Context:
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Considering that Our Betters have sent nuclear-capable bombers flying east up the Gulf of Finland on apparent attack vectors towards St. Petersburg (Just training, of course), it would be remiss of the Russian authorities not to take sensible precautions. Failing to take any steps to prevent an unannounced Pearl Harbor-type nuclear attack on a country’s second largest city would be about as irresponsible as, say, taking no steps to stop an invasion of unvetted illegal aliens across one’s borders.
On the practical level, there are at least 4 Global Positioning Systems in operation. In addition to US GPS, Europe has its own system, as do China and Russia. If one ran an airline in Finland, surely one would want one’s aircraft to have simultaneous access to all four systems? Redundancy, and all that.
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Just like the Russians have been doing again (since 2007).
The point of that kind of mission is to poke at the air defences and see what happens, check reaction times, etc. I would bet that the a/c is loaded with a lot of sensors and ELINT equipment and is waiting for some Russian junior leftenant to accidentally switch on some advanced capability Moscow would rather not advertise. No one thinks the B-52 is a serious threat, some fairly old Russian fighter could shoot it down fairly easily. But the Russians have to honor the threat, since it is possible if really unlikely, just like we do when they sniff around our facilities with Bears. The problem the USAF has though is that the actual nuc mission bomber, the B-2, is pretty hard to see, so is pretty useless for this kind of intelligence mission.
And is is good training. Fly the track specified, stick in international airspace, if you get too far off course home base will tell you. Since they show up on civilian flight trackers, they had transponders on, probably because misidentification is a big hazard.
Edit: a not terrible 2018 overview. It claims that Cold War era flights were stood down by mutual agreement of Bush and Gorbachev, until restarted in 2007. Intercepting the Bear | Air & Space Forces Magazine
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Do NOT underestimate the survivability of a Buff. Those suckers are absolutely loaded with electronic gear. Friend of mine was flying an F-4 in RVN and accidentally painted a Buff. The reaction was immediate and so violent it tore the targeting radar antenna in the nose of the F-4 right off its gimbals.
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That might have made sense years ago in the Cold War – but today the US is an active (albeit undeclared) belligerent in a hot war against Russia – actively assisting in the destruction of facilities and the killing of civilians within Russia. This is a time for careful consideration, not for chest-thumping manoeuvers.
If Russia were provoked into initiating a nuclear attack on the US, the real US response would be by a massive salvo of ballistic missiles – not by ancient B52s or the one or two B2s that would actually be flight-ready that day. The B52 today is only useful as a sneak attack first-strike aggressive weapon, not as a defensive response. Any other country has to treat it as such.
Call me old fashioned, but it would be better if our rulers became honest and asked Congress for a Declaration of War before getting us actively involved in a civil war half-way around the world. It would be even better if the US people were democratically given the opportunity to vote specifically on the question of going to war against a nuclear-armed opponent.
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The BUFF is an amazing aircraft. If you showed me pictures from the future of a B-52 with warp nacelles a’la Star Trek I’d believe it. It also has a giant radar cross section and the Russians have had 50 plus years to figure out how to shoot it down. For that matter the North Vietnamese did shoot some down with Soviet AA systems. The USAF agrees with me and now only uses them on missions where no air defense is expected.
In the sort of situation they are in in an intel flight, I have a hard time beliving that a Flanker in visual range and pacing the B-52 would have any chance of missing. The Russians have many issues, but they’re not that bad.
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Take it a step farther, Gavin. ?Why aren’t we the people involved in the whole question of warfighting. After all, it’s US that will be doing the fighting, not some Pogue in Washington DC. Representative government has dies a long time go, else we wouldn’t have been in all the fights we’ve been in, openly or behind the curtains.
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A bit of a tangent - given the radar cross section of a buff, I am wondering about things like Air Force One and the “doomsday” aerial command posts. Are these not detectable with modern satellite sensors? I bet that in certain circles there is a saying: if we can detect it we can kill it. Do you suppose that such aircraft offer a false sense of impregnability in modern warfare?
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Yes, but no.
They can probably be detected with enough satellite coverage and time. It may be possible to kill one but it will be difficult. They are usually flying inland in North America, making them pretty far away from most enemies and are a moving target with a not completely predictable track. If there are other a/c flying, it may get lost in the clutter since they use civilian airliner airframes. My understanding is there are also various electronic countermeasures that may help.
OTOH, the airborne command posts aren’t supposed to be impregnable. They exist to command and control the US forces (especially the nuclear deterrent) in case of a decapitation strike or other event that puts the National Command Authority out of communications. There is no requirement that they need to survive past a certain point. Of course, they try to make them survivable, this isn’t the Russian animal space program (RIP Laika), but there are limits. I suspect an attempt on them would trigger a “use it or lose it” scenario from the other command and control sites, including Peterson SFB and CFB North Bay. The name of the game here is redundancy.
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I was thinking they might be followed from the moment they take off and tracked - as a normal operating procedure. If this is possible, in time of war, I imagined they might then be targeted with a hypersonic missile (launched on a ballistic trajectory by ICBM) equipped with sensors used for precise terminal guidance. Given the present tech which is out there and the extent to which military normally tech leads consumer tech (think VR headsets fighter pilots have had for several years, which allow them to “see” their surrounding as though there were no plane blocking their vision), such capabilities do not seem far fetched.
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Do you have a background in aviation or aerospace?
I ask because I have a question about Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers in another thread
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I’m just an 80s war nerd who went deep into nuclear issues as a way of compensating for the whole “dead in 30 minutes” stress. I’m not as up to date as I used to be, but I keep following it.
