The US misplaced almost $2B price of army tools within the preliminary 4 days of army operations in Iran. Losses embody SATCOM terminals, three F-15E Strike Eagles, and radar tools.
The chief driver of the fee is a US AN/FPS-132 early warning radar system at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, valued at $1.1 billion, which was hit and partially broken in a missile strike on 28 February.
Qatar confirmed that the radar was hit and broken.
Iran additionally struck the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain, destroying two satellite tv for pc communications terminals and several other giant buildings.
Iranian missile strikes additionally destroyed or severely broken a U.S. AN/TPY-2 radar system related to a THAAD battery at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. The AN/TPY-2 radar part of the THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) System deployed at Al-Ruwais Industrial Metropolis within the United Arab Emirates was additionally hit, and the destroyed radar part is estimated to be price $300 million.
Iran used a mixture of precision-guided missiles and one-way assault drones to focus on and destroy AN/TPY-2 radar techniques
The failure of the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) to ascertain a complete Suppression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD) marketing campaign within the preliminary days of the 2022 Ukraine warfare was a important consider stopping a fast Russian victory.
Regardless of having superior numbers and expertise, Russia did not destroy Ukraine’s Floor-Based mostly Air Defence System (GBADS), resulting in a “mutual air denial” situation that grounded most Russian fixed-wing plane and compelled them into harmful low-altitude.
On January 3, 2026, the U.S. executed “Operation Absolute Resolve”, a swift, huge SEAD marketing campaign in Venezuela involving over 150 plane, together with F-35s and EA-18G Growlers, to neutralize Russian-supplied S-300/Buk techniques and Chinese language radars. This digital assault blinded defences inside 12 minutes, permitting the seize of President Nicolas Maduro.
Even India’s S-400 Triumf air defence system was attacked throughout a quick warfare with Pakistan in Might 2025.
The S-400’s distinctive mobility was a key ingredient of its success. Even when Pakistan reportedly recognized the areas, seemingly utilizing Chinese language satellite tv for pc intelligence, the Indian crews have been in a position to quickly relocate the batteries.
From the above, it’s clear that whereas neutralising enemy air defence techniques is vital, their defence itself has change into a problem.
Suppression of Enemy Air Defences
SEAD refers to army actions designed to neutralize, degrade, or destroy ground-based enemy air defence techniques, together with radar and surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). SEAD missions are important for establishing air superiority, guaranteeing plane survival, and permitting freedom of motion throughout air campaigns.
Probably the most profitable SEAD operations in historical past embody the 1991 Gulf Struggle, the place coalition forces paralyzed Iraq’s air defences in hours, using huge quantities of AGM-88 HARM missiles, cruise missiles, and digital jamming to neutralize Iraqi Command and Management (C2) and radar techniques immediately.
The 1982 Bekaa Valley battle (Operation Mole Cricket 19), the Israeli Air Pressure flawlessly destroyed 17-19 Syrian SA-6 SAM batteries in roughly two hours utilizing unmanned aerial autos (UAVs) for surveillance, digital warfare, and precision strikes.
Within the Vietnam Struggle (1965–1968), US forces pioneered fashionable SEAD in response to Soviet-made S-75 (SA-2) missiles, creating specialised “Wild Weasel” plane to hunt and destroy radar websites, lowering the SAM success price from 5.7 p.c to lower than 1 p.c.
In Operation Allied Pressure (Kosovo, 1999), regardless of difficult, cellular, and adaptive Serbian defences, NATO efficiently used in depth, extended SEAD to restrict the risk to plane all through the marketing campaign. Turkey demonstrated superior, fashionable SEAD by deploying the KORAL digital warfare system to create a no-fly zone, successfully disrupting Syrian air defence capabilities throughout the Syrian Civil Struggle (2020).
Key to SEAD’s success is an built-in strategy that mixes kinetic (missiles, bombs) with non-kinetic (jamming, cyber) assaults. Use of devoted plane just like the F-4G Wild Weasel, EA-6B Prowler, F-16CJ, and EA-18G Growler helps.
Fast adaptation and modifying techniques to counter enemy “radar on/off” and different Digital Counter-Counter strategies. Understanding SEAD helps develop defensive counters to guard GBADS.
India’s SEAD in Op Sindoor
Throughout Operation Sindoor in Might 2025, the Indian Air Pressure (IAF) executed SEAD to neutralize Pakistani radar and missile websites, facilitating secure passage for precision strikes on terror infrastructure.
Key components included the usage of anti-radiation missiles to disable enemy radar and the deployment of superior fighter jets, together with Rafales and Su-30MKIs, supported by Netra AEW&C techniques.
