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The USAF (nor anyone else) has no practical way to defend an AWACS against a near-peer enemy. That's kind of the point of the R-37 or PL-15 (even moreso the PL-
by sudosysgen 4y ago
The USAF (nor anyone else) has no practical way to defend an AWACS against a near-peer enemy. That's kind of the point of the R-37 or PL-15 (even moreso the PL-21), soft targets such as AWACS are vulnerable at 300-400km. That's also the real value proposition of the Su-57, even though they are few and probably can't defeat an F-22, it sure can defeat an AWACS and it's not feasible to detect it before it gets within 300km of an AWACS.
- greedo 4y agoYou're making huge assumptions here. One is the reliability of anti-AWACs AAMs, while ignoring both kill-chain issues and ECM etc. Sure the Russian AF might be able to use them during a "bolt out of the blue" attack, but once hostilities have commenced, any airbase that hosts MIG-31BMs will be targeted heavily.
- sudosysgen 4y agoThe killchain issues are very easy to deal with. An AWACS is a massive target, it doesn't take much to get a missile there. As far as ECM, it works a lot better when you have a small radar cross section. The burn through range for a frequency agile radar at that cross section is going to be far too much. > but once hostilities have commenced, any airbase that hosts MIG-31BMs will be targeted heavily. People say this a lot, but Ukrainian and Iraqi planes were flying weeks after that. And it's not just the MiG-31BM that can carry them.