What is an IADS
A modern IADS is far more complex than a singular SAM battery or its associated command vehicle and radar. Analysts and operational planners should strive to use a common language when discussing IADS, and incorporate this knowledge in order to plan against these complex systems as missions dictate. This understanding must include recognition that a linear, simplistic approach to defeating modern, complex IADS is insufficient and instead requires integrated multi-domain operations.
An IADS is the “structure, equipment, personnel, procedures, and weapons used to counter the enemy’s airborne penetration of one’s own claimed territory,” according to one US Air Force intelligence expert. Rather than a single weapon or person, it is an amalgamation of elements, organized to minimize threats in the air domain. Thus, an effective IADS performs three functions—air surveillance, battle management, and weapons control. Of these, air surveillance alone includes five specific sub-functions: detect, initiate, identify, correlate, and maintain.
Possible IADS structure (representative image)
*Air surveillance is often described as the “eyes” of an air defense system. A radar will “detect” an aircraft entering an IADS’s area of coverage, while the “initiate” function transforms radar returns into “tracks.” The “identify” function examines the track and categorizes it as friend, foe, or unknown.
These three phases occur relatively independently, which necessitates a “correlate” function. For example, if a system sees three tracks in close proximity, a sensor operator has the option to consider the tracks a single entity or three different aircraft. Correlation is important as it can have a significant impact on weapon resourcing. Finally, the “maintain” function allows for specific tracks to be continuously monitored. In modern systems, much of this can be automated, resulting in less “man in the loop” processing and more “man on the loop” paradigms. This reduces the ability to defeat the human factor in a modern IADS, and there is more importance given to the ability to generate multiple effects on air surveillance nodes in order to degrade the awareness of an IADS.
*After surveillance, the battle management aspect of an IADS includes four functions: Threat evaluation, engagement decision, weapon selection, and engagement authority. Battle management marks the transition from identifying a threat to acting against it. Battle management makes the determination that a given radar track is in fact a threat and then selects the weapon to counter that threat. The engagement authority is the final step in battle management that confirms the threat, engagement, and weapon selection decisions.
*These decisions transition into weapons control, where a particular weapon system performs the weapons pairing, acquiring, tracking, guiding, killing, and assessing functions. Within weapons control, even more refined degrees of air surveillance and battle management tasks are occurring too. The difference is these are strictly related to the specific weapon that is engaging a threat.
Infographic
The complexity of modern command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C4I) systems, and processes used by IADS are often underestimated. For instance, it would be unusual to observe an individual weapon system component of an IADS, such as a fire-control radar, providing air surveillance within an IADS. Because these weapon systems share similarities with air surveillance tools, they appear as though they can do just that, and are often mistakenly thought to perform the same task.
As a result, the control functions and guidance aspects of air defense are often analyzed more than other elements of an IADS’ kill chain. This is because capabilities such as fire-control radars and missile batteries that make decisions and have their own radars are perceived as performing these functions across the entire system, irrespective of a weapon’s role or responsibility in a larger IADS.
Current: Advantage Offence.
Even though wealthier states could afford to augment ground based sensors with an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), consisting of powerful radars mounted on large passenger planes, unmanned aerial vehicles, and space assets, the augmenting assets are expensive and available only in small numbers. This makes them early high-value targets, unlikely to survive prolonged conflict.
Thus, most IADS are relying on ground-based search radar to identify incoming strikes and attack radar, which paints the targets for the defending missile. The search radar has numerous weaknesses. It is stationary or has limited mobility; thus, its coverage is limited and can be bypassed.
But more critically, Once turned on, electronic warfare (EW) aircraft can identify its location and engage it with standoff anti-radiation missiles that home in on radar emissions. Historically, an attacking air force can suppress air defenses after a month-long air campaign. As mentioned above, ground search radars can be augmented with AWACS. These aircraft are more survivable than ground-based radars due to their mobility, but the introduction of long-range and very long-range air-to-air missiles, together with low observable aircraft, are rapidly negating the effects of AWACS, retaining advantage for offense.
