Its effectiveness in a combat situation is unknown, but what is known from historical data is that AAMs fired from fighters are more effective at downing aircraft than SAMs. SA-2 Pks were below 1%, with multiple launches per sortie and only 2% of sorties resulting in a loss.
But that is the only enemy aircraft. Meanwhile it shot down a Russian IL-20M and Siberian Airlines Flight 1812 in 2001. They had multiple misses over Libya in 1986 and zero hits, with one missile destroying a Libyan hospital. S-200s also had a 478lb warhead, and even with that they couldn't hit jack shit, the Israeli F-16I shoot-down was probably the result of a pot luck air-burst rather than functional targeting and guidance. How many Israeli sorties have been flown with no shoot down?
That was an SA-3 and at a very short range`. The F-117A had no EW, RWR or MAWS and flew the same route too many times and didn't manoeuvre. It was essentially a UAV type target in that respect.
How come they were locked on by radars when they were supposed to be invisible??
Not to mention systems like S 300s and S 400s when operated by skilled crews like Russians, Indians or Chinese are capable of creating a formidable anti access/area denial bubble. The Americans themselves accepted this fact.
No. Israelis had the EW on but the system prioritises the threats by first dealing with threats which are closest to it. The Russians had told the trick to the Syrians. The radars and missiles closest to the Israeli aircraft lit up when the lang range radars started tracking the F-16s. When the short range missiles were fired, the EW systems tried to tackle them while the high flying, long range missiles took out the F-16. The Israelis were so scared and shocked that very next day they rushed to Moscow to plead to Russians to stop this game.
S-400 system has very capable jammers to do saturation jamming also. Please remember they can jam nearly anything within 300kms including GPS. So if Russians decide to engage Israeli AF, the game will be extremely different and suddenly the so called invincibles might just fall out of sky like stones.
So why haven't more been brought down? An SA-2 with a 440lb warhead could take down aircraft by exploding 120m away, an S-200 has a 478lb warhead. In the end, the North Vietnamese were just firing SA-2s up to altitude unguided and air bursting them. The S-200 is a similar story. The other issue is trying to fire SAMs with huge warheads at planes whilst your fighters are engaging them. You can't do both without risking your own aircraft a la IL-20M incident. Even if the SAMs are going for the right plane, another friendly plane can get in the way or be hit by shrapnel.
More like they went to Moscow to tell them they were going to start applying a liberal dose of SEAD/DEAD if it persisted, which is the other risk for SAMs. At present there is an agreement not to fire SAMs at US/NATO aircraft because they know the SAMs existences will be short-lived if they do. If one US plane goes down, all SAMs will be gone within 24 hours, Russian or Syrian.
Because they were almost on top of the site and had the bomb bay doors open, it was also raining.
Let's see them try it and we'll see how long those S-400 systems lasts afterwards. ARMs can home on jamming just as surely as an active radar. Fire some BQM-74s, watch the radars light up and them waste their missiles, then move in for the kill.
Israelis had to stay far away from them in that war. And Egyptians started losing once they came out of the umbrella of those SAMs.
They may have detected it on longer wave radars, like VHF, but it would not have been targetable with this radar and an F-35/22 would have picked up this transmission from beyond the SAM effective range.
