn more about “Russia’s campaign to mislead the public and undermine democratic institutions around the world,” I suggest you reading this report here. “It reveals how the Russian government is conducting a major multi-pronged propaganda campaign to spread false information… […]”
Image credit: Dmitry Terekhov from Odintsovo, Russian Federation/Wiki
You fail.
Consider that in combat small differences in performance are exploited to improve the CHANCES of victory. Tactics, experience and training make up for a lot. Consider the gap between the F-4 and MiG-21 yet in Vietnam the kill ratios by all rights should have massively favored the MiG. In the 300 to 400 kt range, the public envelopes of the Su-27 and F-18 are not far apart, and I would assume the F-22 and Su-35 are close in a lot of speed ranges. The full 3-D articulation of the nozzles on the ’35 can’t be ignored, it has to really widen up the differences, and make many gaps more narrow. I’m ready to believe a Su-35 would give a F-22 a run for its money in a knife fight. For Americans to glibly assume otherwise is not wise. The advantage for the ’22 is that it can detect a ’35 before the ’35 can detect the ’22. The ’22 has longer range missiles. However as you close to the merge, both aircraft start to equalize, and it comes down to operations (fuel state), training, tactics, and … luck. Do I believe the Russians got into an advantageous position EVERY TIME? Hell no, but it happened, I find that easy to believe.
“The advantage for the ’22 is that it can detect a ’35 before the ’35 can detect the ’22. The ’22 has longer range missiles. However as you close to the merge, both aircraft start to equalize, and it comes down to operations (fuel state), training, tactics, and … luck.”
> I’m sure the Flanker would give a Raptor a run for its money. However due to the Raptors stealth and (for the most part) better sensors, I believe as they come to the merge the Raptor would be in a more advantageous position.
A fair analysis
With NATO’s help, and they sure did kill a lot of innocents in the process too.
SU24 and SU22 are flying junks.
Ask the biggest, and the most formidable distributor of MIG parts in the world, the almighty Phantom. Phantom will tell you that Russian planes are a disaster.
The Russian SAMs must be then the biggest distrubutor of Phantom parts in the world with more than 540 kills, the latest one scored in July 2012 by a Pantsir-S1 in Syria.
Ahhh the beginnings of SAM and understanding how it works. Before anyone ever thought about counter measures and ECM, and RWR, wild weasels and all that. Fascinatingly, that where it counts, the Phantom trashed and destroyed the little Russian planes :)
Who knew that, primitive Sparrows and Sidewinders(which Russia cloned) could bring down so many crappy planes down.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3bc86b5817b2828c7c54082a857c85e2067145179f204a414fb086cf5204ba19.png
Amazing how you are trying it with these exuses about non-existing countermeasures against SAMs while at the same time not realizing that neither advanced countermeasures against IR guided missiles existed when most of those air-to-air kills you’re trying to point out occurred.
It’s pretty normal that countermeasures against SAMs later appeared, same as against infrared homing missiles (Su-22 fooled the AIM-9X last year), but that didn’t make any SAMs useless, especially not the Soviet/Russian ones that keeped scoring another kills despite all the countermeasures U.S. could have installed in their aircraft.
Let’s use as an example the Wild Weasel, firstly introduced on U.S. aircraft in 1965. Yet, the North Vietnamese SAMs successfully continued in shooting another U.S. aircraft down till the final phases of the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_aircraft_losses_to_missiles_during_the_Vietnam_War
The same scenario continues through the 80’s and 90’s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_combat_losses_of_United_States_military_aircraft_since_the_Vietnam_War#1991_(Operation_Desert_Shield/Desert_Storm)
Notice that compared to the up to date U.S. aircraft most of the SAMs that downed them were at least 1-2 or even 3 decades (in the case of that F-117A) old. Making no doubts about the capabilities of all current Russian SAMs, including the most feared S-300/400 soon followed by the S-500.
Back to the Vietnam. No matter how much you will claim the Phantoms “trash” the MiGs, what can’t be deny is a fact the NVAF was doing extremely well during the war with just about 200 MiGs in inventory. That’s also why North Vietnamese pilots are credited with most air victories.
http://acepilots.com/vietnam/viet_aces.html
Oh, and those Sidewinders and Sparrows, the reason once the USAF thought WW2 style dogfights are already over, NVAF clearly proved how wrong those thoughts were. Canons were back on the Phantoms at the end of the war, same as on all the U.S. fighters developed and built since then, you know, just in case.
