On the alternatives to 7th May that armchair critics have been suggesting,
A Scalp missile fired from a `safe' distance of 150km from the target, travelling at Mach 0.8 will take almost 10 mins to reach the target.
That is enough time for Pak to calculate the likely target, empty it and attempt to intercept the missile.
Russia shoots down or spoofs around 80% of Storm shadow/Scalp missiles fired by Ukraine, because Ukraine fires from extreme range,
unwilling to risk the loss of aircraft. We accepted the trade-off of probably losing X aircraft for Y terrorists.
War is a series of such cold blooded calculations.
SEAD: It's not as if you can press a button and lo and behold SEAD is done. The moment you attempt it, it is an act of war and the enemy
knows you are going to try something. We did SEAD on the 8th and 9th, but even then, none of our aircraft could risk crossing the border.
We were only able to degrade Pak air defences enough to get some missiles and drones to hit fixed locations.
Russia has not been able to supress Ukrainian air defences after 3 years. Pak, trying saturation attacks on a local area, was similarly unable
to achieve SEAD.
Russia failed to develop modern standoff air-launched SEAD/DEAD capabilities in time. We had the same sort of holes in the MKI, but was corrected with Israeli tech. The Russian SEAD/DEAD plan was based on using the Su-34 from close range, sadly for them, radar tech had caught up much earlier than that. Their next gen SEAD/DEAD was meant to come in with the Su-57 + drone family, but that was delayed by 5 years, just not in time for Ukraine.
We were in the same boat as the Russians between 2010 and 2015, awaiting upgrades for the M2000 and MKI while Jaguar was delayed.
As for the Americans, ironically, overreliance on stealth has made it a single point of failure, so they are in the same boat as the Russians today. So they have gone back to the drawing board. They are now sticking whatever they can on the F-35, even if externally, for SEAD/DEAD, while awaiting the deployment of the NGAD. Those using American tech without stealth, like the Saudis, are struggling against even modest ADS like in Yemen. Even the Americans have somewhat struggled in Yemen, their bombing campaign failed too.
The British have effectively abandoned the SEAD/DEAD mission to the Americans when it comes to joint ops.
And the French currently do not possess SEAD at all, although they have focused on DEAD.
Funny to note that the only countries with reliable SEAD/DEAD today are Israel and India (thanks to Israeli weapons). And maybe China, though unproven.
Btw...
We were only able to degrade Pak air defences enough to get some missiles and drones to hit fixed locations.
That's a lot harder to achieve. We demonstrated the ability to conduct SEAD/DEAD with surgical precision instead of saturating defenses like the Americans and British, or the Russians.
