Friday, September 07, 2012

US Army Air Defense. Ok, but what is the Marine Corps doing?

Loren Thompson has an article out which covers the US Army's current troubles in fielding a suitable anti-air system..
Army leaders have already figured out that one way in which they might make an important contribution to joint capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region is by providing air and missile defenses. Ground-based defenses against manned and unmanned aircraft are an Army specialty, and the Army has led national missile defense efforts since the Nike-Hercules program was begun in the 1950s. Although sea-based defenses such as the Navy's Aegis system typically provide greater flexibility, warships can't be everywhere and some threats are better addressed from land-based locations.
However, the Army shot itself in the foot just as the shift to conventional threats was commencing by dismantling its plans for future air defenses. Having invested billions of dollars with allies in developing next-generation systems that could remedy the deficiencies of its Cold War air defenses, it decided just as those programs were coming to fruition that overhead threats were not a priority. That decision contradicted the findings of its own warfighters in Iraq, who warned as far back as 2003 that cruise missiles made by China and other countries were able to circumvent the aging Patriot air defense system.
Sounds like trouble huh?  Read the whole thing but then ask yourself this.  At least the Army has the Patriot.  What does the Marine Corps have?

If my quick Google search is correct, 17 LAV-AD's (equipped with Stinger missiles and 25mm gatling gun) and stinger teams.

That's pretty jacked up.

Like Thompson says.  Warships can't be everywhere...and neither can Marine Air.  Especially if its been snatched by Theater Air Commanders for operations elsewhere.  If the current fad for jointness is any guide, we'll lose Marine Air faster than a school boy loses his virginity in a whore house.

Imagine this scenario.

An MEB is taking up defensive positions ... an enemy force is sending out warships, subs and aircraft in what looks like a rehash of the Battle of Midway.  Of course the Navy leaves to deal with the incoming threat.  Along with them goes the Air Force (remember Air-Sea Battle) and the MEB commander is left with only his helos.

Unfortunately for this guy, a deliberate attack on his positions is part of a secondary effort supported with high flying H-6K's, attack UAVs and helicopters.

The MEB can handle threat tanks, artillery and infantry with relative ease.  High flying threats are something else entirely.

Unless I'm wrong (and I standby waiting to be corrected) enemy air power can fly out of reach of current Marine air defense and pummel our positions.  What limited anti-air assets we do have can be identified and either avoided or neutralized by sacrificing a few UAVs to discover their positions.

Either we start planning now to integrate Army Air Defense Units with our MEB's and higher or we need to create credible anti-air units.

Stinger missiles and LAV-AD's aren't credible.  We had a possible answer (but even it was a stop gap) with the SLAMRAAM.  It got canceled.

What do we do.  What do we do?

 

17 comments :

  1. The LAV-ADs were removed from service back in 2002 I think.

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  2. i don't doubt it. i've never seen one in real life but there were only 17 bought. so what do we have do you know?

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  3. Yep no more lav-ad's, we gotta hope that laad can do the job with ground base stingers.

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  4. To be honest, I never really consider GBAD to be that useful, but then, I've never been bombed.

    Disperse, Dig in, and sadly, take losses.

    A Sampson/SeaViper would be a pretty scary defence for a MEB, but it requires 25kw of power to run, and needs to be 30m above the ground.
    And even then, it covers a pretty small area.

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  5. no western force has been bombed since the korean war. think about it. name one force that does anti-air drills!

    i've read about them but never actually done one. they even had text books that instructed how to aim ahead of aircraft...how a battalion of grunts was to all react to strafing runs...how they were to aim at the sky and shoot etc....

    no one does that anymore and it probably wouldn't help if they did. imagine the chinese version of the x-47 flying above stinger range dropping bombs at will. even worse is a bomber launching cruise missiles at distance. unless we have air dominance...not superiority but dominance we're screwed. ar superiority means that a few will get through and that means you could lose hundreds of men

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    1. "no western force has been bombed since Korea"
      Us Brits had the crap bombed out of us in the Falklands during the early stages. Lots of losses and no creditable defence against low flying aircraft.
      We were lucky that Naval aircraft and ship based defences were able to cover most of the area of operations.
      Even so, some Argentinian close air support made it through and hit land targets.

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    2. i stand corrected. i thought the Argies only went after the shipping.

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    3. CoughFalklandsWarCough

      Not just the attacks on shipping, there were bombing runs against the landing sites too.

      Not saying our lack of proper AAA was a good thing, but the actual numbers of ground forces lost numbered in the tens on the ground.

      I'm sure I read only 3% of unguided bombs dropped in the 91 gulf were even claimed to have hit deployed enemy ground forces.

      Its a very messy area.
      One complicated because all of my thinking starts with grounding the enemy airforce as my first act, forcing what enemy air force remains to defend against our incoming strikes, shooting down anything they can throw back, and finally, disperse your ground assets so if they are bombed losses are minimised

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  6. Coulda had SLAAMRAM with the 10" dia booster. Think ESSM but better.

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  7. the norweigns have a version of SLAAMRAM and was reportedly used to guard DC airspace in 2005 inauguration. i agree with sferrin, why cant we load some ESSM quadpacks on a truck or in an MLRS or HIMARS type system? HIMARS can also field AMRAAM missiles too.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASAMS

    http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htada/articles/20100918.aspx

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    1. SLAMRAAMs are still in DC - see here:
      http://www.zone-interdite.net/P/search.php?select_country=all&select_forces=all&search_text=slamraam&submitButtonName=Search

      also, it looks like one is here as well:
      http://maps.google.com/maps?q=38.841927,+-77.014654&hl=en&ll=38.84193,-77.014654&spn=0.00059,0.000826&sll=38.003385,-79.420925&sspn=4.890211,6.767578&t=h&z=20

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  8. Sol, thanks for talking about this. It seems like our military is asleep at the wheel when it comes to anything besides Stingers and Patriots for air-defense. It's yet another vulnerability we don't take seriously.

    While we don't have anything in the inventory, there are numerous OTS options for short-range and medium-range systems including the SLAMRAAM, SLAMRAAM-EX Raytheon option Spudman linked to above as well as SLAMRAAM integrated with AIM-9X.

    It would be interesting to see what we and the Israeli's could cook up.

    We have the ends, we just have no guts to use the means to acquire them.

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    Replies
    1. agreed. but it seems like our priorities are all jacked up these days.

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  9. Interesting timing, considering this article was posted a few days back:

    www.armyrecognition.com/mspo_2012_show_daily_news_pictures_video_uk/raytheon_evolved_sea_sparrow_missile_essm_modernizes_polish_medium_range_air_defense_system.html

    Land-based ESSM strikes me a great idea. Buy into a hot production line, and plenty of potential upgrades.

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  10. Mikey
    "Lots of losses and no creditable defence against low flying aircraft."

    Sorry to be a pain, but are you talking about ships being hit causing losses, or dug in troops?

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  11. Maybe we should have held on to the HAWK Battalions. We haven't had a good low to medium altitude expeditionary air defense solution since the LAAM Battalions were phased out.

    The key is trying to integrate any solution into an effective threat detection mechanism. HAWK had a complete RADAR Suite that was able to tie into the MACS systems. Coupled with the visual capabilities of the TAS system on the PhaseIII equipment a HAWK battery could achieve effective EMCON as well as function standalone with organic detection and tracking.

    I find it a bit ironic that the ESSM system referenced by shockwave uses a HAWK High Power radar for target illumination. I can't tell what it uses for detection though.

    Of course, I am an old HAWK guy...I am a little biased.

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