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Comment by jessaustin | Hacker News Reader

How are AWACS defended? Are they too far away for the enemy to engage? Is it possible to stealth a plane that constantly broadcasts radar? Do they have other means of missile/drone defense? I hope that "assume AWACS doesn't get attacked" is not the first assumption in all these war game exercises.

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Attacking an AWACS is very much on the table, it's just hard. It's like being a battleship captain saying "well, if we sink the bloody carrier then the problem's solved, right?"--you're not wrong but you're vastly underestimating the difficulty. AWACS radar is so strong they can be (and should!) very very very far away from anything that could possibly reach out and touch them, and actually attacking an AWACS will draw so much attention and fire that the attack is probably doomed to failure unless the air force in question is enormously overextended (very possible). I suppose you could use it to divert attention while you did something else, but it'll be a costly diversion.

Now if you did get close to one, considering that the popular ones are visibly repurposed airliners they would probably go down pretty easy. But that's a little like saying "I can sink your aircraft carrier with my 16" gun" without the proviso that "... as long as you let me get way too close first".

The point being that the radar range of an AWACS vastly exceeds the range of any air-to-air missile in production or under design.

So when you see hostile planes driving towards you, you send some fighters to go and shoot them down.

Meanwhile the AWACS can be supporting air, sea and ground battles happening for hundreds of kilometres in every direction. They really are powerful tools.

How about disabling it from space. Load a cruise missile onto a satellite and launch?

Why not railguns? Or laser beams?

The point is to deal with what exists currently and what is likely to exist in the service life of a military system.

You're right though. Space will eventually and inevitably be much more militarised.

> Why not railguns? Or laser beams?

But at the price of $1T they better be thinking of the future and think about opponents who are also willing to spend around that order of magnitude on defense.

Well if this tactical situation goes like others have recently, it will more probably be a weird, cheap-ass, out-of-the-box attack that will dominate AWACS like roadside IEDs dominated Hum-vees. I don't know what that will be, but some possibilities are: network or systems hacks, airborne debris dispersal, swarm of cheap drones released inside the fighter shell, etc. The concept of a fighter escort perimeter reminds me of the firewall on a network boundary. That's not defense-in-depth, and by itself it doesn't work too well anymore.

Sure the space-borne laser or railgun is fun, but it's probably not the first thing that the Taliban or their equivalent will attempt. Unless they can find a way to hijack one that we've conveniently installed for them.

Good point.

Yeah it seems big defense is building for two opponents. Strategic opponents -- basically anyone who has nukes and is not an friend.

Then there is a need to build for guerrilla warfare, roadside bombs, urban combat, target assassinations.

Recently the later seem to matter more. But big and high tech projects will get funding and will do so. Now the system is broken and often the only reason these projects get funded is because there is some defense contractor extending its hand waiting for the next $200M to keep profits up and people employed.

Now it would be interesting to research how to combat or counteract drones? What can someone in a poor country oppressed by a more powerful enemy with drones do to defend against them. Can they be detected easily?

AWACS in combat historically have had fighter (or interceptor) escorts. Sure, I miss the Phoenix, but even without that, you can usually intercept any threat before it reaches the AWACS.

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