Reliance on ground-based search radar, forces the defender to centralize the C2 structure. Passing targeting data between batteries, requires a single central control node. This weakness is exacerbated by the effectiveness of suppression of enemy air defense missions using antiradiation missiles. Unable to continuously emit, defenders must rely on rolling emissions by several radars to gain a picture of their airspace. It is a process where several radars cover the same area and turn on and off for short durations before moving.
Only a centralized headquarters can coordinate that effort and tie it in with defending fighters. This gives the attacker few key nodes for targeting. Destruction of these nodes will rapidly dis-integrate the enemy’s IADS. The missile launchers will still be there, but they will not be able to engage without warning and targeting data telling them where to shoot. So far, the balance is in favor of the offense.
An F-35 on Strike mission (representative image)
Emerging technologies are changing this 10-year prediction.
*One key technology is the miniaturization of cameras and satellites. New microsatellites are cheap, small, and effective. A single rocket can deliver 80 small photo reconnaissance satellites into orbit. This technology has allowed the U.S. firm Planet to photograph any corner of the Earth with one of its 200 satellites, updating images every day with 2-meter resolution.The defender does not need to cover all the Earth; he just needs to cover the conflict zone. He can accomplish this by seeding the orbit over the conflict zone with 300 to 500 microsatellites, especially if these satellites are able to generate imagery of 1-meter resolution and transmit data every 5 to 10 minutes. This satellite constellation will have complete photo coverage of the battlespace and be able to spot any aircraft or ship coming into the conflict zone. This system is even more dangerous because antisatellite weaponry is extremely expensive. For example, both antiballistic and antisatellite (Standard Missile 3, or SM-3) missiles cost between $15 and $18 million each. There may simply not be enough antisatellite missiles to destroy an enemy constellation. There are direct energy weapons coming online, and the Russians recently claimed to have operationalised one. Yet even those systems are few in numbers and may not be able to attrit a satellite constellation faster than the enemy can reseed it. In short, this constellation may be extremely survivable to the point where an attacker might not be able to neutralize it due to the large number of targets.
Early warning satellite constellation (Representative image)
*More powerful high-speed computers allow algorithms to rapidly process thousands of surveillance images, identifying incoming aircraft or ships based on preprogrammed image recognition. It also allows prediction of trajectories based on several images collected with the ability to pass that data across the battle network. The United States has been working on a similar capability in Project Maven.5 This data will not be enough for targeting, but it will generate an early warning system robust enough to replace ground-based radar systems without any of their weaknesses. As computers get smaller, they can be mounted on the micro-satellite. This allows data processing to be done in space and only targeting data to be passed across the network. This reduces the bandwidth requirements and speeds up the time to identify targets. Instead of updating target location every 5 minutes, it can be done every minute, resulting in greatly increased effectiveness of early warning systems.
*Another defensive advantage is electronic warfare. The increased bandwidth and processing power of computers allow advanced militaries to network their electronic reconnaissance. By networking all his EW reconnaissance assets with analytical systems, the defender can analyze the emissions of attackers in real time and determine which targets are real and which are decoys. It can rapidly identify incoming threats that generate emissions that may have been missed by other systems.
Ground based AESA EW
*Underpinning the enemy system is the network. For any data to be relevant, it must be easily passed from one system to another. The network must be robust and secure. Quantum computing technology introduces communications that are long range, difficult to locate, and nearly impossible to break into. This network allows data to be rapidly passed between early warning satellites and ground-based defense systems. In addition, the defender owns terrain and will have time to lay fiber cable between his battle positions, reducing emissions and defending its network against jamming. It will be difficult to isolate specific portions of the battlefield. We know that our adversaries are looking to develop such networks and technologies, and it is only a matter of time before they succeed.
