You are given an area the size of Kansas, it is mostly open plain, some forest, highways and suburban "cities". You are tasked with building an air defense system to shut down your airspace. Your budget is the anual GDP of Texas. What equipment do you buy, and how capable is your system against the United states, Russia, China, euro, etc?
ya mudda
A saturation of HARMS will make any ground based network obsolete.
Is there any answer to HARM?
Fighting a subhuman nation like Russia that doesn't have any lmao
Yes, make them target decoys.
yes they are called "fighter jets" I believe some nations operate them
And how will those jets intercept a stealth F35
they don't :^)
4th gen boomers BTFO'd once again
In theory, an F-15 or F-22 would tear an F-35 a new one if it tried to intrude into their zones of control.
In practice, no nation that operates F-35s can expect to come up against an interceptor that surpasses them. MAYBE Iran's F-14s or one of China's erstaz fighters would be able to down a few before their squadron gets completely obliterated, but it wouldn't be a clean victory.
>F-15 would tear an F-35 a new one
The F-35 could sling AMRAAMs before the F-15 can get radar on the F-35. How does it beat it?
They won't. F-35 is OP as frick until the various early development gen 6 planes actually get flying
Joke's on you my country bought the F35 as well
Fixed-wing air defence. Down them, before they can launch. Back it up with an extensive AD network that won't get crippled by the loss of few sites, that's just a question of mass.
HARMs are slippery, so some will slip the net, you just need to do everything in your power to make sure you have air superiority over your territory.
It gets complicated and expensive. We're talking
>decoy emitters
>secondary and tertiary emitters
>parking detection sites away from launch sites
It gets silly pretty fast. The real answer is F16s with Aim120s
F16s armed with Aim120s in hardened aircraft bunkers.
>decoy emitters
>let's build radar to protect our other radar
You could just build more normal radar
Radar arrays are expensive. Decoy emitters are just a power source and antenna and you can cheap out on the antenna.
SACLOS / optically guided AA missles
They sound like they'd be very vulnerable to decoys but no one seems to do it so presumably there's a reason why. Iraq wasn't really ready for them and didn't seem to have any countermeasures, has there been any major usage of HARMS since then?
They don't do shit for IR seekers. Just about every MANPAD system in exsistence is immune to HARMs.
Literally just a glass dome
a ring of 3ft thick hardened concrete 50k feet up
>Your budget is the anual GDP of Texas
>2 trillion USD
Yeah let's go with 50000 patriots and 1000 S400s because why not
F35 flies over your network of obsolete cold war shit and bombs your capital
Dump literally all of it into r and d for lasers
I didn't consider this, laser point defense might work but we will need another couple generations of laser development before they can reliably melt a high speed anti radiation missile.
>rainy weather blocks your path
*launches missiles during rain*
Nothing personnel
Use deterrence. Buy some inflatable s-300 bounce houses and pocket the rest of the money.
Buy some very old radars to use as bait.
Four aegis ashore sites covering the N, S, E, and W. Each station will have VLS support. Center of the territory have a cooperative engagement capability relay tower and a large airfield. Urban areas covered by iron dome. Patriot missiles, electronic countermeasures, RAM, and phalanx scattered around the territory.
Pocket the other 1 trillion.
AA is a meme, that money is better spent on air patrols, early warning systems, fast response interceptors, a comprehensive radar network, and some good ol well trained pilots.
spend the entire budget on nooks
>actually worked for Norks
Is this the most viable strategy?
Yes as long as you want your defense based on “frick around and find out”
plus a extensive tunnel network yes
Once AESA proliferates to AD systems HARMs will become obsolete. Russia doesn’t have the industrial tech base to make them — or they just recently built their first set but was more American tech from the 80s, no match for today’s sets. China DOES have the ability to make modern ones. So your typical multirole flying to the mission point may be already locked up by an AESA and the plane’s first sign that it’s under attack is via IR warning optics, seeing the smoke from the booster rocket, etc.
The frick are you talking about? Even a ESA still emits directional radiation. Funny thing about directed energy, it's direction can be reversed and a certain missile can go right up the poop chute of whatever vatnik shit decided to scan our protagonist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-probability-of-intercept_radar
AESAs can achieve extreme frequency agility, ultra wide bandwidth, super low side lobes and other tricks that makes them very tough for ELINT to pick up on them, certainly the little radar receivers on a typical fighter jet won’t stand a chance. My guess is that high end AESAs aren’t showing up in AD because the price is too high. Raytheon was working on one for the Patriot I wonder what happened with that.
>what equipment do you buy
I agree to lease a base to the Americans with a trade deal in exchange for f16s and training and hope i get promoted to F35
>how will it fair against Russians
A hell of a lot better than if i buy Russian and put it against the Americans
>how will it fair against the Chinese
Thats what the American base is for, i jus load cargo onto their C17s and help
A ton of 88flaKs. We're doing a swordfish vs Bismarck approach.
You'd be stupid not model your shit after NATO. The most successful air defense networks consist of layers of ground and air based systems.
Patriots and F-35s. Also, invest some cash into high quality infrared missiles.
A FRICKTON of Stingers with NASAMs being held in reserve for high altitude bombings.
As big of an Air Force as I can manage.
Ground based defenses are for Russkies.