The Israeli Air Force is said to have found a way, although not new, but still very effective to bypass the radar of the Russian S-400 Triumf air defence missile complex.
After the Russian side supplied Syria with S-300 air defence missile systems and integrated them with a unified sky control network, allowing to receive data from the S-400’s radar, Moscow confidently asserted that Syria has become impregnable.
But the reality shows that the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has found a way to deceive the radar of one of the most advanced and long-range air defence missile systems in the world.
Experts know that Syrian air defence systems can only attack Israeli warplanes if they appear in the sky of the country.
Normally, the Israeli Air Force uses the tactics of firing cruise missiles from Lebanese airspace, but at least 8 cases in which Israeli fighters violated the airspace of Syria, attacking and destroying ground targets without being detected by Syrian air defence forces.
This is indeed possible, but only in some special areas of Syria, where the radar stations of the Russian S-400, and even the radar of the Syrian S-300, do not observe the target.
According to the information provided, Israeli F-16 fighters and possibly F-35 stealth fighters have successfully carried out many attacks from the south and east of Syria.
Due to the location and the terrain conditions at which the Syrian and Russian air defence systems are deployed, the early warning radar can only detect aerodynamic targets in these directions if they are at an altitude of over 800 meters.
In the case of Israeli warplanes moving at an altitude of below 1000 meters (many similar attacks have been recorded before), the target detection range of both the S-300 and S-400 radar is only 40 to 100 km.
This range is much lower than the range of Delilah cruise missiles that Israeli fighters often carry, even shorter than the range of guided bombs like the Spice 1000.
“Flights of US and Israeli fighters can draw a kind of map of the areas affected by Russian air defence systems, which they can use to deceive radar and successfully penetrate”.
“It can be seen that the S-300 and S-400 air defence systems do not cover all of Syria, in addition, the radar is also very difficult to identify targets flying at an altitude of less than 1 km,”.
Flying low, wriggling, taking advantage of the terrain to attack is the favourite tactic of the US and Israeli Air Force, which they have used many times over the past time, according to experts, it is extremely difficult to deal with this form of warfare.
Long-range anti-aircraft missile systems like the S-300/400 are optimized for hitting targets at high altitudes, while short-range systems like the Pantsir-S1 or Tor-M2 lack the time to hit targets.
In addition to sophisticated tactics, Israeli fighters are also equipped with advanced electronic warfare systems and stealth technology, which makes Russian and Syrian air defenses even more difficult to deal with.