The IADS will retain ground-based search radars but keep them off and rely on satellites to provide early warning and to cue attack radars. Without emissions by the ground-based radars, the attacker will be unable to locate enemy antiaircraft batteries before they fire. The ground search radars will only be activated if the network fails, giving the IADS redundancy should it be temporarily dis-integrated. Neutralizing them will become far more time-consuming and costly in terms of munitions expended and aircraft lost. The penetration of a robust IADS system requires the attacker to converge complementary capabilities from multiple units and services. The challenge is the amount of time needed to plan such a deliberate operation and the availability of key capabilities. If any capability such as EW aircraft is not available, then the entire mission must be canceled.
The digital network that passes data directly from satellite early warning systems to the ground-based shooters allows the defender to decentralize command and control. Data carried across the network is generated by each reconnaissance node and is seen by all shooting nodes. For example, when a satellite constellation picks up a target, it automatically puts the data out on the network so that every shooting battery sees it without headquarters in the loop. Even fighter aircraft can operate independently based on priorities published prior to conflict. This system removes headquarters as a single point of failure in a defender’s IADS, making the task of dis-integrating more challenging.
The capacity of the defense is further increased by decoys and deception countermeasures. These can work both ways but usually favor the defender. Decoys are used to absorb fire power and divert from real targets. Attackers can use decoys to mislead a defender and overwhelm the ADA with targets, but with aircraft being the main striking platform, this becomes more difficult. In theory, airborne decoys are possible, but they must fool radar, EW, and the visible spectrum from space-borne ISR assets, all while maneuvering at Mach 2. The price tag of this decoy will rapidly approach the cost of an actual combat aircraft. Ground systems are much easier to hide using underpasses and vegetation, while ground decoys are cheaper since they can be stationary. The defender has a major advantage when it comes to camouflage and deception operations.
During the 1999 conflict in Kosovo, the Serbian army made extensive use of decoys to absorb NATO airstrikes. According to one report filed by the U.S. Air Force Munitions Effectiveness Assessment Team, 90 percent of reported hits were on decoys. In an extreme case, the Serbs even managed to protect a bridge by constructing a decoy 300 meters downriver. The decoy bridge was designed to be seen from the air and was struck multiple times by NATO aircraft.6 The spoofing did not end in visual range. Serbian air defenses also used extensive radar decoys to divert NATO suppression of enemy air defense missions away from actual radars. Serbian Colonel Zoltán Dani, commander of the 250th Air Defence Missile Brigade, used old radar sets pulled from obsolete fighters to divert NATO strikes away from search and attack radars. During the war, his brigade was engaged more than 20 times with NATO anti-radiation missiles without any effect. The decoys absorbed all the damage. Using such innovative techniques, his brigade was credited with shooting down two NATO aircraft, including a stealth F-117, and damaging another.7
Attempts to penetrate an IADS of a near-peer competitor are possible, but at high cost and over a prolonged conflict. By utilising space based ISR, a defender gains a nearly indestructible early warning system. It can protect his ground-based search radars while maintaining situational awareness. EW reconnaissance systems and high-power computers can distinguish decoys from real aircraft. This degrades the attacker’s situational awareness because the defending battery no longer emits until it is ready to engage real targets. The real defenses are camouflaged, and realistic decoys are set up to draw fire away from defensive systems. The attacker is then engaged from unexpected locations by modern air defenses, including long-range surface-to-air missiles and fixed-wing fighter aircraft.
The defenders will fight in a decentralized manner. Also, a defender’s higher headquarters will allocate ADA and allow them to fight on their own with direct access to early warning networks. The higher headquarters will likely retain control of defending air assets and allocate targets for their own long-range fires, but the bulk of the fight will be in a decentralized manner. This will make dis-integrating enemy defenses difficult because C2 centers will not affect the fight to the degree seen in previous conflicts. Destroying the defender’s C2 nodes will degrade but not dis-integrate the defense. Furthermore, the enemy will likely regenerate damaged C2 nodes, while networked communications will continue to function unabated due to multiple connections and non-C2 nodes that carry the same traffic.