India focused Pakistani air defence techniques, together with radars in Lahore and surrounding areas, to achieve air superiority. The IAF employed a mixture of precision-guided munitions, together with SCALP cruise missiles, BrahMos, and Crystal Maze missiles.
Digital warfare was used to jam radar indicators, blinding Pakistani SAMs. The SEAD missions have been a part of a broader calibrated response. The operation highlighted the combination of techniques, such because the S-400 and Akash missiles, to create a layered air defence, whereas Rafale fighters maintained a protecting umbrella.
Key Components of Floor-Based mostly Air Defence System (GBADS)
GBADS are designed to detect, monitor, determine, and neutralize aerial threats, starting from low-flying drones to high-altitude missiles, and are primarily based on floor or sea floor. Trendy GBAD depends on a layered, multi-domain, and, often, cellular structure to guard civilian populations, important infrastructure, and army forces.
Detection and surveillance (Sensors) is thru a community of superior radar (long-range for early warning, short-range for monitoring) and electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensors. These sensors present a real-time Frequent Working Image (COP) to tell apart hostile targets from pleasant plane or civilian visitors.
The Command and Management (C2) techniques are the central nervous system of GBADS, connecting sensors to launchers to allow fast decision-making, risk prioritization, and the coordination of a number of weapons concurrently.
The engagement is carried out by the “effectors,” which embody Man-Moveable Air Defence Methods (MANPADS), short-, medium-, and long-range SAM techniques. Anti-Plane weapons are used for close-in, high-rate-of-fire defence, significantly in opposition to drones.
Directed Vitality Weapons (DEW) embody high-energy lasers or microwaves used to disable drones or sensors with minimal collateral harm. The idea of layered defence is to deploy radars and effectors in a complementary method to cowl totally different altitudes and ranges, guaranteeing there aren’t any blind spots, significantly at low altitudes.
Digital Warfare (EW) & Counter-UAS requires jammers and spoofers designed to intervene with drone communication, navigation, and seeker instrumentation.
Mobility and agility are important, offering versatile, shoot-and-scoot air defence. That is achieved via tracked or wheeled vehicle-integration, as is the case in most fashionable techniques such because the MIM-104 Patriot (USA, long-range), S-400, SA-6 Gainful (Russia), Akash, MR-SAM/LR-SAM, SAMAR (India), Khordad 15, Bavar-373 (Iran), Iron Dome, SPYDER (Israel), and Chinese language HQ-9 amongst many others.
Detection requires energetic/passive radars, EO/IR cameras, and acoustic sensors. Steerage requires radar-guided, infrared-homing, and un-jammable laser-guided techniques. Integration requires open, modular architectures and safe communications to allow interoperability amongst totally different techniques.
Operational Mobility and Deception
Shoot-and-Scoot techniques, which embody often shifting radar and launcher items, forestall enemies from locking onto their positions. Deploying mock-up radars and inflatable decoys confuses enemy sensors and wastes their precision-guided munitions.
Radar Emission Management (EMCON) entails minimizing energetic radar scans, making the system more durable to detect. As an alternative, use passive sensors or, if an anti-radiation missile (ARM) is detected, shut down the radar fully. Use decoy emitters to attempt to masks the areas of the particular missile website emitters.
Built-in Layered Air Defence System
Lively layered defence is a mixture of techniques to create a multi-layered defend, long-range for ballistic missiles, medium-range for plane, and Shut-In Weapon Methods (CIWS) for drones. Level defence integration entails place CIWS, resembling anti-aircraft weapons or short-range missiles, particularly to guard radar websites from incoming cruise missiles and drones.
Main militaries tier their air defence techniques, with shorter-range missiles and weapons arrayed ‘up-threat’ or alongside seemingly strike ingress routes to guard a longer-range space air defence system.
Digital Warfare (EW) Safety
Defending AD techniques from jamming entails a mixture of Digital Counter-Countermeasures (ECCM) to take care of radar performance, tactical manoeuvres to keep away from detection, and technological upgrades to function in denied environments. Trendy methods give attention to agility, mobility, and redundancy to counter jamming makes an attempt.
Jamming and spoofing are additionally used to disrupt the steerage techniques of anti-radiation missiles (ARM) and drones. Signature administration entails lowering the electromagnetic signature of radars, making them more durable to detect by passive digital help measures (ESM).
If a ground-based radar can not “forestall” jamming, it tries to minimise its results. Energy output could be manipulated to scale back transmissions for a simpler, shorter operational vary for a small length.
The subsequent possibility is to make use of each unfold spectrum and frequency agility. It’s a lot more durable to jam a radar utilizing a number of frequencies without delay. Even more durable if they’re frequency bands, and you’re additionally leaping the spot frequency round in every band.