//Amazing how you are trying it with these exuses about non-existing countermeasures against SAMs while at the same time not realizing that neither advanced countermeasures against IR guided missiles exist when most of those air-to-air kills you’re trying to point out occurred.//
Because the technology was in its infancy, or non-existent at the time. The early Phantoms didn’t even have EWR.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/babf0eb3dc641d91305827f6c99bcdaabfe522428be18708c92a3042201afa2c.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/12ac9bc6ab078fd603655166fe1c204a1f3c82af811b5f978d57a0ab7e6ccbbd.jpg
//It’s pretty normal that countermeasures against SAMs later appeared, same as against heatseeking missiles, but that didn’t make any SAMs useless, especially not the Soviet/Russian ones that keeped scoring another kills despite all the countermeasures U.S. may had installed in their aircraft.//
I did not say the SAMs were useless, I said the Russian planes were crappy. But you must understand that counter-measures were often used after spotting the trail of a SAM launch. Something that is prone to be missed in the heat of a bombing run or battle.
//https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
The same scenario continues through the 80’s and 90’s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…//
Fascinatingly, you didn’t link the Wild Weasel article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Weasel
“This was achieved by turning toward the air defense site in a threatening manner, firing radar homing missiles at the site, or visually locating the site to dive bomb it. These tactics were attempted while under attack by MiGs and anti-aircraft artillery.”
You can see it was still in its infancy and still experimenting.
You are also forgetting that Russian planes, not only being victim of early crappy missiles, were also victim of enemy SAMs too. Sadly, the information is not as readily available. But if they couldn’t escape or even survive a Sidewinder launch that would tend to focus on the sun, instead of the enemy plane, what chances did they have against SAMs? Heck, Russia ran away from Afghanistan due to the Stinger effect!
But if we are going to compare apple to oranges(air-to-air kills to surface-to-air kills), then you must compare the quantity of Russian SAMs that were destroyed, and considering American victory, and the comparatively few aircraft lost during the Vietnam war was astounding. Heck, even the Russian SAMs and anti-air equipment suffered during the other wars, including during the Arab-Israeli conflicts.
And based on the quantity of missiles launched, plus the quantity of aircraft flying. They were extremely ineffective!
“When it was first used on a large scale, in 1965, the SA-2 destroyed about ten fighter-bombers for an estimated 150 Guidelines launched: an average of one kill for every fifteen missiles. By November 1968 one aircraft was being shot down for every 48 missiles fired. During Linebacker II one aircraft was destroyed for roughly every 50 Guidelines fired.”
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/vietnam/nva-ad-sam.htm
For the F-117,flying a predictable pattern, taking off from the same airport at the exact same time, over and over. The only thing needed was someone to point and shoot.
//Making no doubts about the capabilities of all current Russian SAMs, including the most feared S-300/400 soon followed by the S-500.//
Feared, yet not ever used. Funnily still, if they are as effective as the Russian propaganda says(which they say on pretty much every equipment ever made by Russia and Soviet Union) they would have spotted the F-35’s from Israel or were able to do something when Israel bombed Syrian facilities recently.
//Oh, and those Sidewinders and Sparrows, the reason once the USAF thought WW2 style dogfights are already over, NVAF clearly proved how wrong those thoughts were. Canons were back on the Phantoms at the end of the war, same as on all the U.S. fighters developed and built since then, you know, just in case.//
Yet, even during that mistake, Russian planes were shot down over and over and over. The reason why the Russians used mostly guns on their planes was because the Sidewinder clone the Russians developed was even WORSE than the first Sidewinder missiles. Heck, even the MiG-21 had a worse radar than the Phantom.
Both countermeasures against SAMs and AAMs were in infancy during the Vietnam, yet you are still trying to defend the Phantom’s huge losses due to SAMs because of lacks of countermeasures but still failing to accept NVAF MiGs lacked countermeasures against IR missiles as well, they didn’t even have flare dispensers at the time that would undoubtedly take care of many of those early Sidewinders/Sparrows regarding to their high tendency to lose the target.
First MiG variant in the NVAF with early RWR SPO-2 Sirena 2 was the MiG-21MF introduced in NVAF after 1970, another one became the MiG-21bis with its SPO-3 Sirena 3 at the end of 70’s.
Cockpit of a MiG-21PFM, a variant without any RWR mostly used by the NVAF.
http://walkarounds.airforce.ru/avia/rus/mig/mig-21pfm/ds_mig-21pfm_cockpit_03.jpg
“I did not say the SAMs were useless, I said the Russian planes were crappy.”
