Note to editors

I am an expert in things that go Pew-Pew. I have had gas lasers, a 2.5 watt solid state laser, a Gauss gun, Geiger counters and EMP generators. I've been studying missile defense for a long time now, and I have some interesting things that should be brought to light, namely the dire threat U.S. Naval vessels face in the near future should no actions be taken to prevent it, the possible impending PAK-FA/SU-35 overmatch the U.S. and her allies fear, and the incredible revolutions being made in Russian weapon deployment. As an expert in contemporary military history it should be known not just by me but the readers of your blog the manner in which technology can rapidly turn the tables on even the best of plans.

The State of Affairs

The Australians are not happy with the future ahead of them. With no prospect of an export F-22 and with American orders slashed, F-35 bloated to double the cost, the folks at the well researched ausairpower.net have gone to painful lengths to illustrate the potentially difficult threat posed by their neighbors. In one of their many articles about the proliferation of advanced Russian arms, they had this to say:

" The Asia-Pacific-Indian region is in the midst of a 'creeping arms race' characterised by the introduction of a very wide range of modern combat aircraft, guided missiles, and precision guided bombs, especially of Russian origin. As a result, the historically benign strategic environment Australia faced in the past is rapidly eroding. "

China has recently bought a carrier and wing of Russian Flankers. Australia, might I remind everyone, doesn't have anything much larger than a destroyer.

What the three parts will be about

The problem is these same threats here, here, here, and here, are not just Australian issues. I have viewed much of the material on these issues and I can break a few down here. Both Russian and Chinese weapons with advanced guidance systems and better delivery vehicles have been developed and are now being deployed. We are talking military-code GPS guided and multiple means of guidance, including digital scene matching correlation, like the Tomahawks TERCOM. These are weapons you cannot defeat with some noise or deception jamming, decoys, and other unsophisticated techniques. The only way to guarantee success is the destruction of the munition before it reaches its target. Fortunately new technologies make even the most difficult targets like the Mach 2.9 Sizzler antiship missile vulnerable, the question is making enough of a fuss to get them implemented. We have Metal Storm, Directed energy weapons, and other hard kill devices. They all need to be improved to the point that they can engage a near hypersonic target at low level.

The concerns of naval vessels are not the focus in article part 1: giving the F-22 the defenses it needs to survive these advanced weapons are the most basic priority. Because of improvements to foreign technology bases(Thales has licensed a Russian manufacturer to license build a French FLIR/Laser pod for Flankers.), the loss of the formerly U.S.-exclusive MMIC radar club to Russian makers, and continued AAM development, the Raptor has lost and will continue to lose its edge and stealthiness in the light of extremely powerful Russian radars. In fact, the proliferation of WiMax devices has caused a loss in Raptor capability, due to the fact that Russian radars can now buy the MMIC modules on the open market, in which used to be a U.S. exclusively made product. It ended up the USA paid for all the research and development of these microwave modules, and our competitors just bought them from Toshiba.

Part One : Turning a Raptor into a Porcupine

Part Two : The GPS Selective Availability issue: Did our government completely lie?

Part Three : Protecting Naval Vessels from Antiship missiles

Part Four : A new weapon for the F-22 and F-35 giving them hard kill offensive and defensive capability