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Originally Posted by PeriscopeDepth
I'm sorry, I worded this poorly. Russian SAMs are probably the best weapons the Russians make, far more capable than their fighters for anti air IMO. What I was saying was, they should have known better. They themselves built the system. As close as it was to their border they should have known where these things were approximately through ELINT, sat recon, and perhaps even HUMINT.
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The very point of the very high mobility of the latest generation of Russian antiaircraft weapons is to defeat or degrade the Recce-Strike Complex of NATO, even as the weapons are relatively close to the borderline (say as the Soviets advance through West Germany). If the weapons live up to half the hopes, it is hardly surprising they can evade destruction long enough to bag a few aircraft.
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They made the system. If not capable of knowing how to outright defeat it, they should have known EXACTLY how to avoid it.
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SAM systems are so sited that enemies have to fly through their kill zones to reach their target. If they were able to "avoid" it, it'll likely be because of a Georgian deployment error.
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The RuAF did OK with CAS in Georgia, but if they were ever to come up against a modern air force I have my doubts about them. Keep in mind the vast majority of their Air Force is the same stuff they were using in the 1980's. Ours is too (and earlier), but has seen A LOT of upgrading. The majority of Russian equipment hasn't. And the performance of their radar guided AAMs (as recently as mid 1990s) has been absolutely terrible, even compared to Vietnam era Sparrows.
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While I don't think they are quite up to modernity yet, Do you mean Ethiopia and Etritea? What happened to warm thoughts of the Russians and Ukies knowing how to defeat their own systems in this one?
Anyway, the murky statistics suggest out of 16-24 firing attempts, there was 4-5 hits (1 direct, 3-4 proximity), 2 unknowns, and 10-16 misses or failures to launch (according to Yefim Gordon). That's about a 17-44% hit rate, which is actually better than the Vietnam Sparrow pK of 0.08 (according to RAND).
Which is not too bad when you consider the actual pK of AMRAAM in the 90s wound up to be .59, and of BVR shots .46 (again according to RAND). The Sparrows in GW1 were IIRC about 24/71 fired or so.
Besides, the R-27 labored under several disadvantages in the battle. Never mind the maintenance, which is likely to be far inferior in a merc-hiring African country (and is the official reason for the relatively poor performance), but being in Africa, one can see little hope of competent vectoring. Positioning is a big factor in whether you can get hits or not BVR