Bombarding the opponent with rockets and artillery usually wins. We've been doing that for decades.

The issue is that advanced opponents (ie: Russia or China) will have air defense of their own. How do you expect to take down a SAM site? Its specifically designed to destroy air targets as they approach.

With what, with air-drones? Against a hardened anti-air specialty base?

This is where electronic warfare comes in handy: "jamming" the radar of a SAM site for example will blindfold them. But the battle of information (jamming, stealth, and advanced radar) is constant, there's no guarantee that your jamming or stealth technology will be good enough for the next generation of Radar.

And no. You don't approach a SAM site (or any area a SAM site is defending) from the air. US Patriot systems can take out SCUD missiles traveling at Mach 5.

And if your "kamikaze drones" are flying at Mach 5 with an explosive payload, that makes them effectively a SCUD missile.

> And no. You don't approach a SAM site (or any area a SAM site is defending) from the air.

This is completely mistaken. SEAD (suppression of enemy air defenses) is one of the most basic and important missions the air force and naval aviators train for. The US absolutely does attack SAM sites from the air, and has done so going back to the Vietnam war. In 91 Saddam had a state of the art integrated air defense system that was systematically demolished by air in the initial days of the counterattack, long before ground troops got close to say Baghdad.

Google what the acronym at the bottom of the "Wild Weasel" patch means for a laugh.

Nice. :) For the lazy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Weasel

There are reams of doctrine about how to approach a SAM site from the air. Look up Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) or Destruction of Enemy Air Defense (DEAD).

Jammers (think emit a huge amount of energy on the frequency the radars use) and anti-radiation missiles (think radar homing) are a big part of it.

How many incoming bombs, cruise missiles, and other threats can a modern SAM system engage at once? According to wikipedia, a SA-20 carries 4 missiles per TEL, and each command vehicle can control up to 12 TELs. That gives the command vehicle 48 missiles to play with. There is a 0.7 chance of intercepting a "tactical ballistic missile," which is the equivalent to a SCUD, and is probably the easiest thing to intercept. If you fire two missiles at each TBM, you have about a 91% chance of intercepting each missile, meaning you only need to fire 7 TBMs at a site in order to have a fifty chance of one of the missiles making it through, if they fire two missiles at each one. In the meantime, the SAM sight has expended 14 very expensive surface to air missiles. BTW, the .7 figure is likely under favorable conditions, which most battlefields would not be, as there would be jamming, decoys, cyber attacks, and lots of other clutter. This is also for ballistic missiles. Terrain following cruise missiles and precision guided munitions would likely be more difficult to target. [1]

In modern warfare, the offense still has the advantage, if you don't run out of ammunition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_missile_system#S-300PMU-...

> How do you expect to take down a SAM site? Its specifically designed to destroy air targets as they approach.

> With what, with air-drones? Against a hardened anti-air specialty base?

Yep, air drones (or, to use the more common name, “missiles”, whether launched from the surface or launched from manned aircraft) are by far the most effective technique.

In fact, there are missiles optimized exclusively for that (anti-radiation missiles for taking out radars sites.)

> You don't approach a SAM site (or any area a SAM site is defending) from the air.

Yes, you usually do.

> US Patriot systems can take out SCUD missiles traveling at Mach 5.

SCUDs are ballistic missiles, which at any given speed are the easiest thing to hit, since they don't maneuver.

> And if your "kamikaze drones" are flying at Mach 5 with an explosive payload, that makes them effectively a SCUD missile.

No, it makes them hypersonic cruise missiles. Which no one, anywhere, has a particularly good counter for right now.

If all else fails, there's always the intercontinental ballistic tungsten telephone pole. Nothing short of a nuke can stop it.

The Earth does a pretty good job. Just don't stand in the way, and you won't get hit.