Interestingly, the kill records of Russian fighters in the Korean/Vietnam Wars (last wars where the latest up to date Russian and American military equipment faced each other) say something different. None of those wars U.S. fighters dominated, they always ended with just slightly better results over its counterparts. Most of the aces also ended in the opposite sides rather than in those where the U.S. pilots were.
http://aces.safarikovi.org/victories/doc/soviet.union.claims.from.the.korean.war.1950-1953.pdf
http://acepilots.com/russian/rus_aces.html
http://acepilots.com/vietnam/viet_aces.html
“But if they couldn’t escape or even survive a Sidewinder launch that would tend to focus on the sun”
“But if we are going to compare apple to oranges(air-to-air kills to
surface-to-air kills), then you must compare the quantity of Russian
SAMs that were destroyed, and considering American victory, and the comparatively few aircraft lost during the Vietnam war was astounding.”
“And based on the quantity of missiles launched, plus the quantity of aircraft flying. They were extremely ineffective!”
While trying to point out on the number of Russian SAMs fired and calling it “extremely ineffective”, somehow magically you forgot that the effectivity and mass deployment of both Sidewinders and Sparrows during the Vietnam War also didn’t go as expected. The kill probability of both of the types was as low that they didn’t reached even 10% in dogfights.
Together about 1050 Sidewinders and Sparrows has been fired during the war and of those just about 130-140 got the target. This is all than a success with satisfying results.
“In total 452 Sidewinders were fired during the Vietnam War, resulting in a kill probability of 0.18.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-9_Sidewinder#Summary_of_Vietnam_War_AIM-9_aerial_combat_kills
“The Pk (kill probability) of the AIM-7E was less than 10%; US fighter
pilots shot down 59 aircraft out of the 612 Sparrows fired. Of the 612
AIM-7D/E/E-2 missiles fired, 97 (or 15.8%) hit their targets, resulting
in 56 (or 9.2%) kills.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-7_Sparrow#Sparrow_III
I see you immediately got caught when I mentioned that F-117 kill, but anyway I was just pointing out it was another up to date U.S. aircraft that became a victim of obsolete Soviet SAMs, in case you think I wanted to use it only as a proof of vulnerability of the stealth. Irony is that this was the oldest SAM that ever shot down a modern U.S. aircraft. Though is not exactly known how this occured, is known this wasn’t just a lucky shot. This was even confirmed by the Zoltán Dani, commander of the missile brigade that downed the F-117, when he said he used certain modifications into its P-18 radar and into the missile’s warhead.
“Feared, yet not ever used. Funnily still, if they are as effective as
the Russian propaganda says(which they say on pretty much every
equipment ever made by Russia and Soviet Union) they would have spotted the F-35’s from Israel or were able to do something when Israel bombed Syrian facilities recently.”
If you was about to look at the S-300’s operators, you may notice it wasn’t exported to ANY country where in the last decades some serious conflict was ongoing. The S-300 simply didn’t get an opportunity to score a kill. Anyway there is one fact. In early 90’s, Americans themselves came to the Moscow to negotiate with Russians about sales of their S-300V system (variant against ballistic missiles) since the U.S. Patriots were unable to intercept the Iraqi Scud missiles that were falling on Israeli soil.
People who are trying it with arguments that Russia is not doing anything with coalition raids on Syrian facilities still not realize the S-300/400, Pantsir-S1s and other Russian air defense assets are in Syria first of all to protect Russian military instalations. Simply, too many parties are involved in that conflict, because of different reasons, for example the Israel claims that it fight against the Hezbollah (what Russia doesn’t) and therefore Russia doesn’t want to interfere to this, not when it has good ties with Israel.
“Yet, even during that mistake, Russian planes were shot down over and over and over. The reason why the Russians used mostly guns on their planes was because the Sidewinder clone the Russians developed was even WORSE than the first Sidewinder missiles. Heck, even the MiG-21 had a worse radar than the Phantom.”
If we are talking just about air-to-air kills then U.S. fighters scored a bit more kills, but not because technological superiority but because the USAF and USN clearly outnumbered whole NVAF that used just about 200 MiGs during the war. Yet, after the war, about 60-70 MiGs still remained in NVAF’s inventory among them also such units that shot down over 10 enemy aircraft.
The 4326 is the true beast with its 13 air victories.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/MiG-21_Balalaika_20130914.jpg
“In December 1966, the VPAF’s MiG-21 pilots of the 921st regiment downed 14 F-105s without any losses.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_F-105_Thunderchief#Vietnam_War
Regarding to a fact the Russians got a fully functional Sidewinder (that ended stuck in a tail of a Chinese MiG) their K-13 definitely couldn’t be so inferior to the AIM-9. According to the NATO, the missiles were even compatible when they tried to combinate parts of the AIM-9 and the K-13.
The reason why the canons remained in MiGs is that Soviet designers were apparently aware of that the early missiles won’t be likely too effective what has later shown to be absolutely true.
Considering the zoom, it doesn’t look like they were flying together.
Sheeesh, even denying pictures, that’s just…low!
If you pay attention closely it looks like the same aircraft in two different frames.