Penetration and degradation of an IADS is possible through converging key systems across all domains. The real challenge lies in dis-integration of the IADS. It is important not to underestimate the resilience of enemy networks and their ability to reconstitute damage inflicted by friendly fire power. At the strategic level, failure to gain quick victory via dis-integration of adversary's IADS will result in a war of attrition, a contest that may not be won at a politically acceptable cost, ending the conflict in a peace settlement favourable to the defender.8
1. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/what-is-a-modern-integrated-air-defense-system/
2. Tim Fernholz, “The Company Photographing Every Spot of Land on Earth, Every Single Day,” Quartz, November 11, 2017, available at <https://qz.com/1126301/the-company-photographing-every-spot-of-land-on-earth-every-single-day/>.
3. Will Marshall, “Mission 1 Complete,” Planet.com, November 9, 2017, available at <www.planet.com/pulse/mission-1/>.
4. Patrick Tucker, “Russia Claims It Now Has Lasers to Shoot Satellites,” Defense One, February 26, 2018, available at <www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/02/russia-claims-it-now-has-lasers-shoot-satellites/146243/>.
5. Makena Kelly, “Google Hired Microworkers to Train Its Controversial Project Maven AI,” The Verge, February 4, 2019, available at <www.theverge.com/2019/2/4/18211155/google-microworkers-maven-ai-train-pentagon-pay-salary>.
6. John Barry, “The Kosovo Cover-Up,” Newsweek, May 14, 2000, available at <www.newsweek.com/kosovo-cover-160273>.
7. Sebastien Roblin, “Stealth Can Be Defeated: In 1999, an F-117 Nighthawk Was Shot Down,” The National Interest, November 2, 2018, available at <https://nationalinterest.org/blog/b...ated-1999-f-117-nighthawk-was-shot-down-35142>.
8. https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News...ad-zone-how-emerging-technologies-are-shifti/
Special note– This Article is based on two other Articles. For the most part I only edited, modified and put it together in a single format. To expand the depth and scope of the topic, I highly recommend readers to read the original Articles. Those two are–
A modern IADS is far more complex than a singular SAM battery or its associated command vehicle and radar. Analysts and operational planners should strive to use a common language when discussing IADS, and incorporate this knowledge in order to plan against these complex systems as missions dictate. This understanding must include recognition that a linear, simplistic approach to defeating modern, complex IADS is insufficient and instead requires integrated multi-domain operations.
An IADS is the “structure, equipment, personnel, procedures, and weapons used to counter the enemy’s airborne penetration of one’s own claimed territory,” according to one US Air Force intelligence expert. Rather than a single weapon or person, it is an amalgamation of elements, organized to minimize threats in the air domain. Thus, an effective IADS performs three functions—air surveillance, battle management, and weapons control. Of these, air surveillance alone includes five specific sub-functions: detect, initiate, identify, correlate, and maintain.
Possible IADS structure (representative image)
*Air surveillance is often described as the “eyes” of an air defense system. A radar will “detect” an aircraft entering an IADS’s area of coverage, while the “initiate” function transforms radar returns into “tracks.” The “identify” function examines the track and categorizes it as friend, foe, or unknown.
These three phases occur relatively independently, which necessitates a “correlate” function. For example, if a system sees three tracks in close proximity, a sensor operator has the option to consider the tracks a single entity or three different aircraft. Correlation is important as it can have a significant impact on weapon resourcing. Finally, the “maintain” function allows for specific tracks to be continuously monitored. In modern systems, much of this can be automated, resulting in less “man in the loop” processing and more “man on the loop” paradigms. This reduces the ability to defeat the human factor in a modern IADS, and there is more importance given to the ability to generate multiple effects on air surveillance nodes in order to degrade the awareness of an IADS.
*After surveillance, the battle management aspect of an IADS includes four functions: Threat evaluation, engagement decision, weapon selection, and engagement authority. Battle management marks the transition from identifying a threat to acting against it. Battle management makes the determination that a given radar track is in fact a threat and then selects the weapon to counter that threat. The engagement authority is the final step in battle management that confirms the threat, engagement, and weapon selection decisions.
