UK's Surface to Air defense capability

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flamingknives RE:UK SAM Order of Battle - flamingknives; grist to the mill 8/20/2005 2:53:36 PM

If that's the standard of report writing required for an after action team I'm surprised the military ever learns anything. You'll note that my complaint stems not about your assesment of Rapier/SACLOS*, but the evidence you use to prove your case. Your initial statement was that Rapier crews claimed 14 kills, actually got one and this proved that the SACLOS guidance technique was less than useless. You have since revealed more information in increments, but it's still rather short of explanation other than your tenuous leap of logic. Quote RAPIER - DID - NOT - WORK - DURING - MAY 21-25 - THE MAIN AIR BATTLES. THAT'S - NOT - THE - ARGUMENT - I'M - MAKING. Quote It would not track properly so the posts were serviced and retuned. It would still not track so most of the 12 posts were moved again to lower positions. It would still not track or hit any crossing target. The 12 posts got 1 hit on 27 May. These are rather platform-in-that-specific-situation specific, aren't they? What exactly drove the Rapier crews to claim a kill? Why did they think that they had shot down 14 aircraft? My first instinct would be that they saw their missiles explode in the area of the aircraft. That it didn't score a kill indicates that the explosion did not do sufficient damage to the aircraft. Which to me would be a fuzing or warhead issue. Certainly a factor of the weapon system, but not necessarily the guidance. Unless you've got some more evidence hidden away.

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neutralizer RE:UK SAM Order of Battle - flamingknives; grist to the mill 8/21/2005 6:51:54 AM

While I would agree that there were issues with Rapier in FI, and I've repeatedly highlighted some of the underlying causes, the fact is that Rapier performs and performed as specified in live firing practices. This includes engaging crossing tgts. From what I vaguely remember the first people to succussfully use Rapier were the Iranians back in the 70s when they shot down a crossing Iraqi TU-22(?) (and yes it was before they went to war properly). Anybody who thinks that Thompson's alleged statement that it can't engage crossing tgts is sadly underinformed, if Thompson said such a thing, I'll be charitable and say he misunderstood what he was told, and in a previous post I've explained the difficulty of a crossing target that is at a tangent to the msl's max range or close to it. Same sort of issue applies to guns as well. The fact is engaging crossing tgts is a very easy thing to demonstrate. Presumably the USAF was reasonably convinced of Rapier's capabilities when they paid to equip several RAF Regt sqns to defend USAF bases in UK. More generally, SACLOS was and still is an excellant method for AD, where msls are the generally agreed best weapon. Repeated modelling proves it, validated by live perfomrance, thousands of msls fired in trg cannot be ignored. But FI shows you need to train for the war conditions wou will fight in. As for the fuel stuff, I'd point the finger at incompetant bde HQ G4 offrs for not finding out what fuel consumption was for a Rapier bty. Looks like a comd who didn't train his HQ too well :-)

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neutralizer RE:UK's Surface to Air defense capability 8/22/2005 8:09:29 AM

A few numbers to give a bit of perspective. Typically, low flying fast jets operate at about 450 kts, = about 230 m/s. Rapier FS C has a published max rg of 6800 m and speed of Mach2+, Mach 2 is about 660 m/s. HVM has around 5000 m max rg and speed Mach 3+ (Mach 3 about 990 m/s). It only needs a modicum of basic arithmatic to derive flght and in range exposure from this data. For example an aircraft coming in FS C rg at 12 O'clock and leaving it at 3 O'clock is in rg for about 9700 m of flight path taking some 41 secs, closest pt to lnchr is some 5500 m which is a msl flight time of some 7 secs. However, surv rdr can detect at 16km on normal settings, which is some 70 secs flying from the lnchr. A normally trained operator can visually acquire within a few secs of being pointed at the tgt by the rdr. Its too easy. The problems start when the terrain prevents early acquisition both by rdr and visually.

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skyhawk619 RE:UK's Surface to Air defense capability 2/13/2006 4:53:50 PM

I am a Falklands veteran and Rapier missile operator whos detachement 32 Alpha shot down 3 aircraft, I shot down an A4 skyhawk and a Mirage at San Carlos and another operator shot down an A4 at Fitzroy, I am sick to death of Armchair Generals posting B.S on the web about kills, the most ludicrous being we only shot one aircraft down, they still find aircraft even today and can prove that they were hit by Rapier missiles, this missile system deserves the credit of its performance, just because some know it all posts something on the web, dosent make it true, I will be shortly bringing out a book called Watching Men Burn and setting the record straight once and for all.This is the official history of T Battery written by the Regiment link I have had enough of people discrediting this fine Battery and Regiment 12 Regt RA.

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