Aviation Week & Space Technology
21-Oct-2002 10:58:59 pm
Central Iraq's Air Defenses
Remain as Dense as in 1991
DAVID A. FULGHUM/WASHINGTON
Breaking down the air defenses around Iraq's main urban centers to open the way for an allied offensive would be far tougher than pounding the less sophisticated systems operating in the no-fly zones.
Pentagon officials consider a "handful" of aging, but extremely fast MiG-25s as Iraq's most dangerous interceptor aircraft.
"The no-fly zones
are dangerous places, but we own them when we want to," a senior Air Force official said. "[There,] they're looking for the lucky hit, although they've been fairly creative when it comes to tactics."
Rather than the classic integrated air defense system (IADS) of overlapping rings of surface-to-air missiles that the Iraqis have maintained around Baghdad and Tikrit (Saddam Hussein's hometown), in the no-fly zones allied pilots are being challenged with antiaircraft artillery (AAA), modified artillery rockets and occasional surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) moved into unprepared sites for a short time.
"THEY COME DOWN [into the no-fly zones] and take a shot, but they emphasize survival over lethality," the official said. "They come out of Baghdad, maybe 80-100 km., stay a couple of days and return."
In the no-fly zones, command and control is decentralized and rudimentary because the air defenses there have been attacked with regularity.
"They can maintain some control and situational awareness in the no-fly zone, but they have to rely on radar operating [a considerable distance away] in the free-fly zone," the Air Force official said. "Using something like a modified artillery rocket, the chance of them hitting an aircraft are slim. But when you put rockets, AAA and the odd SAM together, it's clearly a dangerous environment. There's concern the Iraqis will get lucky with a so-called golden BB."
As for specialized air defense missiles, "they don't have their SAMs permanently located," he said. "They have to move around to survive, so they don't have the redundancy [of supporting missiles that] they used to." Because the radar information is provided from distant radars, the "quality of their [targeting] information is not that good for bearing, range and altitude." The shoulder-fired, low-altitude, infrared missiles that don't rely on radar data are primarily the aging SA-7 and SA-14s. The Iraqis are not thought to have the more sophisticated SA-16s and SA-18s, but U.S. officials don't know for sure.
Air defenses in central Iraq are estimated as at least as formidable as they were in the 1990-91 Persian Gulf war. In fact, much of the system is relatively unchanged. There is an air defense operations center in Baghdad and sector air defense centers in Taji (central), Kirkuk (north), H-3 (west) and Talil (south). They control about 60 SAM firing units, variously called batteries or battalions, of
SA-2s, SA-3s and SA-6s. At the beginning of Desert Storm, there were 90.
"But, what they have done, because of our enforcement of sanctions and no-fly zones, is to move all of the better air defense weaponry into the free-fly zones between the 33rd and 36th latitudes [where they are not attacked]. As a result, the density of air defenses around Baghdad and central Iraq, including Kirkuk, Tikrit and Taji, is about the same as Desert Storm."
Backing up the SAMs are 7,000-7,500 AAA guns of 23 mm. or more. The most numerous of these weapons are the 57-mm. S-60 and the 100-mm. KS- 19.
"Taking down their integrated air defense system in a concerted wartime effort will be much different than enforcing the no-fly zones," the Air Force official said. "Those are two different air defense systems and two different problems. We would have to pay close attention to the IADS just as we did in Desert Storm. It's limited by data handling and training, but it's still something you have to take seriously."
Nonetheless, the Iraqi air defenses have so far not been effective against allied attack. As a result, the Iraqi measure of the system's merit is curious. "You have a group of commanders for whom engagement of aircraft is considered just about as good as downing one," the Air Force official said.
And while the Iraqis are running a large number of science projects aimed at improving their chance for a kill, they so far have not succeeded. "They need to maintain the illusion of progress that will keep Saddam from killing them or throwing them in jail. This is an adversary with severe problems, but with great determination to engage us. The Iraqis have a sound technical base, they are pretty good at keeping these old systems running with cannibalization of parts, and they have the engineers to put them together."