*These decisions transition into weapons control, where a particular weapon system performs the weapons pairing, acquiring, tracking, guiding, killing, and assessing functions. Within weapons control, even more refined degrees of air surveillance and battle management tasks are occurring too. The difference is these are strictly related to the specific weapon that is engaging a threat.
Infographic
The complexity of modern command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C4I) systems, and processes used by IADS are often underestimated. For instance, it would be unusual to observe an individual weapon system component of an IADS, such as a fire-control radar, providing air surveillance within an IADS. Because these weapon systems share similarities with air surveillance tools, they appear as though they can do just that, and are often mistakenly thought to perform the same task.
As a result, the control functions and guidance aspects of air defense are often analyzed more than other elements of an IADS’ kill chain. This is because capabilities such as fire-control radars and missile batteries that make decisions and have their own radars are perceived as performing these functions across the entire system, irrespective of a weapon’s role or responsibility in a larger IADS.
Current: Advantage Offence.
Even though wealthier states could afford to augment ground based sensors with an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), consisting of powerful radars mounted on large passenger planes, unmanned aerial vehicles, and space assets, the augmenting assets are expensive and available only in small numbers. This makes them early high-value targets, unlikely to survive prolonged conflict.
Thus, most IADS are relying on ground-based search radar to identify incoming strikes and attack radar, which paints the targets for the defending missile. The search radar has numerous weaknesses. It is stationary or has limited mobility; thus, its coverage is limited and can be bypassed.
But more critically, Once turned on, electronic warfare (EW) aircraft can identify its location and engage it with standoff anti-radiation missiles that home in on radar emissions. Historically, an attacking air force can suppress air defenses after a month-long air campaign. As mentioned above, ground search radars can be augmented with AWACS. These aircraft are more survivable than ground-based radars due to their mobility, but the introduction of long-range and very long-range air-to-air missiles, together with low observable aircraft, are rapidly negating the effects of AWACS, retaining advantage for offense.
Reliance on ground-based search radar, forces the defender to centralize the C2 structure. Passing targeting data between batteries, requires a single central control node. This weakness is exacerbated by the effectiveness of suppression of enemy air defense missions using antiradiation missiles. Unable to continuously emit, defenders must rely on rolling emissions by several radars to gain a picture of their airspace. It is a process where several radars cover the same area and turn on and off for short durations before moving.
Only a centralized headquarters can coordinate that effort and tie it in with defending fighters. This gives the attacker few key nodes for targeting. Destruction of these nodes will rapidly dis-integrate the enemy’s IADS. The missile launchers will still be there, but they will not be able to engage without warning and targeting data telling them where to shoot. So far, the balance is in favor of the offense.
An F-35 on Strike mission (representative image)
Next 10 Years: Advantage Defense
Emerging technologies are changing this 10-year prediction.
*One key technology is the miniaturization of cameras and satellites. New microsatellites are cheap, small, and effective. A single rocket can deliver 80 small photo reconnaissance satellites into orbit. This technology has allowed the U.S. firm Planet to photograph any corner of the Earth with one of its 200 satellites, updating images every day with 2-meter resolution.The defender does not need to cover all the Earth; he just needs to cover the conflict zone. He can accomplish this by seeding the orbit over the conflict zone with 300 to 500 microsatellites, especially if these satellites are able to generate imagery of 1-meter resolution and transmit data every 5 to 10 minutes. This satellite constellation will have complete photo coverage of the battlespace and be able to spot any aircraft or ship coming into the conflict zone. This system is even more dangerous because antisatellite weaponry is extremely expensive. For example, both antiballistic and antisatellite (Standard Missile 3, or SM-3) missiles cost between $15 and $18 million each. There may simply not be enough antisatellite missiles to destroy an enemy constellation. There are direct energy weapons coming online, and the Russians recently claimed to have operationalised one. Yet even those systems are few in numbers and may not be able to attrit a satellite constellation faster than the enemy can reseed it. In short, this constellation may be extremely survivable to the point where an attacker might not be able to neutralize it due to the large number of targets.
