It's been a while since the Americans started telling us about this invisible wonder-plane they were developing. Many years later they're still developing the F-35, their overpriced, overdue, underperforming, bottom-tier stealth warplane.
The rationale for the F-35 was that we needed a stealth light attack bomber to, well, attack some nation with sophisticated air defences. "Some" is code for either or both China and/or Russia. To the folks in Beijing and Moscow there was never much doubt who the invisible warplane was aimed at and so they took advantage of the endless development delays to figure out how to make the invisible visible (link is external) again. Word has it they've done a fine job.
The Russkies have deployed what many consider the world's finest surface to air missiles, the S-300 and the new and improved S-400 now just entering service. The Chinese have focused on the development of multi-band, multi-sensor detection and jamming systems to uncloak the F-35's limited stealth and disable its systems. Both China and Russia are also nearing deployment of their own stealth fighters and at some point we'll admit that stealth is far better for the defenders than the attackers.
The Russians and the Chinese are focusing on what's known as A2/AD. That stands for Anti-Access/Area Denial. We take offence at this but what A2/AD is all about is keeping us out of their airspace. How dare they?
“The advantage that we had from the air I can honestly say is shrinking,” Gen. Frank Gorenc (link is external) said, “not only from with respect to the aircraft that they’re producing, but the more alarming thing is their ability to create anti-access/area denied (link is external) [zones] that are very well defended” by batteries of ground-based anti-aircraft missiles (link is external).
After embarrassing fumbles in the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the Russians embarked on “a very large modernization” to improve both training and equipment, Gorenc said. “They learned a lot,” he told an increasingly unnerved roundtable of reporters at the annual Air Force Association conference here. “They [improved] quality and quantity.”
Russian fighter jocks are famous for flashy (sometimes fatal (link is external)) maneuvers at air shows. But Gorenc isn’t solely or even primarily worried about their Top Guns: It’s ground-based radars and missiles that have him most concerned.
“It’s one thing to address an aircraft threat which has increased significantly — which by the way it has –but clearly surface to air missile systems are much cheaper, they’re much more available,” he said. “There’s clearly a whole set of modern long-range surface-to-air missile systems that are being layered in a way that makes access into that area more difficult.”
Gorenc is focused on the anti-aircraft kill zones that extend from two pieces of Russian territory in particularly: Crimea (link is external) in the Black Sea and Kaliningrad on the Baltic (link is external). (He’s also keeping an eye on the Russians in the Arctic, he said, but that’s less immediate).
“Some of the array that’s in Kaliningrad extends into Poland today. That’s a fact,” he said. In other words, launchers on Russian soil can hit targets in NATO airspace. In fact, Gorenc has said in the past (link is external) that a third of Polish airspace is in the Russians’ range.
Gorenc seems oblivious to the fact that the Russians are responding to our decision to march NATO forces right up to Russia's borders and our stated decision to deploy our stealth light attack (nuclear weapon capable) bombers, our "kick in the front door" warplanes, within spitting distance of the Rodina.
Just what did we expect? We engineered this very outcome.
The rationale for the F-35 was that we needed a stealth light attack bomber to, well, attack some nation with sophisticated air defences. "Some" is code for either or both China and/or Russia. To the folks in Beijing and Moscow there was never much doubt who the invisible warplane was aimed at and so they took advantage of the endless development delays to figure out how to make the invisible visible (link is external) again. Word has it they've done a fine job.
The Russkies have deployed what many consider the world's finest surface to air missiles, the S-300 and the new and improved S-400 now just entering service. The Chinese have focused on the development of multi-band, multi-sensor detection and jamming systems to uncloak the F-35's limited stealth and disable its systems. Both China and Russia are also nearing deployment of their own stealth fighters and at some point we'll admit that stealth is far better for the defenders than the attackers.
The Russians and the Chinese are focusing on what's known as A2/AD. That stands for Anti-Access/Area Denial. We take offence at this but what A2/AD is all about is keeping us out of their airspace. How dare they?
“The advantage that we had from the air I can honestly say is shrinking,” Gen. Frank Gorenc (link is external) said, “not only from with respect to the aircraft that they’re producing, but the more alarming thing is their ability to create anti-access/area denied (link is external) [zones] that are very well defended” by batteries of ground-based anti-aircraft missiles (link is external).
After embarrassing fumbles in the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the Russians embarked on “a very large modernization” to improve both training and equipment, Gorenc said. “They learned a lot,” he told an increasingly unnerved roundtable of reporters at the annual Air Force Association conference here. “They [improved] quality and quantity.”
Russian fighter jocks are famous for flashy (sometimes fatal (link is external)) maneuvers at air shows. But Gorenc isn’t solely or even primarily worried about their Top Guns: It’s ground-based radars and missiles that have him most concerned.
“It’s one thing to address an aircraft threat which has increased significantly — which by the way it has –but clearly surface to air missile systems are much cheaper, they’re much more available,” he said. “There’s clearly a whole set of modern long-range surface-to-air missile systems that are being layered in a way that makes access into that area more difficult.”
Gorenc is focused on the anti-aircraft kill zones that extend from two pieces of Russian territory in particularly: Crimea (link is external) in the Black Sea and Kaliningrad on the Baltic (link is external). (He’s also keeping an eye on the Russians in the Arctic, he said, but that’s less immediate).
“Some of the array that’s in Kaliningrad extends into Poland today. That’s a fact,” he said. In other words, launchers on Russian soil can hit targets in NATO airspace. In fact, Gorenc has said in the past (link is external) that a third of Polish airspace is in the Russians’ range.
Gorenc seems oblivious to the fact that the Russians are responding to our decision to march NATO forces right up to Russia's borders and our stated decision to deploy our stealth light attack (nuclear weapon capable) bombers, our "kick in the front door" warplanes, within spitting distance of the Rodina.
Just what did we expect? We engineered this very outcome.