My major opinion on modern Boeing is that it really is MacDac in a Boeing suit. If you look at the internal executive positions and general behavior since the acquisition, it isn’t a lot like the old Boeing. Essentially an internal reverse takeover.
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You have to think of the whole strategic picture [1]. If they are gunning for the airborne command a/c, that can only be interpreted as a serious counterforce strike, and you have just forced the US to fire nucs at you. Mutually Assured Destruction is still a core policy, no matter what it is being called this year.
Unless they just want WW3 to happen faster, there is no point in preemptive striking the US piecemeal. All you will have done is alert the enemy. The system is built to make it hard to get Pearl Harboured. You take out a piece, the rest carry on and possibly launch.
- Counterforce: attack on the enemy’s material that can damage you. Warning systems, missile fields, bomber bases, submarine pens, etc. Sometimes stretched to include industrial capacity. Generally first-strike targets because if you succeed completely (which is extremely hard given submarines) the enemy is at your mercy.
- Countervalue: attacks on civilian targets, typically cities.
Getting to them them is harder than it looks if they have any warning. Assuming an E-4 flies at 900 km/h, every minute put them 15 km further away from where you last saw them. Now if it is a peacetime preemptive strike, it’ll be in trouble, as the transponder maybe going and that makes it easy. But then we are back to MAD. If it is already wartime, the transponders are off and they’re probably flying more erratically, and it gets much harder to track.
Hypersonics are probably going to be spotted on the way in if you have any radar coverage at all. If they are on an ICBM, we have plenty of ways of spotting and tracking the launch (starting with an enormous thermal signature). At speed they have a big plasma sheath on them (like in space capsule reentry) which reflects radio like nobody’s business. They have to slow down to lose the sheath, reacquire the target, then head for it. If it is a kinetic kill vehicle, you have to get very close. If it is a nuc, you have now warned everyone of what is happening and MAD applies. If your timing is off at high speed you can miss easily. You can make up for this with volume, but at some point can no longer disguise the attack and MAD applies.
- Cross range: that amount that the missile can change direction. Needed to hit a maneuvering target. Bigger is better but the faster you go, the worse it gets. Particularly bad for vehicles with small or nonexistent control surfaces. An ICBM reentry vehicle has very little. A fighter a/c has a lot.
It is a similar problem to what the old ABM systems had and the US has a lot of data on hypersonics and interception issues from the Sprint program. Sprint was Mach 10 attacking Mach 24 targets.
[1] As much as I love Tom Clancy’s writing, the tendency of his successors to make gear novels where some bit of new tech wins the war annoys me.
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Yup! Good old MAD has saved the world from a major war for about 80 years – 4 generations. (I know that sounds disrespectful to all the guys who died in conflicts from Korea to Afghanistan – but those were not really major existential wars). Those who rule over us seem to have forgotten the reality that it was only everyone’s concern for self-preservation that avoided any of those conflicts from expanding into a true major war.
We can also guess that today no nuclear power is going to accept defeat and go quietly into that dark night – pushing people too far is likely to have extremely negative consequences.
Bottom line – smart move is to try not to start conflicts; when conflicts do occur (as they always will), make sure those conflicts remain firmly confined. But it looks like our rulers have forgotten that wisdom.
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you read that right
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Part of the problem with MAD is that it requires rational people. There is evidence that the Russians in their dying throes seriously considered (just dwell on that a bit!) a first strike against us. Saner heads on the Politiburo apparently prevailed, but it’s still a scary thought. People don’t give up power easily. That includes “our betters”.
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You meant Soviets, not Russians. But the problem is real! When people feel their backs are against the wall, they may not behave rationally. “If I am going down, you are coming with me”.
Ask yourself – Do we have rational rulers? Would rational rulers spend money they do not have, run up unpayable debts, de-industrialize their economic base, open the border to unlimited unvetted illegal immigration, run an unsustainable trade deficit, undermine trust in their legal system, destroy confidence in the printed money they are using to pay for vital imports? There is more than one wall which people might find themselves backed up against, and be tempted to reach for the nuclear button.
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One step closer to Armageddon – France has officially announced that it has sent French forces into the Ukraine to face off directly against Russian forces. In days gone by, this would have been preceded by a Declaration of War by France against Russia – but that was then and this is now.
For students of history, it was the failure of French forces in Vietnam which led to the US unwisely sending US “advisors” to that region. And we all know how that ended up.
France sends combat troops to Ukraine battlefront - Asia Times
"France has sent its first troops officially to Ukraine. They have been deployed in support of the Ukrainian 54th Independent Mechanized Brigade in Slavyansk. The French soldiers are drawn from France’s 3rd Infantry Regiment, which is one of the main elements of France’s Foreign Legion (Légion étrangère). …
The initial group of French troops numbers around 100. This is just the first tranche of around 1,500 French Foreign Legion soldiers scheduled to arrive in Ukraine. These troops are being posted directly in a hot combat area and are intended to help the Ukrainians resist Russian advances in Donbas. The first 100 are artillery and surveillance specialists. …"
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Those are some serious soldiers France has sent. AND while they are French Forces they are hardly “French”, so no native sons (or very few and those are the “bad boys”) have been sent.
But your point is taken. This is a serious provocation. OTOH, we could claim Russia’s mucking about in our elections is the same “serious provocation”. ?How should we respond to this incursion.
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When it comes to elections, I am much more concerned with the undeniable Democrat Party mucking around with our elections than with the alleged Russian mucking about. Let’s work out what our response should be to the Democrat provocation first. Once we have got that sorted out, dealing with any Russian (or English, or other) interference in our elections should be easy to handle.
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