Early warning satellite constellation (Representative image)
*More powerful high-speed computers allow algorithms to rapidly process thousands of surveillance images, identifying incoming aircraft or ships based on preprogrammed image recognition. It also allows prediction of trajectories based on several images collected with the ability to pass that data across the battle network. The United States has been working on a similar capability in Project Maven.5 This data will not be enough for targeting, but it will generate an early warning system robust enough to replace ground-based radar systems without any of their weaknesses. As computers get smaller, they can be mounted on the micro-satellite. This allows data processing to be done in space and only targeting data to be passed across the network. This reduces the bandwidth requirements and speeds up the time to identify targets. Instead of updating target location every 5 minutes, it can be done every minute, resulting in greatly increased effectiveness of early warning systems.
*Another defensive advantage is electronic warfare. The increased bandwidth and processing power of computers allow advanced militaries to network their electronic reconnaissance. By networking all his EW reconnaissance assets with analytical systems, the defender can analyze the emissions of attackers in real time and determine which targets are real and which are decoys. It can rapidly identify incoming threats that generate emissions that may have been missed by other systems.
Ground based AESA EW
*Underpinning the enemy system is the network. For any data to be relevant, it must be easily passed from one system to another. The network must be robust and secure. Quantum computing technology introduces communications that are long range, difficult to locate, and nearly impossible to break into. This network allows data to be rapidly passed between early warning satellites and ground-based defense systems. In addition, the defender owns terrain and will have time to lay fiber cable between his battle positions, reducing emissions and defending its network against jamming. It will be difficult to isolate specific portions of the battlefield. We know that our adversaries are looking to develop such networks and technologies, and it is only a matter of time before they succeed.
How the New IADS will Function
The IADS will retain ground-based search radars but keep them off and rely on satellites to provide early warning and to cue attack radars. Without emissions by the ground-based radars, the attacker will be unable to locate enemy antiaircraft batteries before they fire. The ground search radars will only be activated if the network fails, giving the IADS redundancy should it be temporarily dis-integrated. Neutralizing them will become far more time-consuming and costly in terms of munitions expended and aircraft lost. The penetration of a robust IADS system requires the attacker to converge complementary capabilities from multiple units and services. The challenge is the amount of time needed to plan such a deliberate operation and the availability of key capabilities. If any capability such as EW aircraft is not available, then the entire mission must be canceled.
The digital network that passes data directly from satellite early warning systems to the ground-based shooters allows the defender to decentralize command and control. Data carried across the network is generated by each reconnaissance node and is seen by all shooting nodes. For example, when a satellite constellation picks up a target, it automatically puts the data out on the network so that every shooting battery sees it without headquarters in the loop. Even fighter aircraft can operate independently based on priorities published prior to conflict. This system removes headquarters as a single point of failure in a defender’s IADS, making the task of dis-integrating more challenging.
Decoys and Deception. (To augment IADS)
The capacity of the defense is further increased by decoys and deception countermeasures. These can work both ways but usually favor the defender. Decoys are used to absorb fire power and divert from real targets. Attackers can use decoys to mislead a defender and overwhelm the ADA with targets, but with aircraft being the main striking platform, this becomes more difficult. In theory, airborne decoys are possible, but they must fool radar, EW, and the visible spectrum from space-borne ISR assets, all while maneuvering at Mach 2. The price tag of this decoy will rapidly approach the cost of an actual combat aircraft. Ground systems are much easier to hide using underpasses and vegetation, while ground decoys are cheaper since they can be stationary. The defender has a major advantage when it comes to camouflage and deception operations.
