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LearningTranscript
00:00So, a few days ago, we had news of an Egyptian Rafale F3 managing to jam the radar of another
00:12Egyptian Suhoi 35, making it almost useless.
00:16A few years ago, we also had some news that the Russians in Syria, in their Khmeimim,
00:25they managed to defeat a drone attack electronically, and then there are, for example, those Typhoon
00:32pilots always saying that the Gripen is capable of getting very, very close, scaringly close
00:38when it's on electronic warfare suit.
00:42And do you remember those cases in the Baltic where some Russian planes actually appeared
00:48nearby some American ships without having been identified by the SPI-1 radars before,
00:54just appeared out of nowhere and nobody really knew how they did it?
00:58Oh, and the Australian pilot, do you remember the Australian pilot saying that even within
01:04visual range was incapable of tracking the F-22 and shooting it?
01:11Yes, but at the same time, we all remember that picture where there was the F-22 just
01:18in the middle of the Rafale head-up display.
01:23Yes, but still we have all those pilots that you're fighting against the F-22 or the F-35,
01:29they were really unable to understand where it was coming from.
01:34And I mean, many of them were actually F-15 pilots.
01:38So if A beats B, and B beats C, but then C beats A, which one is the best?
01:52Welcome to Millennium Seven Star, the channel that helps you make sense of military history
01:57and military technology.
01:59And please stay with me till the end, because as usual, the stuff that we're going to cover
02:03here is not easily found anywhere else on YouTube.
02:08But maybe you can find it if you look attentively, but it's not very common.
02:12So, assessing military power before the Industrial Age was relatively easy because numbers, quantities
02:26were the driver.
02:27Obviously, the troops experience was extremely important, the training was extremely important.
02:34But the equipment, there are not that many cases where an asymmetry in the equipment
02:42turns out to be decisive for the outcome of a confrontation.
02:47There are some cases, indeed, think the British longbows, for example, during the 100 Years War,
02:53but there are not that many.
02:55When after the Napoleonic Wars, the technology asymmetry became more and more relevant,
03:03and everything became much more complicated.
03:06In World War Two, obviously, quantity was still an important factor, extremely important factor,
03:12but technology became a decider.
03:15However, judging the potential effectiveness of an aircraft at the time was still relatively easy.
03:24We had to consider a couple of dozen parameters overall, speed, autonomy, max altitude, armament,
03:34protection, this kind of things.
03:36Since the parameters were few, then it was still possible to say things like that everything else equal,
03:43an aircraft with two more machine guns was, well, you could safely say that it was then better than the other one.
03:52The root problem is that our brain is not wired for multivariate optimization.
03:58We like to think in a linear scale.
04:01This is also the reason behind the fact that in business we make key performance indicators
04:07rather than assessing the raw numbers.
04:09In economy, we have all sorts of indexes to represent a phenomenon.
04:15However, with few relatively simple and linear, crucially linear parameters, we can still manage.
04:24But when things become more complicated, or they are no longer linear, well, we fail.
04:31In modern warfare, this linear approach is misleading at best, or utterly wrong at worst.
04:45So, we see a lot of videos on YouTube comparing two different pieces of military hardware.
04:52Normally, the comparison is made on numbers, the few numbers that are known or are estimated.
05:00This approach has several weaknesses, obviously, but it becomes totally inadequate
05:05when we are evaluating or comparing systems.
05:10I mean electronic, electromagnetic systems, or electro-optic systems.
05:15The first consideration is that the information that you can find on these systems,
05:20at least on the relatively modern ones that are still in service, is definitely not accurate.
05:25The information that you find in the public domain is often an estimate,
05:31or numbers declared by the manufacturers for marketing reasons.
05:37And maybe what we know is deliberately wrong.
05:41Now, figure out for yourself what is going to happen when you are trying to work out
05:45the interaction between two unknowns.
05:48Yes, it's an order of magnitude bigger unknown.
05:52But, since we don't like this situation, then we end up using generic categories.
05:59Modern, effective, capable, when not the old, plain, good or bad.
06:06And sometimes I'm guilty of that too, to be honest.
06:09Ok, Altis, how is the Rafale F3 Spectra suit?
06:13It is good, sir.
06:14And what about the Sukhoi 35?
06:18It is good, sir. Very advanced.
06:20Is the Sukhoi 35 better or worse than the Rafale?
06:25According to the information available, the Su-35 is a bit worse than the Rafale, sir.
06:31Please, define a bit.
06:33I don't know, sir. This is a very ineffective human way of expressing quality.
06:39I just copied it.
06:40Ok, let's rephrase it.
06:42What exactly is better in the Rafale than in the Sukhoi 35?
06:50I don't know, sir.
06:52Do you want me to connect to the Egyptian Ministry of Defense mainframe to find out?
06:57No, stop it!
06:59So, despite our liking for this nuanced approach of assessing the effectiveness,
07:07when it comes to assessing the effectiveness of electronic systems, electronic warfare,
07:12radars, current search and tracks and this kind of systems,
07:16it may well be the case that the nuanced approach doesn't cut it.
