Iran TOR M1A SAMs VS US missiles

IDonT said:

In 1991, Baghdad was the most heavily defended city in the world, with overlapping SAM coverage, redundant command and control, and backed by the 7th largest airforce. They had state of the art Russian tech. The US took that system apart on the first night.

I really hate this: "wait till the US face a 'real' opponent arguments". The US military is combat veteran. It has fought more wars in the past 20 years than Iran, China, and Russia put together. It has proved itself capable of commanding large air armadas and supplying multi-Corps army formations on the move. No amount of training can recreate the "fog of war". Lastly, when was the last time Iran or any other country had an air exercise that involved thousands of sorties in ONE day. The last time the US did that was this month in Red Flag, the last time the US did that in actual combat was in 2003.

Prowlers are being replaced with Growlers



The US had covertly procured Soviet weapon systems for years from third parties. This information was just recently declassified. USAF aggressor squadrons flew Migs in the Cold War.

The Iran will spend $700 million dollars on a compromised system because there is no other alternative. It is the best system for the money. It's not like they can go to another vendor.

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That explained why there's war everywhere for the past 20 years. Probably the judgment for it was to get enough war experience. ff

SAM's are good for one thing: protecting fixed sites and forcing the opponent to proceed with caution. A SAM air defence system will not stop a determined and well equipped enemy from attacking, though it may hamper his movement and flexibility though.The USA is a well equipped and a determined opponent, and as such, the USA will develop countermeasures and tactics to deal with any new potential threat to their operations.

All I have been saying is that when you come up against modern SAMs you must expect casualties. Iran will not win an air war, but it is just as stupid to think that the US will have no losses. In war, no system works perfect, and you wont be able to jam all, or stay at perfect range. The SAMs will be taken out, but at a price.
When it comes to all the wars the us has fought the las 20 years against state of the art sam systems, well there isn`t any. Iraq had many missiles, but they were old. Again i use the israelis and the SA-6 as example. they got a rude awakening, but prevailed in the end. That might happen again.

Just my two cents worth,

What if the USAF flew in the brand new F-22 to target the Iranian Tor-M1s?

Theoretically it would be possible to have the ten F-22s at Okinawa supercruise to Diego Garcia for a pit stop and proceed to JDAM the M1 Radars and launchers, targeting provided either by US special forces with laser designators or as I have heard rumoured using their own AESA radars which can scan the ground as well.

I bet the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps would'nt even see the F-22s coming

On topic of missile range, it varies by altitude, speed, and direction, etc. The "maximum range" is under ideal conditions, and only 3rd world pilots launch at maximum range and make a U-turn. If the US was engaging Iranian SAM sites, the US aircraft is not going to do that.

Turning on/off a SAM radar is not going to protect it against an anti-radiation missile. It takes some time for the system to cool down. The attacker isn't limited to anti-radiation missiles, they can use ATGM's, LGB's, cluster bombs, attack UAV's (IAI Harpy), etc.

For a SAM unit to survive the future battlefield, it needs to be able to defend itself from incoming munitions. You need missiles to intercept other missiles, as well as guided munitions like LGB's. As a last line of defense, maybe even a land-based 30mm CIWS gun system.

Given a hypothetical situation (according to my theory above) where the US deploy wild weasel aircraft to destroy Iranian mobile SAM units, the wild weasel aircraft will launch its anti-radiation missiles, and the Iranian SAM unit will launch its missiles to intercept the incoming missiles. Failing that, the 30mm CIWS guns will auto engage incoming missiles to defend the SAM unit(s). If the US aircraft use LGB's, the defending SAM unit would have alarms that go off when being painted by laser and deploy its own laser soft-kill system. Failing that, it'd launch missiles, then CIWS system to hit the falling LGB.


And no, I don't think the F/A-22 will be deployed against Iranian SAM sites. Wrong aircraft to use IMO.

What are SAMs good for in the future battlefield? Against first-world opponents with better aircraft, it's very difficult to shoot the planes down. But the munitions aren't stealthy and you can still target those. A good defensive SAM system can be deployed to intercept incoming cruise missiles and other air to surface munitions. It can also keep most non-stealthy enemy aircraft at either very low or very high altitudes.

DPRKUnderground said:

Why did the Iranians go for a short-range SAM like the Tor-M1A when they could have gotten a medium or long-range SAM? USAF fighters can drop bombs from twenty five miles away. The Tor-M1 can't reach that far.

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Because Russia won't sell the long range SAMs since doing so would really hit US-Russia ties. Despite recent rhetorics from Putin, I don't think Russia considers Iran to be worth the price, for now, of bringing Russia-US ties to a new recent low.
Given that the Iranian nuke sites locations are known, I don't see how a few weeks worth of 24/7 bombings mainly by B-2, cruise missiles supported by F-22 perhaps cannot destroy most of them.
The underground ones may need some special ops teams on the ground, Israel will be glad to help out here. Some losses are expected here but will be deemed acceptable.
The interesting part is how Iran can then expand the conflict to shipping in the Gulf, Iraq, get some help from Syria, fire some SRBMs at the green zone in Baghdad or Kabul forcing USAF to look for their mobile SRBMs etc etc.

They would never fire at Kabul. They're allies of Afghanistan.

Iran needs to modernize their Air Force. They have old MiG-29s that have gone through a small upgrade, and some old MiG-21s and MiG-27s. They're budget is close to $20B. They should put their MiG-29s through an extensive upgrade program and let India help them on their MiG-21s and 27s.

China would never sell them the JF-17. Russia could sell old surplus Su-27s. But that would put Russia under huge pressure. Iran is in a bad situation. They can't do anything to stop a USAF bombing campaign or even do some damage to it.

DPRKUnderground said:

Iran needs to modernize their Air Force. They have old MiG-29s that have gone through a small upgrade, and some old MiG-21s and MiG-27s.

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has no MiG-27s.
It's possible to neutralize SAMs, but what if not all are using their radars during the initial phase? Then some CMs and planes will be shot down, as they were over Iraq and former Yugoslavia. The Russians may also use their AWACS and other long-range radars from outside Iran to pass info. to them- and some good training against real air targets!
Iran doesn't really have to attack shipping and/or close the strait of Hormuz: a few dosen BMs and/or SOF/terrorist attacks can destroy all refineries/loading terminals in the Gulf and there will be nothing to ship out!

Floggers are Floggers.

yeas, but MiG-23 and MiG-27 (both sharing the Flogger name given by NATO) are in effect quite different aircrafts and Iran has neither of them. There was a rumours of MiG-27 purchase in the early 90's but nothing came form it.