During the 1999 conflict in Kosovo, the Serbian army made extensive use of decoys to absorb NATO airstrikes. According to one report filed by the U.S. Air Force Munitions Effectiveness Assessment Team, 90 percent of reported hits were on decoys. In an extreme case, the Serbs even managed to protect a bridge by constructing a decoy 300 meters downriver. The decoy bridge was designed to be seen from the air and was struck multiple times by NATO aircraft.6 The spoofing did not end in visual range. Serbian air defenses also used extensive radar decoys to divert NATO suppression of enemy air defense missions away from actual radars. Serbian Colonel Zoltán Dani, commander of the 250th Air Defence Missile Brigade, used old radar sets pulled from obsolete fighters to divert NATO strikes away from search and attack radars. During the war, his brigade was engaged more than 20 times with NATO anti-radiation missiles without any effect. The decoys absorbed all the damage. Using such innovative techniques, his brigade was credited with shooting down two NATO aircraft, including a stealth F-117, and damaging another.7
Conclusion
Attempts to penetrate an IADS of a near-peer competitor are possible, but at high cost and over a prolonged conflict. By utilising space based ISR, a defender gains a nearly indestructible early warning system. It can protect his ground-based search radars while maintaining situational awareness. EW reconnaissance systems and high-power computers can distinguish decoys from real aircraft. This degrades the attacker’s situational awareness because the defending battery no longer emits until it is ready to engage real targets. The real defenses are camouflaged, and realistic decoys are set up to draw fire away from defensive systems. The attacker is then engaged from unexpected locations by modern air defenses, including long-range surface-to-air missiles and fixed-wing fighter aircraft.
The defenders will fight in a decentralized manner. Also, a defender’s higher headquarters will allocate ADA and allow them to fight on their own with direct access to early warning networks. The higher headquarters will likely retain control of defending air assets and allocate targets for their own long-range fires, but the bulk of the fight will be in a decentralized manner. This will make dis-integrating enemy defenses difficult because C2 centers will not affect the fight to the degree seen in previous conflicts. Destroying the defender’s C2 nodes will degrade but not dis-integrate the defense. Furthermore, the enemy will likely regenerate damaged C2 nodes, while networked communications will continue to function unabated due to multiple connections and non-C2 nodes that carry the same traffic.
Penetration and degradation of an IADS is possible through converging key systems across all domains. The real challenge lies in dis-integration of the IADS. It is important not to underestimate the resilience of enemy networks and their ability to reconstitute damage inflicted by friendly fire power. At the strategic level, failure to gain quick victory via dis-integration of adversary's IADS will result in a war of attrition, a contest that may not be won at a politically acceptable cost, ending the conflict in a peace settlement favourable to the defender.8
1. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/what-is-a-modern-integrated-air-defense-system/
2. Tim Fernholz, “The Company Photographing Every Spot of Land on Earth, Every Single Day,” Quartz, November 11, 2017, available at <https://qz.com/1126301/the-company-photographing-every-spot-of-land-on-earth-every-single-day/>.
3. Will Marshall, “Mission 1 Complete,” Planet.com, November 9, 2017, available at <www.planet.com/pulse/mission-1/>.
4. Patrick Tucker, “Russia Claims It Now Has Lasers to Shoot Satellites,” Defense One, February 26, 2018, available at <www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/02/russia-claims-it-now-has-lasers-shoot-satellites/146243/>.
5. Makena Kelly, “Google Hired Microworkers to Train Its Controversial Project Maven AI,” The Verge, February 4, 2019, available at <www.theverge.com/2019/2/4/18211155/google-microworkers-maven-ai-train-pentagon-pay-salary>.
6. John Barry, “The Kosovo Cover-Up,” Newsweek, May 14, 2000, available at <www.newsweek.com/kosovo-cover-160273>.
7. Sebastien Roblin, “Stealth Can Be Defeated: In 1999, an F-117 Nighthawk Was Shot Down,” The National Interest, November 2, 2018, available at <https://nationalinterest.org/blog/b...ated-1999-f-117-nighthawk-was-shot-down-35142>.
8. https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News...ad-zone-how-emerging-technologies-are-shifti/
Special note– This Article is based on two other Articles. For the most part I only edited, modified and put it together in a single format. To expand the depth and scope of the topic, I highly recommend readers to read the original Articles. Those two are–
1. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/what-is-a-modern-integrated-air-defense-system/
-By Maj. Peter W. Mattes, USAF
2. https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News...ad-zone-how-emerging-technologies-are-shifti/ -By Alex Vershinin
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