As soon as the jammer has managed to output RF vitality sufficient to utterly block the radar’s use of both, or each, triangulation and/or trilateration to find the supply of the jamming.
Bodily Hardening and Concealment
Hardened websites embody the development of bunkers or fortified, camouflaged positions to guard launchers and radar elements from air strikes. Although in the end, the radar antennae should be within the open for his or her operations.
Terrain masking entails positioning techniques behind hills or inside forests to restrict the instructions from which they are often focused.
Counter-SEAD Measures
The coordinated response contains fast communication amongst radar items, fighter plane (CAP), and numerous GBADS to neutralize attacking plane earlier than they’ll launch missiles.
Synthetic Intelligence (AI) helps real-time, high-speed calculations of incoming threats, significantly for intercepting high-speed missiles. India’s S-400, Akash, and SPYDER techniques are designed to function in an built-in method, permitting for each space defence and rapid-reaction, point-defence capabilities.
Safety from ARMs
A number of strategies are used to guard from ARMs. Jamming the ARM seeker with highly effective transmitters. May attempt to decoy them with offset transmitters in the identical frequency vary as personal AD radar.
The identical strategy could be utilized to Digital Countermeasures on the transmitters themselves. ARM could be destroyed via onerous kill utilizing its personal AD techniques in a layered defence.
Lastly, one can shut the Radar off for a short time if an arm is detected. Some militaries search to realize air dominance, or a minimum of air superiority, in order that closing to inside ARM launch vary is almost not possible for the attacker.
Technological Counter-Countermeasures
Technological Counter-Countermeasures embody frequency hopping with radars quickly altering frequencies to remain forward of jammers making an attempt to lock onto a single band.
Agile Beam-Steering in superior radars can shift their beam path quickly to keep away from jamming noise. Burn-By strategies contain growing the radar transmitter energy to overpower the jamming sign.
Utilizing superior algorithms to filter out noise, acknowledge deception patterns, and distinguish true targets from false ones. Aspect-lobe cancellation entails designing antennas that ignore indicators coming from instructions apart from the principle, meant scanning path. Implementing AI for automated, real-time identification of jamming sorts and automated, adaptive countermeasure deployment.
Bodily shielding digital elements from high-power microwave or electromagnetic pulses (EMP) and shifting to larger or much less generally used frequencies which might be more durable to jam. New ARMs can bear in mind a radar’s location even when it shuts down; subsequently, fashionable defences use superior decoys to simulate the radar even after it’s off.
Glint Phenomena makes use of specialised, high-fidelity decoys to generate “glint” (flickering) within the ARM’s monopulse receiver, inflicting monitoring errors. Implement GPS/GNSS spoofers to confuse navigation techniques of guided munitions, inflicting them to overlook the goal.
Lowering Radar Vulnerabilities
Apart from the radar antenna, which should be introduced up into the open, most different techniques should be in hardened shelters or caves. Newer applied sciences scale back digital vulnerabilities.
Growing use of space-based constellations and platforms in near-space will scale back GBAD necessities. On the location, restore and spare back-ups are essential.
Wartime Restore and Upkeep Points
Restore and upkeep of GBADS in a warzone current important challenges that may severely degrade a army’s means to guard its airspace. The first points embody excessive battle harm, logistical bottlenecks for spare elements, and the necessity for fast, in-field, harm restore options.
Conflicts could cause geopolitical and provide chain disruptions, making it troublesome to supply important spare elements. Disruptions in delivery and/or sanctions may have an effect on.
The high-intensity use of missiles and radars throughout warfare creates fast, high-volume demand for consumables that may exceed accessible inventory. Transporting heavy, specialised elements to the entrance strains whereas beneath enemy hearth is hazardous and time-consuming, affecting operational readiness.
Broken techniques should be fastened instantly to revive protecting umbrellas, as non-deployable techniques create important vulnerabilities. On-site repairs usually happen in or close to the fight zone, requiring extremely educated, expert technicians who can carry out complicated diagnostics beneath stress.
If a system is severely broken, it should be recovered from the sphere. Tracked autos, resembling these utilized in cellular GBAD, require specialised, gradual, and dangerous restoration operations with heavy-lifting gear.
Legacy techniques pose their very own restore challenges as a result of obsolescence and restricted spare availability. Enemy jamming and cyber-attacks can disrupt the software program/electronics of superior techniques, requiring specialised software program help, generally from international producers who could also be unreachable.
Lengthy-term deployment in harsh discipline environments results in structural corrosion, lowering the effectivity of radar and missile launchers.
Trendy, automated air defence techniques are complicated; educated upkeep personnel could also be in brief provide or unavailable on the entrance strains. These challenges display that, in fashionable warfare, the power to quickly restore, preserve, and maintain GBADS is simply as important because the techniques’ capabilities.
