You mention; ”an F-16 on a counter-air mission will have to stay up there for a while longer: it will have to activate its radar, acquire the target and fire the missile, before returning back to the low altitude.”
You mention; ”an F-16 on a counter-air mission will have to stay up there for a while longer: it will have to activate its radar, acquire the target and fire the missile, before returning back to the low altitude.”
The F-16 would still need to use it's radar in track while scan mode for the first leg if it wanted to get any considerable range out of the AIM-120. Firing the AIM-120 "mad dog" off the rail at the generally area of the target would further greatly reduce the range since there would be no in-flight course correction of the missile, until it's own seeker went active (as long as the aircraft also didn't change course a bit, and is now out of the gimbal limits of the missiles internal radar). You would have to reasonably get within just a few kilometers of the aircraft you were firing at for this to be effective, maybe 10-15km max, with a giraffe attack firing from low alt at a high target at 35,000 feet.
2 problems with the link 16. Say you are fying at treetop level to sneak up to do a giraffe attack with a aim-120. Your assests feeding you that info are also effected by terrain blocking your aircraft from their transmission, unless all of these assest and jets are using SATCOM (that isn't being jammed) , then your own aircraft is likely going to have a broken up picture going in, making this kinda attack, while not impossible, extremely high risk. With low chance of success.
The other thing is that in the sophisticated EW environment it's quite likely that link 16 transmission would at least be detected by Russian forces, and even if disrupting or interpreting these encrypted communications would be difficult, it would make detecting the aircraft trying to penetrate 50km into the Russian lines (glide bomb jets are usually launching at around 60km behind Russian lines) , easier.
You mention; ”an F-16 on a counter-air mission will have to stay up there for a while longer: it will have to activate its radar, acquire the target and fire the missile, before returning back to the low altitude.”
I don’t think it will have to activate its radar.
The F-16 would still need to use it's radar in track while scan mode for the first leg if it wanted to get any considerable range out of the AIM-120. Firing the AIM-120 "mad dog" off the rail at the generally area of the target would further greatly reduce the range since there would be no in-flight course correction of the missile, until it's own seeker went active (as long as the aircraft also didn't change course a bit, and is now out of the gimbal limits of the missiles internal radar). You would have to reasonably get within just a few kilometers of the aircraft you were firing at for this to be effective, maybe 10-15km max, with a giraffe attack firing from low alt at a high target at 35,000 feet.
2 problems with the link 16. Say you are fying at treetop level to sneak up to do a giraffe attack with a aim-120. Your assests feeding you that info are also effected by terrain blocking your aircraft from their transmission, unless all of these assest and jets are using SATCOM (that isn't being jammed) , then your own aircraft is likely going to have a broken up picture going in, making this kinda attack, while not impossible, extremely high risk. With low chance of success.
The other thing is that in the sophisticated EW environment it's quite likely that link 16 transmission would at least be detected by Russian forces, and even if disrupting or interpreting these encrypted communications would be difficult, it would make detecting the aircraft trying to penetrate 50km into the Russian lines (glide bomb jets are usually launching at around 60km behind Russian lines) , easier.