Throughout the launches, the EWO keeps reporting “No Uplink.” Does this mean “No radar/missile lock?”
I dunno how Vietnam era Soviet SAMs operated. I know we had Wild Weasel EW assets, to their ground radars, both search and fire control, may have been effectively blanketed and they were just firing Hail Mary Shots, though Lilac 2’s prayers weren’t answered.
Hawk was and is a beam rider (it follows the illumination of ground control fire control radar) although it now has autonomous radar and IR for the end game. Patriot is a lot more sophisticated. The early Patriot was launched against a fire control radar set of coordinates, and got uplinks until it’s passive radar aquired the ground radar’s illumination signal in the end game. Modern Patriot variants have got it all, active radar, IR, passive radar, and command uplink, home on jam; they even downlink the missile’s target tracks to the fire control radar. It’s a very robust and deadly system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-75_Dvina#Countermeasures_and_counter-countermeasures
Sounds like they were firing blind. The SA-2 was a command guidance missile (about the least effective kind), the fire control radar would send steering commands to the missile. To counter it, all you need to do is jam the uplink, or the fire control radar. From the transcript it sounds like the Vietnamese were firing blind, without command guidance, hoping for a lucky hit, or to cause the B-52s to panic and either abandon their bomb runs or have crashed caused by evasive maneuvers. Sounds like the b-52s maintained discipline.
I’m reading it that way. Wikipedia says it’s command guidance (or home on jam) which means that it depended on commands from the ground to steer it. Even without interference, command guidance is limited by the beam size of the fire control radar, which needs to be smaller than the lethal radius of the warhead.
I took the “no uplink” to mean he was listening for command guidance uplinks, and not hearing them, he assumed it was a Hail Marx shot. I assume that there was blistering stand off jamming that kept the radars from acquiring the buffs. They must have been firing on con trails using visual sightings and guessing at altitude.
I’m reading it that way. Wikipedia says it’s command guidance (or home on jam) which means that it depended on commands from the ground to steer it. Even without interference, command guidance is limited by the beam size of the fire control radar, which needs to be smaller than the lethal radius of the warhead.
I took the “no uplink” to mean he was listening for command guidance uplinks, and not hearing them, he assumed it was a Hail Marx shot. I assume that there was blistering stand off jamming that kept the radars from acquiring the buffs. They must have been firing on con trails using visual sightings and guessing at altitude.