A fairly large number of tactically significant events have taken place in the Syrian theater of operations in recent months. This is a massive attack with Tomahawk cruise missiles on the Shayrat airbase (some of which were successfully "planted" by Russian air defense and electronic warfare systems near Tartus), and missile and air strikes against units of the Syrian Arab army under the forward offensive "bridgehead" of the USMC - At- Tanf, and the frequent incidents with reconnaissance flights of American strategic anti-submarine aircraft P-8A "Poseidon" in the immediate vicinity of the logistics center of the Russian Navy Tartus, etc. These events are often exaggerated and chewed by the Russian and foreign mass media, in connection with which interest in them is gradually beginning to fade. At the same time, more and more interesting (in technical terms) moments are coming out of the shadows, on which the result of a possible initial stage of escalation of a direct conflict between the Russian Aerospace Forces and the NATO Allied Air Forces both in the Syrian theater of military operations and and the airspace of Eastern Europe. And it is on these technological moments that the Western European mass media simply adore regularly speculating, relying on the low awareness of ordinary readers.
Thanks to this, they often catch up with undeserved "bonuses" to various subsystems of their military equipment, as well as ennoble the tactical experience and intelligence of NATO officers, underestimating the capabilities of Russian defense products and discrediting the level of training of our servicemen. Now we will try to partially dispel all the myths and conjectures about the recent fake that burst into the world information space about the recent “successful hunt” of two Raphales for the combat mode of operation of the Su-33 onboard radars.
Next, we will talk about a kind of "cat and mouse" game between the tactical aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces and the NATO Allied Air Forces, where the main tools are built-in radiation warning stations, as well as integrated and suspended electronic reconnaissance systems that can provide a fairly large range of information about the enemy's radio-emitting means … Various methods of using RER complexes are an integral part of any modern military conflict, and the Syrian company is no exception.
In our case, it is necessary to consider in detail the news about the conduct of electronic reconnaissance by multipurpose tactical fighters "Rafale" in relation to the air group of the 279th separate shipborne fighter aviation regiment (OKIAP), equipped with carrier-based fighters Su-33 and MiG-29K / KUB. According to a note published on livefistdefence.com on July 17, 2017, the crews of two Rafale, during combat duty of the Admiral Kuznetsov heavy aircraft-carrying missile cruiser in the Eastern Mediterranean station N001K in just an hour and a half of patrolling. In fact, the source claims that the pilots of the flight from 2 "Raphales" were able to identify the modes of "tracking on the pass" and "capture" of the target by the H001K radar using the SPECTRA integrated airborne defense complex, developed by Thales and MBDA.
Undoubtedly, the high-performance digital element base of the SPECTRA complex is at a level worthy for machines of the "4 ++" generation, which determines the ability to analyze in detail the operating modes of multifunctional enemy sea, land and air-based radars, as well as to determine the modes of active radar homing heads for missiles of the class Air-to-air / ground-to-air. Thus, the RF Detection modular scanner, which is the basis of the fighter's radiation warning system, is responsible for frequency analysis. It is represented by two highly sensitive receiving antennas, located under the radio transparent fairings behind the edges of the air intakes, and is capable of carrying out highly informative RER even of those radio-emitting target radars that are not currently accompanying or capturing Rafale. The technical level and capabilities of the radio-electronic part of the SPECTRA station approximately correspond to the indicators of the REP L-265M10 "Khibiny-M" complex and significantly exceed the parameters of the SPO-15L "Beryoza-L" SPO L-150 "Pastel".
Nevertheless, the news multiplied among Western news agencies with reference to a French source about the successful "interception" of the "combat / firing mode of operation" of the N001K radar raises huge doubts, and indeed hardly corresponds to reality. The fact is that the pilots of the Su-33 carrier-based fighter-bombers that joined the tactical fleet of the Russian Aerospace Forces and used to deliver high-precision bombing strikes against the ISIS infrastructure, even theoretically, would not randomly use the “capture” mode of any targets for precise auto-tracking. It is most likely that it was only a "survey" or "escort on the aisle" mode, with the help of which our pilots scanned the airspace above the battlefield for the presence of coalition strike and reconnaissance aircraft. We look further. In the bombing mode on IG targets, the pilots also did not use the RLPK-27K airborne radar system with the N001K radar, since it was not hardware-adapted to operate in the air-to-ground mode. The maximum that could be used from the auxiliary subsystems is a specialized computing subsystem for high-precision bombing SVP-24-33 "Gefest", integrated into the avionics of several "Sushki" 279th OKIAP.
The use of Hephaestus could in no way affect the N001K onboard radar, because this subsystem uses its own autonomous hardware units to correct aiming and select the most correct trajectory for dropping free-falling bombs at targets from the highest possible heights and distances. The hardware basis of the SVP-24-33 is a high-performance onboard special computer SV-24, around which are "tied": radio navigation module SRNS-24, solid-state onboard storage for service software and targeting software, BFI information generation unit, radio station R-862 and other equipment … None of the above modules are designed to control an airborne radar, which, by its design, can only work for air targets. Consequently, the information copied by numerous news and analytical publications in Russia and Western Europe about the "opening of the secret firing mode of operation" of the N001K airborne radar using the SPECTRA airborne reconnaissance and defense systems of the Rafale multipurpose fighters is another portion of the "thoroughbred" bluff for the ears of an ignorant layman.
And if we argue objectively, the outdated Cassegrain N001K radar with a range of 100 - 120 km against targets with an EPR of 3 - 5 m2 and a single air-to-air mode cannot attract NATO defense departments, because in the upcoming conflicts of the 20s of the XXI century will be used multipurpose fighters Su-30SM and Su-35S, equipped with radars N001 "Bars" and N035 "Irbis-E" with a variety of operating modes. It is these fighters that such machines as Rafale, F-22A Raptor, F / A-18G Growler and RC-135V / W Rivet Joint can conduct "electronic hunting". Nevertheless, there are no fools among our fools either: not a single Su-30SM or Su-35S crew, unless absolutely necessary (threat of an attack, etc.), will "capture" the coalition Air Force aircraft for precise auto-tracking, presenting the enemy with a gift in the form of the radar profile of the combat mode of the radar operation.
