It seems to me that the Finnish Air Force is preparing for wrong kind of Air war. Mainly because the Finns still insist in using the “old Soviet” or Warsaw Pact style on command and control of fighter forces from underground command centres. These are, in all likelihood, more difficult to destroy, as being harder targets, than any of AWACS, as they are mobile and at least can try to get out of the harms way.These bunkers are still destroyable, and what more they are always limited in their capability in the information they can receive from out of the world. Even though KeVa 2010, the middle ranged surveillance RADARS 2010, from Thales Rayheon systems of which they are 12 in Finland.

KeVa 2010 RADAR, or Thales Rayhtheon Systems Groundmaster 403 on SISU 8X8 drive. Photo by Ilmavoimat

are indeed very good Radars and not permanently fixed to any one place but they are rather movable on their trailer beds there is still “around ten” in existence and they will not be measuring when they are moving so however you look at it they are still high value targets that are reasonably easy to destroy.

Now here is the Dilemma: To my knowledge Finish Air Forc,e the frontier guard or Army are not developing “passive sensor networks” that would in times of War pick up the bits and pieces after the main RADARs have been destroyed. It wouldn’t hurt if you had Multi static Radars that you would only be looking to loose the radiating parts. And still get to keep keep the receiving parts. Radiating part will be cheaper and easier to replace all things considered so if you lose the radiaiting component, you can set up the replacement fast, and you can still a keep the radar functioning by adding more radiating elements into the equation. Multistatic radars are really fascinating with their multi path propagation and calculating the 3D space around them based on those multi path signals.

Also infrared, near-infrared to Middle infrared, and Ultra violet plus Optical sensors would make sense in this kind of Air warfare on passive side, because in large networks they will give you the picture of the battlespace  quite realiably and by the virtue of being passive they are almost impossible to destroy. and even with functioning RADARs they still do very nicely again the Stealth or low observable Targets.

Multi static radar is also hell on the wheels in countering stealth technology and stealth aeroplanes so it would, in that sense also, make sense to cover at least to some extent the country with this kind of technology. Stealth technology does not eat the radar waves to great extend, they just try to bounce them off to somewhere where nobody will pick them up. Multistatic radar this makes this emission control virtually impossible. Even though you can still point your aeroplanes nose toward the radiating “active part” of the RADAR you have no knowledge of where they are receiving parts are placed so you cannot avoid in the long run bouncing the RADAR waves toward these receivers and then they have you.

But in The View of the HX program purchasing Mini AWACS like E-2 Hawkeye, or GlobalEye from SAAB would make a lot of sense. They would bring Finnish Air Force to the same level then all our Western Air Forces and maybe over advanced cababilities for the RADARS as well. Because about 10 km on the air they will see a lot of targets that ground-based RADARs will not be able to see just because they are so high that they will have a line of sight to the targets they are trying to measure. These would of course be advantageous for any Airforce.

Of course there are still things Finnish Air force lacks, particularly in electronic warfare and suppression of enemy air defences department. Fortunately the procurement of new Fighters will address some of these problems but still we do not have adequate numbers of and weaponry to threaten in any meaningful way the air defences in our vicinity.

So even though one hopes that the Air Forces would see the light and purchase three to five AWACS aeroplanes such as GlobalEye to bring FDF into 21st century I am not hopeful that this will happen. And the question is just money. When Finnish and All European political leaders felt that the history was over that Soviet Union or Russia will be counted free and  just like any other country, they decided to drive down the war fighting abilities of All European nations. Finland fortunately was one of those countries that did not get abroad into this “General Spirit of optimism” but still procured weapon systems because they could be gotten cheaply from European armies that we’re cutting that down their strengths.

Still the finances of the army were cut down pretty bad, so now that the Finnish Air Force is needing a new main fighter, Finnish Navy is needing new Surface combatants and the Army would be needing pretty much everything. So this is why I am afraid that the Air Force will not be getting brand new mini AWAS planes even though it would be a great force multiplier for the Air Force. Army and Navy need the Air force and navy needs their ships as well. The best I’m hoping right now is that at least FAF would get enough numbers so that it will be viable Air Force in this area. They will be needed to support the Navy and Army, in air defence and an escort duties. And of course they still need to be used as the operational “big stick” and do deep strikes and interdiction in the battlefield.

So we need at least sufficient numbers. I’m not even too hopeful with that because it has been said in many times will still be around 60 to 75is the goal, even though what we need is closer to 100 or 120. Tempus Fugit, gentlemen