[Goose]

The bad news is that even the crappy Russian anti-radiation missiles like the K-58 are a threat to the Hawk illuminator.

My impression is that Russia has very rarely been running SEAD missions in Ukraine, and their ability to do so has probably been degraded by their ongoing losses whenever they operate close to the front line. This missile outranges the Kh58 as well, so should help to continue to deny Russia airspace or could be use closer to urban centers to try and shoot down drones or take a stab at some cruise missiles. Ukraine has similar systems but may be running low on missile stocks so every bit helps.

One thing that for some reason nobody has pointed out (AFAIK) is that a very large part of the Russian poor SEAD/EA performance is that the Russians designed their systems to counter NATO radars, NOT their own missile systems. That especially matters on the Soviet designed systems which are not software driven and predate wide band microwave amplifiers. Much like the original HARM, the Kh58 has different "heads" for different frequencies. You can't easily reprogram any of it's recognition systems. It was never designed to attack an S-X00 system and probably can't be modified to do so very well without major R&D as well as testing. OTOH, the Russians spent years building systems to counter, in particular, the HAWK system. The have training manuals and combat experience (via surrogates) against it. They have many recording of the engagement radars and the aircraft positions to go with them. Western Europe was at one time covered with HAWK batteries. The Russians have many captured batteries to dissect and test against. They have the manuals.

For that reason, I expect their performance against that system to be quite good, much better than against the S-300 for example. They have tactics (that we have actually observed) using EA to get close enough to use the Kh58. The Russians in the past were also very good at saturating a HAWK battery with too many targets. The HAWK as originally designed could only engage as many targets as it had illuminators. The LASH equipped HAWK was built to share an illuminator among targets, but how well that worked is questionable.

I do agree that the HAWK is "better than nothing". I just hope Ukraine realizes that it probably won't work as well or be as survivable as their S-300s are, not because it is a "worse" system, but rather because it is something the Russians have explicitly developed weapons and tactics to defeat and destroy.

[Goose]

The bad news is that even the crappy Russian anti-radiation missiles like the K-58 are a threat to the Hawk illuminator.

My impression is that Russia has very rarely been running SEAD missions in Ukraine, and their ability to do so has probably been degraded by their ongoing losses whenever they operate close to the front line. This missile outranges the Kh58 as well, so should help to continue to deny Russia airspace or could be use closer to urban centers to try and shoot down drones or take a stab at some cruise missiles. Ukraine has similar systems but may be running low on missile stocks so every bit helps.

One thing that for some reason nobody has pointed out (AFAIK) is that a very large part of the Russian poor SEAD/EA performance is that the Russians designed their systems to counter NATO radars, NOT their own missile systems. That especially matters on the Soviet designed systems which are not software driven and predate wide band microwave amplifiers. Much like the original HARM, the Kh58 has different "heads" for different frequencies. You can't easily reprogram any of it's recognition systems. It was never designed to attack an S-X00 system and probably can't be modified to do so very well without major R&D as well as testing. OTOH, the Russians spent years building systems to counter, in particular, the HAWK system. The have training manuals and combat experience (via surrogates) against it. They have many recording of the engagement radars and the aircraft positions to go with them. Western Europe was at one time covered with HAWK batteries. The Russians have many captured batteries to dissect and test against. They have the manuals.

For that reason, I expect their performance against that system to be quite good, much better than against the S-300 for example. They have tactics (that we have actually observed) using EA to get close enough to use the Kh58. The Russians in the past were also very good at saturating a HAWK battery with too many targets. The HAWK as originally designed could only engage as many targets as it had illuminators. The LASH equipped HAWK was built to share an illuminator among targets, but how well that worked is questionable.

I do agree that the HAWK is "better than nothing". I just hope Ukraine realizes that it probably won't work as well or be as survivable as their S-300s are, not because it is a "worse" system, but rather because it is something the Russians have explicitly developed weapons and tactics to defeat and destroy.