Venezuela raid – where were their SAMs?

Like  many other ‘invincible’ entities, Venezuala’s defenses took a thrashing this last week. Seems we keep seeing these so-called battle-tested, best-in-class systems getting absolutely hammered – why is that?

For the last decade, the Kremlin’s sales reps have been pitching the S-300VM “Antey-2500” as the ultimate shield. It was sold as a system capable of swatting hypersonic missiles, tracking twenty-four targets simultaneously, and turning the Caribbean into a no-fly zone for the U.S. Navy. Other countries bought into the hype of the S-300 family as well, including China, India, Vietnam, and even some NATO countries.

As we proved in Vietnam, no matter how good your jets may be, SAMs may be better. We have been learning that ever since Gary Powers’ untouchable U-2 got shot down. And here is a boogey-man of air defenses, and as the famous George C. Scott line said, we went through them like “Crap through a goose.” How is that?

In a word… tactics and training. We had them, Venezuela didn’t.

It purchased two full battalions of the S-300VM, spending enough oil money to pave the barrios in gold, all on the promise that this hardware was an invulnerable umbrella against the wicked West.

Lot of money went up in smoke. Now, the United States practices multi-layer tactics defeating electronic defenses,  and Venezuela stepped right up.

The first fatal wound was self-inflicted by the system’s own design, specifically the massive 9S32ME engagement radar that NATO calls “Grill Pan,” and fans call “Sauron’s Eye.”

This piece of technology, on paper, is a little bit scary: it’s a high-power Phased Array radar designed to burn through American jamming with sheer brute force. But in modern electronic warfare, brute force is a quick jaunt into disaster. For example, to track a stealthy F-35C or a low-flying Tomahawk, the Grill Pan has to blast massive amounts of energy into the sky, effectively becoming the brightest object in the electromagnetic spectrum.

In Rod Serling’s voice: “Imagine, if you will, a huge powerful radar blasting pure power into the sky. But there may be a small problem if their enemy uses anti-radiation missiles to kill off big radars. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.” We started jamming their radars, they goosed up the output to power over our jamming, and our missiles homed in on the newest high-profile targets in their view. Remember the old truism that tracers work both ways? Well, in these cases, so does radar.

The S-300VM doing what it does best: getting blown up by Ukrainians with drones. (Security Service of Ukraine)

They weren’t helped by geography. The missile system was designed for the Russian steppes, maybe the Mideast deserts – flat country in which you can see big incoming targets from the next time zone. Now, remember what Venezuela looks like – mountainous jungle. So where did we route our missiles? Right through the valleys. Hard to track incoming when there is a mountain between you and it. Hard to hit the incoming, too, when the first you see of it is only seconds away from impact. Now let’s get to training:

The S-300VM is impressive, to put it mildly. It requires highly trained humans who understand spectrum management, complex geometry, and the subtle nuance of filtering false targets. Venezuela is manning a lot of its military hardware assets with conscripts, who may (conceivably) have not been paid in three months, and more than likely received training via a handout translated from Russian.

When their screens filled up with hundreds of ghost targets created by good ol’ U.S. ingenuity or enemy radar started throwing error codes, we guarantee those poor guys didn’t troubleshoot the system.  We Are The Mighty

There is a reason American duckhunters ADA troops spend a fair amount of time in school – this isn’t an easy subject. They have to be sharp, able to learn complex subjects, and pro-active. Think draftees with probably a 6th grade equivalent education are going to match them? Probably not… and it showed.

There is a bonus to this – with all the ruined and captured equipment, the Russian missiles  just became instantly obsolete. We are going to pull them apart and get everything we can (which is a lot) about them. We will know what the Russian sales folks exaggerated.

Fun article and well worth reading! I especially love the captioning (copied above) of the launchers burning. Not the BEST unnecessarily amended meme caption ever though – I favor this one:

Category: Science and Technology, Terror War