Russia's deadly air defence

I wrote before about how Russian fighter jets are still more advanced than American ones already, but the truth is the Americans have twice as much jets in all categories than the Russians do, in my last post about how tanks aren't as important in today's battlefield as air power, I also mentioned how the MiG-23 was an aircraft mass produced in an attempt to help ground forces (which would be in even larger numbers) and how that concept didn't work.

SAM's (Surface to Air missiles) were built widely by the Soviets but never seemed to be very effective when put into combat, evidence of this is the Yom Kippur War in 1973 with Israel against Egypt and Syria, having learned from the Six Day War in 1967 Egypt put literally a wall of SAM's on the border, this did take down several Israeli planes but wasn't half as effective as it should have been.



With only a brief analysis it is clear that Russian radar and missiles have improved to the point that American F-15's, F-16's, F-18's and even the new F-35 aren't capable of surviving against them, the radar signatures of the F-35 are strong enough to be tracked and killed by these deadly systems!

The S-300 is old but still well capable of downing the 25 year old US F-15 Eagles;
many people dispute SAM's since they seem to have a bad record, most of them cite the Yom Kippur and the Iran Iraq War, I already explained the former and the latter would be because the operators on both sides didn't have adequate training.

Now as if shamming the USAF teen series fighters and the new JSF I'm going to put the nail in the coffin of what many believe can counter and/or destroy SAM sites;

Stealth aircraft:



Okay, let me show you exactly how much of a threat Russian SAM's can be to a stealth aircraft.

In 1999 during the NATO bombing of Kosovo Col. Dani Zoltan commander of the 250th missile brigade downed an F-117 Nighthawk with an SA-3.

The SA-3 entered service in 1961 and, while it had undergone some upgrades, was considered a minor threat to NATO aircraft!

NATO didn't even get a chance to bomb the wreckage and the Russians got a look at the wreckage thus compromising the then 19 year old stealth technology.

I hope America keeps this in mind considering the Russians more than likely considered all of these facts when building the S-400 system meaning that the Russian IAD's (Integrated Air Defences) will be twice as deadly.

I'm sure Iran and Venezuela will be thumbing it to the Americans when they receive (both have ordered) their brand new air defense systems in which a lot of work and experience has gone into and knowing the fact that in any American attack several fighter jets and pilots would be lost in the case of war.