Thread by @TrentTelenko

1/This is a tweet thread on the drone campaign inside the on-going Azeri-Armenian War.

Most have focused on the drone strike videos, myself included, but it is the C4ISR system behind it that makes it the Spanish Civil War of the 21st Century.

C4ISR is this thread's subject

2/Too appreciate the Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) portion of the Azeri drone campaign requires some background.

This is Armenia's 2nd drone war.

See Armenian troop reaction here -

https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1310954999451725825

3/ Yet the Armenians are doing far worse than the last time they fought Azeri suicide drones.

Hero loitering munition (Israeli)

https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1314278652545298434

Harop loitering munition (Israeli)
iai.co.il/p/harop

https://twitter.com/blueboy1969/status/1314141356684718082

4/It isn't just a question of more, although that is a factor, particularly given the scale of Israeli & Turkish arms sales.

See Zarba loitering munition, which is a licensed produced version of the Israeli Orbiter 1K.
defence-blog.com/news/azad-syst…

5/The Azeris have three types of loitering drone munitions plus a Turkish drone called the TB2 dropping unpowered laser guided munitions.

See 29 post thread on the implications on the proliferation of armed medium altitude long endurance (MALE) drones

https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1312884906272452610

6/What we are seeing here with the general failure of Armenian air defenses is the AFV equivalent of the 1967 sinking of the Eilat.

DD's did not become obsolete because of a pair of Komar missile boats sank one. Neither will AFV's.

See this thread -

https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1311278889981935617

7/See this very good 50th anniversary post for context -

THE SINKING OF THE INS EILAT: 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRST SURFACE TO SURFACE ENGAGEMENT WITH ASCM’S
21 October 2017
steeljawscribe.com/2017/10/21/the…

8/ We know from the 2014-2015 Donbas fighting that the Ukrainians killed off nearly all of the Russian fleet of Israeli UAVs using SA-8 GECKO and at least once an SA-11 GADFLY.

euromaidanpress.com/2015/05/14/rus…

9/ The Ukraine responded via LRRP's with DIY multi-copters drones to spot artillery strikes.

Ukraine's DIY drone war: Self-taught soldiers facing up to Russian-backed war machine
By Nicholas Lazaredes in Ukraine
Updated 26 Apr 2015, 10:38pm

abc.net.au/news/2015-04-2…

10/Yet in 2020, the TB2 is systematically killing Armenian Tanks, Trucks, Artillery, & Anti-aircraft vehicles that Israeli surplus Russian drones did not in 2015.

What changed?

The answer is C4ISR and the tactics training and procedures (TTP) that go with it.

11/Too explain how C4ISR has changed, I'm going to draw in this document:

The Radar Game - Understanding Stealth and Aircraft Survivability
web.archive.org/web/2010112002…

12/The goal of stealth is to pre-empt detection and break
down the chain of events where an air defense must attempt to detect, track, and take a valid shot at an airframe.

See the difference between a stealth & non-stealth strike.

13/The use of stealth is underscored by the use of mission planning software to steer a low observable air frame through a modern integrated air defense system (IADS).

14/How a strike is planned depends on the observability of the air frame, frequency, height, terrain and the coverage weaknesses of the IADS.

These figures show a conventional "Fuzzball" and either a "pacman" or "bowtie" stealth airframe RCS.

15/These figures show how RCS varies with frequency.

16/Terrain has coverage blind spots no matter how dense the IADS sensor network.

And this has been known since World War 2, as these 1940's radar coverage documents show.

17/Another thing known since WW2 was that radar has a zenith coverage blind spot directly overhead.

Japanese Kamikazes exploited it often via a low approach with zoom climb into the "radar cone of silence."

https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1314586067866091521

18/Turkish TB2 operators have shown a similar knowledge of this radar blind spot for non-AESA radars in attacking Russian Panshir-S1 in Libya.

See this sub-tweet thread -

https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1314347734040707079

19/"The Radar Game..." also points out that pulse doppler radars also have a coverage 'notch' that will deny a missile shot because the doppler shift does not provide a good track.

20/What is happening to Armenian air defenses is that the RCS of drones are innately small and the Azeris are getting outside C4ISR support.

The execution of Armenian air defense argues that we are seeing ELINT & SIGINT location of those assets with mission planning software..

21/...support that provides drone evasive routing through the Armenian IADS.

There is a US military model for this kind of support.

See:
Standoff Munitions Application Center, Barksdale AFB, LA
U.S. Air Force Fact Sheet
8af.af.mil/Units/Standoff…

22/Unclassified metrics presented to the Association of Old Crows --

SMAC did 1700 JASSM targets worth of route planning in FY2017.

A "Medium threat" environment like Syria prior to the S-300 deployment was two days and two full simulation runs for a 90% effective to strike.

23/...A "Kaliningrad class" threat with a S-400 takes longer and requires five simulation runs with the best threat data for a 70% effective target engagement.

SMAC planned the Shayrat Airbase attack on 7 April 2017 and both 14 April 2018 attacks on Barzah & Him Shanshar.

24/Armenia is a low to medium threat IADS and both Turkey and Israel have operated in a S-300 protected Syrian air space.

Whether Israel or Turkey are providing the Azeri regime SMAC style munition planning support is less relevant than the fact it is happening at all.

25/25 The hook here is the following --

What is near impossible for the 1st generation of engineers is merely difficult for the 2nd and is easy for the 3rd...

...and the electronic/software technological generations drone combat power is based upon are 18 months.