Not quite sure what you are referring to by more ISR nodes. Do you mean more positions with Kolchuga arrays, or more S-400 or other supporting radar arrays?
Kolchuga.
In part, but not entirely. If one looks at who the operators of 5th gen fighters are and/or will be this decade, it is a number of NATO nations and important allies like Israel, Japan, Australia and Singapore. All of whom have advanced intel and/or EW capabilities and ISR assets.
Sure. But that's incidental. This entire thread is based around an assessment of hypothetical capabilities, not a real situation. The reality is that GBAD-centric IADS (with the possible exceptions of Russia and China) are used by weaker states, to make up for their inability to dominate the air. So yes, in reality it will almost always be the case that someone performing SEAD/DEAD operations will have a major advantage in EW and ISR. However to hypothetically asses the ability of modern GBAD against an aggressor we need to isolate and de-contextualize. The conclusion this thread warrants (imo) is a theoretical rather then a practical one.
The other thing to keep in mind is the sort of initial targets in any sort of air campaign or IADS rollback. These are command/comms facilities, sensor arrays, air bases, power stations and distribution points, and transportationi hubs and chokepoints. These sorts of targets are not exactly hard to find, and they get hit, the defender's ability to react is going to keep diminishing.
True, but lets say we're talking about day 1. Nothing has been hit
yet.
Part of what I was going on about was one of the fundamental limitations of ground-based radar systems. Inclusion of some sort of AEW system which can be datalinked to other assets is a bit different. I am not sure though whether Russian kit is advanced and integrated sufficiently so that an A-50 can feed targeting data direct to an S-400 missile, or if the A-50 can feed targeting data to the S-400 which can in turn update the missile(s). Potentially the worst case scenario is where the A-50 can only be used to queue the S-400 of inbound contacts, and the S-400 then needs to 'look' itself for targets to engage.
Purely hypothetically the A-50U should have the ability to transmit targeting data to an S-400, which would need to update the missile. I'm not sure whether the A-50U can actually direct the missile itself. The bigger problem of course is whether they've practiced doing this, and whether the operators and confident/comfortable enough to do this in a combat situation. Realistically that would be the weak link for the VVS/PVO forces in this scenario (remember only 2 serial A-50U have been delivered, and ~10 serial S-400 btlns, they haven't had much chance to intersect).
Relating to that, the real issue with the flight altitude of a cruise missile has to do with at what distance the curvature of the earth no longer masks the presence of the cruise missile.
Hence an airborne ISR node would solve the problem, if I understand correctly.
Hard to say for certain since the 'real' capabilities of both the attacking and defending systems are not known. However, I have come across a reference which suggests Pantsyr having a tracking capability out to ~28 km for targets which are 2 m sq. Given that the RCS of something like the F-35 is supposed to be around 0.0015 m sq. then Pantsyr might not be able to provide any sort of early queuing or engagement except possibly if optically sighted. Against inbound cruise missiles, that would have a larger RCS I would imagine, though the LO feature of JASSM might give it a similar RCS. What this suggests is that the the Pantsyr crew would likely only have a few seconds to engage an inbound strike (LO aircraft or cruise missile) and that is if the crew had some kind of warning and vector for the inbound.
Again, low flighting air defence targets (strike aircraft or cruise missiles) are going to be shielded from the Pantsyr's radar by the curvature of the earth until within ~24 km, and that is assuming that the Pantsyr is located in a broad, flat area.
Ok, this makes sense. It would be helpful if we got more info on what they did with the Pantsyr prototype at Kapustin Yar. So far all I know for certain is that it was able to intercept a long-range cruise missile, launched from a Tu-95MS (presumably the Kh-55), with some advance warning. Definitely not an LO target. But with multiple Pantsyrs (batteries of iirc 10) attempting to engage, their chances improve.
Actually I was largely ignoring it. Decoy vehicles as I have mentioned can be used, but the initial targets are largely unable to be decoyed, since they would be things like fixed radar stations, power plants, transformer farms, transmission substations, bridges, road/rail hubs, and command/comms buildings and airfields. An S-400 could be a significant target as well, because of the large area which it's radar systems can monitor, but in doing so it gives away its position.
I was talking specifically about S-400 decoys, as well as decoys simulating command vehicles for Air-Space Defense Bdes (think MT-LB chassis, with the tall superstructure). The C4I nodes for the Russian Army would be almost entirely mobile (this concept is borrowed straight from the Soviet Army where an HQ disappears among the mass of similar troops, making it next to impossible to ID). The solution of course would be ELINT assets using enemy comms to locate HQs, but this is far from guaranteed unless we assume an ELINT advantage on the part of the attacker. The military search radars would not be fixed, unless we're talking about the giant BMD early warning arrays, or the Don-2M pyramid. They'd be stuff like the P-19. They would be easy to detect because they'd be actively scanning.
As for the actual effectiveness of decoys, they have proven effective in prior conflicts. However, I suspect their effectiveness is going to diminish due to the advances made in weapons. Even with some decoys now able to generate a thermal signature, munitions are being fitted with sensors like radar which can scan a target and make a determination whether the target is soft or hard-skinned, and then the muntion can select which target to actually strike. The Brimstone missile is an example of this capability. I some how suspect the radar return off a decoy (many decoys are inflatable) would be different than that of an actually vehicle.
True. The question is whether similar advances will be made in decoys. The Russian Army played with the concept of using actual decommissioned vehicles as decoys, but tossed it as being too complicated/expensive. The main problem was that an engineer unit could only transport and deploy a small number of those, where as when it comes to inflatables, they can carry a huge supply.
But at this point the question becomes, can all munitions be fitted with these sensors? Because the more you put on the missile, the more expensive the missile becomes. Given that stockpiles of PGMs are relatively small, in a major conflict against a peer power you'd either run the risk of running out, or you'd have to select in what cases you want to commit those kinds of resources. The main purpose of decoys, as I understand it, is three-fold. One is to draw out the aggressor into revealing his own capabilities and patterns of planning, the second is to allow the defender to do physical damage to them, and the third is to waste the attackers resources (for example in the sense that his op-tempo permits X sorties a day, if only Y are flown against real targets, then that's an X-Y= loss of effective op-tempo).
Finally lets say the strike package does fire a Brimstone at a decoy target. The missile scans and determines that the decoy is a decoy. Now what? Assuming the real target isn't sitting 10m to the left of the decoy, can the tactical aircraft that launched the missile find and identify the real target quickly enough? Can a Brimstone fly circles (loiter) while the F-35 (I'm assuming this is our aggressor) tries to locate an alternate target? And would this increase the risk of defenders other units being able to successfully intercept the aggressor?
Again, just to clarify, this is extremely hypothetical. Your original point was completely correct, the real world operators of these systems will have the necessary advantage in kit, intel, and resources, to overcome all of these objections.
Again not likely. Amongst the earliest objectives of the air campaign would be to take out the search radar, which means that the strike package would be heading to the point of origin for the search radar signals. It would then become a question of just how close the strike package and any standoff munitions can get before (or if) getting detected, what assets the defender would have in position to response, and how much time available for the response.
