Jaguars D3 with their AESA radars, and dedicated offensive EW suite, beats all but the Rafale for detecting, suppressing and tracking enemy SAM radars.
Hass rahe ho saalo. Kuch samajh hai toh nahi.
The Jaguar has a unified system architecture that takes threat cues from radar, AWACS, GCI, tracks live targets picked up by the ELM 2052, has an onboard adaptive radar jammer in the D29 (at the cost of one 30mm ADEN), carries SAAW and Hammer stand off munitions, and can cue decoys for particular SAMs.
Its low NoE flight profile, combined with Highway in the sky heads up routing makes it anyway impossible for ground based radars to pick up in the first place, and that has been there since D2 days. The 2052's ability to generate real time SAR maps of the terrain allow the bird to now launch munitions by following terrain without the need to have visual on target, nor the necessity for precise drop coordinates.
IAF Jag D3s have repeatedly and ad nauseum slipped past both the Rafale and the Sukhoi in exercises, have evaded not just the old SA 2s, Akash and Gecko batteries, but now the S400 too.
In international exercises, jags have penetrated Red Flag Mountain Home defenses (backed up by F15Cs and F16s) and USN F18s (with the E2C airborne).
There's a reason why the Jag is revered in the IAF strike community. And why we went to such great pains to acquire ex French and RAF Jags and keep our inventory updated.
Adding a quote from Group Captain Harsh Vardhan Thakur, Chief Test Pilot of HAL now:
"Its legacy electronic warfare (EW) suite has always been ahead of its time. Indeed, it’s the choice of opponent in all EW-range training capsules. I’ve led many a mission when the planners requested Jags to step up, to make a worthy battle of the whole mission. We’ve had our share of fun, repeatedly slipping through defences and taking out surface targets with maximum impunity. There was a training mission led by me, when I refused the request for our formation to step up (
gain altitude) just so ground radars could spot us and track us. So, all the sensors dipped their acquisition units to the surface when we were ingressing. Silly as it may sound, four of us accelerated to 560 knots at low levels and then zoomed up to 30,000 feet as we struck the runway, without one missile tracking us. The auto-bombing on Jag precludes the requirement of pilots to spot their DMPI. Pilots simply press the trigger and smoke a cigar, while the system does all the hard work of honing the sights on to the target and getting the bombs to ride to them accurately. Anyway, the two Jags at low levels penetrated the fringes of the missile envelope several times, then turned away. The CO at the missile unit went, ‘Gotcha!’. The debrief was a laugh riot. The poor CO is my course mate and curses me till date for his failed demo (to students) of the Jag formation take-down. ‘Pick on someone your own size’ I say."
He is speaking of the legacy Jaguar IS (the DARIN II)
