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Wild Weasel: Difference between revisions
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{{Useful Notes}}
'''[[Wild Weasel|Wild Weasels]]''' are the aircraft crews who try to [[Airstrike Impossible|sniff out and kill enemy anti-aircraft defenses]] ahead of other air missions, as well as the pop-culture name for that mission. They show up in some flight sims and a few pieces of war literature, but not quite enough to be their own trope; nevertheless, while stories of fighters-versus-SAMs aren't ''quite'' as glamorous as hot fighter-on-fighter action (and thus gets way less exposure in popular culture), they're still a very important component of aerial warfare, not to mention an eternal part of the Vietnam War for pilots. In short, they handle [[Escort Mission|Escort Missions]] where the main threat is a [[Macross Missile Massacre]] from surface-to-air missiles instead of enemy aircraft.
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=== Into the Den: Meet the Weasels ===
Actually, the idea was [[A Simple Plan|basic enough]]: fit a "Wild Weasel" aircraft with basic radio-detection equipment, add in an additional couple of wingmen, and have it [[Escort Mission|accompany the flight of bombers]]. At some point, some enemy search radar--say, a "[[Reporting Names|Fan Song]]" radar for the SA-2--will light up your formation. The Weasel chases down the direction of the radar signal with his wingmen right behind him; if the SAM locks on to him and launches, it's [[High-Speed Missile Dodge|go low and evade]] (SA-2s were notoriously inaccurate below 3,000 feet). Keep this up until it finds the launch site and/or radar and hits it with rockets and cannon. After that, its wingmen perform their own strikes on the site to make sure it's dead, all while the bombers proceed serenely unmolested by the SAM site. [[What Could Possibly Go Wrong?]], indeed?
(Not coincidentally, the unofficial motto of the Wild Weasels was "YGBSM", for "[[You Have Got to Be Kidding Me!|You Gotta Be Shittin' Me!]]", reportedly [[Oh Crap|the response]] of the first Weasel <s>[[Insistent Terminology|pilot]]</s> [[Guy in Back|Electronic Warfare Officer]] when he learned ''just'' what his mission entailed.)
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=== Exploiting the Terrain: [[Geo Effects]] [[In Space|IN THE AIR!]] ===
The whole business of SAM hunting was a fair bit more complicated than just lofting Shrikes and Standards at whatever Fan Song radar lit up the sky. One big problem was that of range: a single SA-2 weighed 5,000 pounds, and most of that was rocket propellent; that gave it a far longer reach than the short-ranged Shrike missiles. The antiradar missiles would rarely put an entire SAM site out of commission for long: the standard SA-2 battery consisted of six launcher vehicles in a "Star of David" formation around the radar van, plus a small fleet of support vehicles and stockpiled missiles. The missile would only kill the radar van, if it hit at all (and if the radar was turned on--always a big ''if''). Plus, there was the question of flight time: the SA-2 was ''fifty percent'' faster than the Shrike, and still significantly faster than the Standard, meaning that a SA-2 could launch its missile, guide it to its target, and turn itself off to avoid the incoming ARM.
So, despite the addition of the Shrike and the Standard to the Wild Weasel arsenal, flying SEAD often entailed closing in on the radar site and hitting it the hard way, with unguided bombs and rockets. Just getting close enough was a real challenge: aircraft had to skim the treetops and hide in valleys to avoid radar exposure. Low-altitude flight, in turn, meant increased vulnerability to shoulder-fired missiles and antiaircraft guns, the number-one cause of aircraft losses in Vietnam. Add in the ''many'' tips and tricks on the propagation of radio waves, jamming, chaff, ECCM, and you could see why Weasel crews call it "a game of chess in 3-D, and the opposition cheats". Because Wild Weasel missions take place at low altitude, terrain matters. (This is also why what applies for land-based SEAD doesn't always work for attacking navies: over a flat ocean, there are no canyons to hide in. Barring stealth technology or truly exceptional ECM work, you're not getting within 30 miles of a competent radar screen without being detected.)
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=== Post Vietnam ===
The US [[Incredibly Lame Pun|piloted]] Wild Weasel techniques in Vietnam, so most cases of pop culture that ''do'' feature SEAD missions are drawn from/inspired by the Vietnam-era missions. However, in the roughly forty years since the war, the fighter-versus-SAM conflict has continued in various parts of the world, although not on the same scale as Vietnam. The most immediate example came just after the US pulled out from Vietnam, during the [[Arab-Israeli Conflict|1973 Yom Kippur War]], where new Egyptian and Syrian SA-6 missiles and ZSU-23/4 antiaircraft guns hurt the Israeli Air Force very badly; as the IAF learned the hard way, what worked against the long-ranged SA-2 wasn't necessarily applicable against the short-ranged SA-6. The Israelis would return the favor in 1982, where imaginative use of decoy drones over the Bekaa Valley and some very intense training post-1973 paid off nicely ([[Curb Stomp Battle|30 SAM sites and 80 Syrian fighters destroyed versus zero Israeli losses]]).
For the US, the F-4G Wild Weasel-dedicated variant and the AGM-88 HARM, the successor to both the Shrike and the Standard, came into service, where they proved very deadly against Soviet-made SAMs in Libya and Iraq. As a measure of ''just'' how far the Wild Weasel mission has come since its birth, note that Baghdad's air defense system [[Gulf War|in 1991]] was estimated to be ''triple'' the thickness of Hanoi's. [[Technology Marches On|It was comprehensively smashed in a matter of weeks, thanks in no small part to new weapon systems like cruise missiles and the F-117 stealth fighter.]] The USAF is one of comparatively few services to maintain a dedicated Wild Weasel platform, the F-16CJ; most other air forces have taken the US Navy approach of fitting EW pods and antiradar missiles to multirole aircraft for the SEAD role.
The advent of armed remote controlled drones combined with improvements to stealth technology has further changed the nature of Wild Weasel missions. As drones are unmanned and relatively cheap, they can be used to great effect in distracting air defenses. Drones (which are no-where near as fast or dangerous as figher-bombers, and are not attractive targets for SAMs) crowd the radar screen and draw fire while stealth aircraft power in and attack. While there is no such thing as a perfect stealth, when they are visible on radar they produce very small signatures, comparable to drones. In practice it makes it incredibly difficult for SAM crews to know what to shoot at, and what is actually attacking them.
Similarly, the advent of AWACS air-born radar/control centres and space base surveillance technologies has greatly reduced losses in anti-SAM missions. Knowing where SAMs are positioned practically eliminates the need to place aircraft in harms way. Modern terrain skimming cruise missiles can hit with superb effectiveness at extreme ranges and are next to impossible to shoot down. In response to this, SAM crews move their positions constantly and place radar reflectors, although this does not protect them from commando units marking targets. Similarly, once a SAM site goes active and gives its position away, modern GPS, inertial guidance and AWACS control can guide a weasels missiles to where they need to be with a great degree of certainty, regardless of radars being active.
As with most things in modern combat, the advantages are all with the attackers. Even assuming that you have no knowledge of a SAM site's location and have no ability to kill it from safe range, wild weasel missions are not as dangerous as they once were. Stealth technology allows planes to get into position with decreased risk, and improved on-board computers allows for faster tracking and (combined with smarter missiles) the ability to strike at targets even when radars are off.
In practice, SAM systems by themselves can only really slow down a large, modern airforce. The only real defense is a similarly sized and funded air force, and even then the defenders are still at a huge disadvantage, as they have to spread their forces around the clock.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Wild Weasel]]
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