Undetectable!

This is coolbert:

Look-down shoot-down. The Ukraine Conflict.

AWACS for the Ukrainian? What next? AWACS = airborne early warning and control (AEW&C)

 Ukrainian ability to intercept and shoot-down low-flying stealth Russian cruise missiles very scant to non-existent. Now a dire necessity.

Thanks here to an extract from the first paragraph of a Strategy Page article.

"ARTILLERY: Russian Kh-69 For Never Cruise Missile"

Russian Kh-69 stealth cruise missiles used the Ukraine Conflict the Ukrainian having no counter.

"April 28, 2024: Russia is trying to perfect its Kh-69 stealthy cruise missile, which is an upgrade of the older Kh-59. Kh-69 was still in development throughout 2023, then in April 2024 six of these missiles, launched from a Russian fighter-bomber, were used to destroy a Ukrainian power plant. Ukrainian air defense systems did not detect the incoming Kh-69s because they were launched from Russian aircraft that were on the Russian side of the Ukrainian border and, when the missiles entered Ukraine, they were low to the ground and virtually undetectable by Ukrainian ground radar. It would take an aircraft based ground surveillance radar, like the one carried by the Americans AWACS aircraft, to spot incoming Kh-69s. Ukraine doesn’t have any AWACS but NATO has fourteen of them and the United States has 31. There are dozens of smaller AWACS-type aircraft produced by other countries, such as Sweden, based on twin-engine business jets. NATO or the United States could provide Ukraine with some AWACS but Ukraine would have to supply jet fighters to protect the AWACS against potentially aggressive and possibly effective efforts to shoot them down."

Comments:

* First obtain three or four of whatever type AWACS already up and flying and operational. Source not so relevant.

* Train the ground crews and those manning the electronic radar and associated apparatus.

* Train the flight crews. Those that actually fly the warplane.

* Provide protection from Russian air-launched air to air missile of the R-37 variety.

* A minimum of about $1 billion USD to get the entire paraphernalia/impedimenta up and going with success. Sustain also.

Needed now but only an item[s] that can be accomplished in the far-off future and not the near future I fear.

Foreign interventionism I might not think desirable. Crossing a red line and all that.

coolbert.