Typical Structure to Defend THAAD AD System
Typical techniques used to defend THAAD radar and battery websites embody MIM-104 Patriot (PAC-3), the first, close-in, lower-tier defence that protects THAAD batteries, significantly the AN/TPY-2 radar, from cruise missiles, plane, and tactical ballistic missiles that slip previous THAAD. Iron Dome acts because the lower-most tier, intercepting short-range rockets, artillery, and drones that would threaten the THAAD radar set up.
David’s Sling is a mid-tier system utilized in tandem with THAAD and Iron Dome, able to intercepting cruise missiles and short-range ballistic missiles. Varied, generally undisclosed, Quick-Vary Air Defence (SHORAD) techniques are deployed to guard the instant neighborhood of the THAAD radar in opposition to drones and low-flying threats.
Built-in Air and Missile Defence Battle Command System (IBCS) is the command-and-control community that connects the THAAD battery to different defence property (Patriot, sensors), permitting them to share knowledge, enhance the protected space, and optimize the usage of interceptors.
A separate AN/TPY-2 radar could be deployed in “forward-based mode” to detect threats early, feeding knowledge to the THAAD battery to offer earlier and extra correct focusing on. In areas such because the Center East, CENTCOM integrates THAAD with allied radar techniques to create a “frequent air image” for improved situational consciousness.
Radar elements are sometimes unfold out, and the positioning is fortified to face up to particles or close by impacts. Use of fighter plane (like F-35s) to offer air superiority and goal drones or cruise missiles that would assault the radar.
Because the THAAD focuses rather more on Ballistic missile defence, these techniques are important for defending in opposition to descending missiles, making it weak to assaults from totally different angles or low-altitude, high-speed cruise missiles.
To Summarise
Defending AD techniques resembling S-400, Patriot, or NASAMS from hard-kill weapons (loitering munitions, anti-radiation missiles, drones, and guided bombs) requires a layered, “onion-skin” defensive bubble strategy that mixes energetic interception, digital warfare, and passive survivability techniques.
Trendy threats, significantly suicide drones, are designed to overwhelm these techniques by saturating defences. Layering defences ensures that if one system fails, one other handles the risk, significantly for short-range safety of long-range property.
For self-propelled AD techniques (e.g., Pantsir, Tor), integrating vehicle-based hard-kill APS is essential for destroying top-attack weapons and ATGMs. Exhausting-kill interceptors detect incoming threats (RPG/missile) utilizing radars and launch small projectiles to neutralize them 50m away from the car.
With elevated drone threats, an efficient C-UAS (Counter-Unmanned Plane Methods) is vital not just for GBADS but in addition for high-value ground-based political, army, and financial property.
Programmable Air Burst Munitions (ABM) that explode close to the goal, releasing sub-projectiles to extend the kill chance of incoming missiles or drones. New options present 360-degree detection and 90-degree elevation to guard in opposition to drones coming straight from above.
Hiding and defending the system when not actively capturing is important in opposition to anti-radiation missiles (ARM). Always transfer cellular AD techniques to confuse enemy intelligence relating to their location. Flip off radars (emitters) when an ARM is detected, forcing the weapon to lose its lock.
Deploy reproduction decoys (e.g., inflatable dummies) of radars and launchers to draw costly, high-quality ammunition. Shield important elements utilizing sandbags, earth berms, or netting to camouflage property and scale back the blast influence of close by hits.
Excessive-Vitality Lasers/Microwaves supply a low cost-per-shot in opposition to low cost drones, utilizing laser beams to burn via airframes or microwave pulses to destroy drone electronics.
Autonomous Swarm Interceptors utilising AI-driven, autonomous drones that may intercept incoming drone swarms at a considerably decrease value than utilizing, for example, a multimillion-dollar Patriot missile.
Iran has used cruise missiles and Shahid-136 class ($50,000) kamikaze drones to focus on the THAAD radar. Clearly, the warfare is getting democratized with much less highly effective nations with the ability to use low cost drones to hit costly GBADS.
There’ll thus be a have to take a contemporary take a look at the strategy to the defence of GBADS and at cost-to-effect ratios.
- Air Marshal Anil Chopra (Retired) is an Indian Air Pressure veteran, fighter take a look at pilot, and ex-director-general of the Heart for Air Energy Research. He has been embellished with gallantry and distinguished service medals throughout his 40-year tenure within the IAF.
- THIS IS AN OPINION ARTICLE. VIEWS PERSONAL OF THE AUTHOR
- He tweets @Chopsyturvey
- Comply with EurAsian Occasions on Google Information
