Forgotten SAM systems from 1999

Time erases facts. It's an inevitable process. And it seems that most people don't care too much about it. Today I wanted to try to save some knowledge that survived after 20 years on several websites, in a very fragmented form.

Dawn of War

---

Air-force

---

Final preparations for Kosovo War (Spring 1999), have started much earlier, in autumn 1998. All the signs were obviously present. International troops on the ground, then their preparations to withdraw... We all knew what's coming.

According to previous conflicts, including Gulf War it was expected to have high involvement of air force, especially in the situation where the opposing side has very modest aviation and AA defence.

Serbian air-forces expected the war equipped with ground-attack J-22 Eagle/ Orao, completely unusable for any other purpose due to lack of radar, jet trainer / light ground-attack Super Galeb (also harmless against aircrafts), obsolete Mig-21, and relatively usable Mig-29.

The best Mig-21 Serbia had was MiG-21bis, rus. Изделије 75A, NATO ‘’Fishbed-L’’ and Изделије 75Б, NATO ‘’Fishbed-N’’. Their radars were respectively RP-22M and MRP-22SMA. According to historical records those were capable to compete against "century series", F-105, F-4 Fantoms, Mirage III (if piloted by ace) or A-4. In total, there were 74 available Migs, desperately obsolete they were not even used in war. During the Yugoslav wars, Serbia lost 5 of them, Croatia 3 more, mainly from MANPADS. However... There was a vast quantity of air-to-air rockets available for them....

Mig-29 was way better aircraft. During the breakup of Yugoslavia, Serbian Mig-29 had 568 sorties over Croatia + 65 over Bosnia. Croatian AA defence fired 147 times with no success. There were 16 plains in total in Spring 1999. In reality were 10 "flyable" L-18 and 1 NL-18. (rus. 9.12B, NATO ’’Fulcrum-A’’). Not a single one of them was 100% combar ready.

R73 Archer, air-to-air missile

SAM

---

I gave my best to present a Table so you could easily understand the capabilities:

Ok, so... Serbian army had numerous choices (not the most efficient) but still usable. The biggest threats were A-10 and Apache. Those were equipped with GAU-8 gun usable to the distances up to 1200m, Hydra rockets with an effective range up to 8 km and Maverick rockets with an effective range beyond 20 km.

With the regular MANPADS, there can be achieved a solid defence against the guns. Mavericks are too expensive. Actually, what was needed was something to cover about 5-10 km in radius. Something highly mobile. And something that has no radar guidance!, because there are many jets flying around armed with AGM-88 HARM more than willing to strike back automatically from the distances far beyond any defence Serbians had. Do you remember those Mig-21 from the begging? This is the story about their rockets.

Portable system Igla

The Art of Bodge

---

Again, I will present you a Table, made from following sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

More than 5 sources, for maybe 15 words?! That is the power of time... Click on them to see the photos of this weird systems.

In practice, all available air-to-air rockets Serbs had were tested. The most common target was 120mm flare grenade launched from a mortar. The ability to find the targets was not a problem, it was possible to achieve even at distances beyond 20 km (more than Maverick, blyatiful...). Bodging on vehicles was relatively easy, with the necessity to cool down the sensor. There was no need for manual lunching, as the rockets started their flight automatically. It was a problem, actually, because the range was not sufficient from a very intuitive reason - those were designed to be fired from a flying jet with some initial speed.

The next bodge was to use additional rockets as boosters in order to reach more than 5 km. There were two choices, Russian S-24 and Serbian M-80 Munja (Thunder). Interesting fact is that both of them were designed to work in "opposite direction", from air to ground :)

With additional boosters, it seemed possible to actually work. The achievable range exceeded 10km, more than enough to counter yet another weapon. The story is known for two RL-systems. One was on duty around Belgrade, it fired several times - and missed.

The second one was sent to Kosovo and engaged two A-10. According to witnesses, one of them dropped the additional fuel tank (was it damaged?), and both of them were chased away (6th of June?). It could be true, as the external fuel tank used on Thunderbolts is very large and there are several videos from 1999 that include landings with the attached external fuel tank.

In 2018, March, 21st, Yemen forces managed to hit Saudi F-15 using very similar bodge, but the airplane successfully returned to base.