07:20It may well be the case that one system can make another one completely useless.
07:27As it may have happened with the Rafale and the Sukhoi 35,
07:32a specific feature on a jammer may be capable of making an entire radar useless.
07:39On the flip side, if a radar can use a frequency which is completely outside the jammer's frequency band,
07:46then the jammer becomes useless.
07:49One famous example.
07:51During the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Israel based its defense on two pillars.
07:58Well, actually three, to be honest, but I don't think nukes are relevant in this context.
08:04So, two pillars, a massive fleet of effective tanks and its modern air force.
08:10The tanks were neutralized, at least at the beginnings,
08:14by encountering for the first time in history a massive screen of guided anti-tank weapons.
08:21But I'm digressing.
08:23The air force, after the Egyptian attack through the Suez Canal,
08:27tried to attack and confront the Egyptian troops,
08:32but they ended up in the operating range of the SA-6 gainful.
08:36The SA-6 was a Soviet surface-to-air missile that was state-of-the-art at the time.
08:42Those weapons took an unexpected heavy toll on the Israeli air force.
08:48The reason was that the radar warning receivers installed on many Israeli aircraft
08:55were not capable of intercepting the guidance emissions of the SA-6 in the coup band.
09:04If the pilot didn't see the missile firing, it had no technology that could help him.
09:09The only possible solution in this case was using a radar warning receiver
09:14that was capable of working in the coup band.
09:17Nothing less would be effective.
09:19It was a yes or no situation.
09:21Either you can work in the coup band or you can't.
09:26An improved, a bit better radar warning receiver,
09:30but still incapable of working in coup band, would not have been a solution.
09:36This is a strong non-linearity. This is on and off.
09:40This is not, well, if it was maybe a bit better, it could have...
09:44No. Either yes or no. Non-linear.
09:54So, the availability or the lack of a specific technology
09:59can make a weapon completely useless in modern warfare.
10:03This is obviously useful to know beforehand,
10:06so that's the reason why the United States, China and Russia
10:10invest a lot of efforts and a lot of money in trying to provoke each other
10:16in order to better understand the electromagnetic order of battle of the opponents.
10:22This is the reason why you see all these reports of confrontations
10:27over the Baltic, over the Black Sea, above the China Sea and so on.
10:32That's the purpose of doing this kind of activity.
10:35And to be honest, it's not just the major partners.
10:38The French tend to do this pretty much everywhere in the world.
10:42The British have their own initiatives.
10:45And to a lesser extent, even my own country, Italy,
10:48has this kind of capability that is used and deployed sometimes
10:52within the context of NATO operations.
10:56However, despite all these activities, nobody really knows what is going to happen
11:02if a generalized conflict had to begin.
11:06In the first critical hours, when in modern conflict the maximum effort is actually applied,
11:13it may well happen that a technology that was fundamental for your plans
11:19is not going to work, or at least is not going to work as expected.
11:24At the beginning of the hostilities,
11:26when all the systems are all clashing together at the same time,
11:32you may have several of these situations.
11:36The one thing that I'm pretty sure that is going to happen
11:39if this generalized conflict between near peers is going to happen,
11:45is that the plans will go out of the window almost immediately.
11:51In one of my previous videos about the F-35,
11:54I mentioned the risk of putting all the eggs in one basket.
11:58Many European air forces, in general many world air forces,
12:02are going to have the F-35 as the only model in their inventory.
12:08And this is very dangerous.
12:10Variety is intrinsically a form of protection.
12:17In the same way, biodiversity increases the resilience of the ecosystems.
12:25Different systems may interact in different ways with different outcomes,
12:30particularly if they are based on different working principles,
12:36different weapons with different seekers,
12:39or different sensors with different sensing technology,
12:45everything stuck together, all layered together.
12:48This is going to be much more resilient
12:52than anything based just on the best possible technology.
12:57Standardization is good in a civilian economy.
13:01It's definitely not applicable in a military and in a conflict context.
13:07A fleet composed by two totally different types of aircraft,
13:12designed by different people, built in different factories,
13:16with different methodologies, using different weapons,
13:20different sensors that require different training from the pilots,
13:26is going to be intrinsically more resilient to these surprises.
13:30What may be effective against one may not be effective against the other.
13:34So, I think I made my point.
13:36And which kind of conclusion can we draw from this?
13:40Well, the conclusion that I would personally draw is
13:45that the next time someone asks you if, I don't know,
13:48the Eurofighter is better than the Rafale,
13:53just don't answer.
13:55Just don't.
13:59Or maybe point them to this video.
14:02So, thank you very much for watching.
14:03If you liked this video, I'm sure you will love the videos
14:06that are going to appear beside me.
14:07In the meanwhile, please just subscribe and like the video,
14:11because in this way YouTube will know that this was an interesting video
14:15and maybe is going to show this to someone else who is interested.
14:19If you could support the channel on Patreon or Subscribestar,
14:22you will have my eternal gratitude.
14:24In the meanwhile, again, thank you very much for watching
14:28and see you the next time.