

Therefore, Dani kept the battery’s targeting radar inactive, but cued them towards the approximate position of the stealth aircraft reported by the P-18 radar. That not only gave adversaries a chance to direct stealth aircraft away from the threat, but invited a potential strike by a HARM anti-radiation missile. However, that still requires sweeping the sky for targets, and in the process illuminating themselves to enemy radars. The thing is, stealth jets can be detected by high-band targeting radars at short distances. The missile commander decided to set an ambush for the stealth jets, deploying S-125M batteries with a good firing angle on the NATO jets as they flew back to Italy. Recommended: Would China Really Invade Taiwan? Recommended: Russia's Next Big Military Sale - To Mexico? Air Force That Never Built the B-52 Bomber fighters and the airborne radar planes directing them, allowing Dani to piece together a accurate picture of those routines. Worse, the Serbs had managed to break into NATO communications and could overhear conversations between U.S. However, that the NATO mission planners had complacently scheduled the stealth bombers on predictable, routine flight patterns. However, low-bandwidth radars are imprecise and cannot provide a ‘weapons-grade’ lock. (Dani initially claimed he had modified the P-18’s hardware to achieve this, but later admitted this was a hoax.) Thanks to the decoys and constant movement, Zoltan’s unit didn’t lose a single SAM battery despite the twenty-three HARM missiles shot at him by NATO war planes.ĭani had noticed that his battery’s P-18 “Spoon Rest-D” long-range surveillance radar was able to provide a rough track of Nighthawks within a 15-mile range when tuned down to the lowest possible bandwidth-so low, in fact, that NATO radar-warning receivers were not calibrated to detect it. While his batteries shuttled from one site to another, Dani also setup dummy SAM sites and decoy targeting radars taken from old MiG fighters to divert NATO anti-radiation missiles. The S-125M wasn’t normally considered a ‘mobile’ SAM system, but Zoltan had his unit drilled to redeploy the weapons in just 90 minutes (the standard time required is 150 minutes), a procedure facilitated by halving the number of launchers in his battery. He permitted his crews to activating their active targeting radars for no longer than twenty seconds, after which they were required to redeploy, even if they had not opened fire.

He redeployed his Neva batteries frequently, in contrast to the static posture adopted by ill-fated Iraqi and Syrian missile defenses in the Middle East. Dani was by all accounts a highly motivated commander who studied earlier Western air-defense suppression tactics. Zoltán Dani, commander of the 250 th Air Defense Missile Brigade. Zelko’s adversary that evening was Serbian Col.