The effort by Chinese companies and others to improve the system with fiber-optic data links appear to have not made a major improvement in Iraq's IADs.
"FIBER OPTICS HAVE inherent value because they are more secure [from communications intercept or jamming] and they have a much higher capacity to carry target data," the official said. "But you have to understand that this air defense system is fundamentally the same Kari network built by Thomson-CSF [now Thales] before Desert Storm. While it seemed formidable 10-12 years ago, it's now 1970s technology. It's very limited in its data handling capacity. Another limitation is that when Kari was built in the mid-1980s, it was oriented to defend east and west against Israel and Iraq. Now it has to defend against a north-south threat."
Iraq has gone to many foreign sources for help with its air defenses, but improvement has been notional at best.
"There is absolutely, unequivocally zero evidence" that the Iraqis have been able to obtain any elements of the SA-10 or SA-20 air defense missile systems, and there is "nothing significant in upgrades" to the SA-2, SA-3 or SA-6 missiles that they are known to possess, said the Air Force official. "The SA-10 is a big system with lots of equipment, and that's not like smuggling in aircraft tires," he said.
Like the SA-10 missile system, the Pentagon also has no evidence that the Iraqis have successfully imported or made operational any passive detection system capable of tracking electronic aircraft emissions such as the Ukrainian-built Kolchuga or the Tamara and Trash Drum/Ramona from the Czech Republic.
"THEY DON'T HAVE IT," the official said. "They rely on ordinary electronic support equipment and visual observers."
Nor has clandestine help from Serbian air defense officials appeared to have made a major improvement in Iraq's capabilities. "The Serbs were a heck of a lot better in Allied Force [the Kosovo air campaign] than the Iraqis have been," he said. Moreover, the air defense systems were different.
The Serb air defense system was basically made up of SA-3s and SA-6s. "They pulled a couple of SA-2s out of storage, but they didn't do anything but provide targets," the Air Force official said. "They fielded a shorter range system that emphasized the mobility of the SA-6. In Iraq it's a classic Soviet system in the free-fly zone just as it was in Desert Storm, utilizing SA-2s, SA-3s and SA-6s linked together with a fairly structured command-and- control system. The Serbs haven't really provided much in the way of equipment, training or tactics. Even if they had, it would be questionable how much use Iraq could make of it."
More important than foreign governments for maintaining Iraq's air defenses has been a network of companies that comprise the gray international arms market. "Through them, Iraq has been able to redress the effects of sanctions to some degree both in their air force and air defense forces," the official said. "They can maintain operationally ready units even though they don't fly or train a lot. Certainly, they can get small parts overland from companies that don't ask about the end user. They also had pretty big stocks of SA-2s and -3s. as well as Spoon Rest and Flat Face radars. Between cannibalization and the gray market, they can keep going."
Theoretically, interceptor aircraft are part of Iraq's air defense system, but they don't fly when allied aircraft are around. Trying to defend Iraqi airspace with aircraft would likely be suicidal.
"WE BELIEVE THE LIMITED [flight] training hours go to senior people rather than attempting to maintain any sort of pipeline for new pilots," the official said. "They don't have a lot of MiG-25s, but it's one of their better airframes. They also have [MiG-29] Fulcrums, [Mirage] F-1s, [MiG-23] Floggers and [MiG-21] Fishbeds, but the Foxbat is their chief interceptor. There is no indication they have any of the new [generation of Russian air-to- air] missiles."
As for surface-to-surface missiles, the official Pentagon estimate is that Iraq still has several dozen Scuds, locally assembled or modified, and a few launchers. "We are concerned about the Scud threat," the official said. "Saddam Hussein also started out building some new missiles that were compliant with the 150-km. U.N. Security Council rule, but now appears to have modified them [for greater range]."
A new Central Intelligence Agency report puts the Al Samoud liquid-fuel and Ababil-100 solid propellant missiles in that category. It says the missiles have been "tested aggressively and are in early deployment." While they could be a threat to Israel, "we're more worried about their being fired into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia," the Air Force official said.
©October 21, 2002, The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.