January I&A

Here are the topics in the works for the upcoming January issue of I&A:

-The importance of IMINT
-The DPRK's SAM Network
-An overview of DF-31 bases (notice that there wasn't too much attention to the details of relevant facilities in the December 2nd Artillery Corps piece-that was done to allow me to do longer, more in-depth overviews like this in the future...plus it kept the PDF from being 500 pages)
-Something odd about HQ-9 SAM sites (as in sites designed for the HQ-9, not hybrid or other sites simply hosting an HQ-9 battery)
-A contributor piece by Christopher Biggers on Bandar-e-Abbas

Newsflash: there have been many issues with and complaints about the Google Documents format. Some people can't always get the links to work. Sometimes the system itself does weird things, like giving me the link to the wrong issue, or only allowing Google account holders to view the documents. To address these problems, beginning with the January issue I&A will be distributed via Mediafire. That's the same hosting site that I used to distribute the 2011 collection of back issues, as well as the PDF I wrote on the Falcon missile family. As far as I know, there aren't any issues using Mediafire at the present time. If there are any, let me know now! As a warning, being that it's a file hosting site, it remains to be seen if some e-mail providers will filter out the download link. If that happens I'll re-attack the problem.

I&A December

I&A's December issue will start to go out tomorrow. If you got an e-mail tonight, Google Documents did something weird and I managed to re-send everyone the November issue.

Oops. Sorry about that!

I did at least manage to send everyone the right KML file.

Update:

The correct download link just went out to the first set of subscribers. Everyone else will get the download link and the KML file tomorrow.

I&A in 2012

By this point many of you have a good idea of what I&A is all about. The goal for 2012 is to continue to increase the scope and depth of the content. Ergo, here are a few items to bring to your attention:

1. Additional contributors are always welcome. If you think you have something to say, send me an e-mail with "Contributor" in the subject line. While imagery analysis will always play a big part of I&A, other features are certainly welcome as well.

2. I'm starting to prepare a general outline of topics for 2012 to begin getting things organized. To that end, feel free to reply here with a comment if there is a subject area or specific topic that you want to see covered. As the list grows I'll add them at the bottom of this post.

3. The large-size image format received an upgrade in the December issue. I'll be toying with a few more templates over the next few weeks, and will post some examples here to see which one you believe works out the best overall.

Potential Topics For 2012
Air Defense - The DPRK
Air Defense - Japan
Facility Analysis - The RoK's ADD complexes
Facility Analysis - individual 2nd Artillery Corps garrison complexes
Software Review - Falcon View
Strategic Warfare - European SSBN Facilities
Tech Notes - The S-500

I&A Volume 1 (2011)

Below you will find a link allowing you to download all eleven issues of I&A from 2011, containing over 400 pages of analysis in total. At the end of each year, my plan is to make the previous volume available in this fashion to allow anyone unfamiliar with I&A to take a look and potentially subscribe. Recent subscribers can now enjoy access to the back issues as well. They have all been formatted in a manner allowing them to be employed as source material for research. The issues are contained within a standard Windows .zip file, hosted at Mediafire.

Click here to download Volume 1

Here are the major contents of each issue, in chronological order. Articles authored by contributors are noted with the author's name following the title. All issues also feature a Links article looking at various relevant websites, a complete list of references for each article, and the What Is It? analysis exercise on the back cover.

Download! Print! Read! Distribute! And if you haven't already, subscribe. It's free!

February 2011 (V1N1, 17 pgs)
Overview - Feature Overview
Overview - I&A: What Is It?
Tech Notes - The J-20's Real Impact
Current Events - The J-20 In Imagery
Air Defense - Nagorno-Karabakh
Historical Perspective - Analysis Over Time

March 2011 (V1N2, 33 pgs)
Current Events - Latakia Port Facility
Air Defense - China's Hybrid SAM Sites
Historical Perspective - OTH-SW Deployment in China
Strategic Warfare - Iranian SSM Facilities
Software - Facility Drawings in GIMP
Reading List - High-Tech Reading List

April 2011 (V1N3, 51 pgs)
Current Events - The Libyan Lesson
Air Defense - The S-300P/S-400
Air Defense - Contact Line (Masis Ingilizian)
Strategic Warfare - War of the Weird
Historical Perspective - SAM Modernization in China
Facility Analysis - The Price of Nuclear Rennaissance (Raj Kumar)
Reading List - Military Classics

May 2011 (V1N4, 23 pgs)
Current Events - Pakistan and Bin Laden
Air Defense - Armenian Air Defenses (Masis Ingilizian)
Strategic Warfare - Pakistani Nuclear Facilities (Raj Kumar)
Historical Perspective - SAM Site Analysis
Book Review - Ken Alibek's Biohazard

June 2011 (V1N5, 45 pgs)
Current Events - PRC NAVAIR Developments
Imagery Highlight - Algerian FLANKERs
Air Defense - China's Strategic SAM Network
Strategic Warfare - Soviet/Russian ABM Systems
Software Review - Google Earth
Reading List - Tools for the IMINT Analyst

July 2011 (V1N6, 26 pgs)
Current Events - Iranian Silos "Unveiled"
Imagery Highlight - Shenyang
Facility Analysis - Karachi Port Facility (Daniel Videre)
Tech Notes - China's New AAM
Air Defense - Azerbaijan (Masis Ingilizian)
Strategic Warfare - Soviet/Russian BMEW
Tech Notes - IADS Classification

August 2011 (V1N7, 26 pgs)
Current Events - Azeri Favorit Spotted
Imagery Highlight - Zhukovskiy
IC Analysis - ODNI's New Mission (Marv Gordner)
Facility Analysis - Tabriz Silo Complex
Air Defense - Taiwan
Historical Perspective - Warsaw Pact SAM Sites
Software Review - SpaceEye

September 2011 (V1N8, 20 pgs)
Current Events - Varyag Begins Sea Trials
Tech Notes - The RVV-BD
Air Defense - PLA Airborne Surveillance (Raj Kumar)
Strategic Warfare - Assessing China's Type 094 SSBN Force

October 2011 (V1N9, 79 pgs)
Air Defense - Russia
Strategic Warfare - Space Surveillance in Russia
Strategic Warfare - Russia
Historical Perspective - Former Soviet ICBMs
Facility Analysis - Ashuluk
Facility Overview - Zhukovskiy
Reading List - Russian Aviation

November 2011 (V1N10, 21 pgs)
Current Events - Umm Aitiqah AB (Christopher Biggers)
Facility Analysis - The Playing Field (Daniel Videre)
Imagery Highlight - Vietnam's Vostok-E
Tech notes - Iran's Nahang SSC (Christopher Biggers)
Facility Analysis - Denial and Deception at Bandar-e-Abbas (Christopher Biggers)
Conflict Analysis - Deepening Tides of War (Masis Ingilizian)

December 2011 (V1N11, 68 pgs)
Strategic Warfare - The PLA's 2nd Artillery Corps
Strategic Warfare - PLA Ballistic Missile Launch Sites
Strategic Warfare - The PLAN SSBN Force
Air Defense - PLA SAM Modernization

November/December I&A, Future Plans

The November I&A has begun to filter out to subscribers. Expect to find it in your inbox today or tomorrow.

The December I&A will feature numerous topics related to the PLA, similar to what was seen in October for Russia. Topics being worked on so far incldue the following:

-The PLA's 2nd Artillery
-PLA Ballistic Missile Launch Sites
-The PLAN's SSBN Force
-Current Chinese SAM Developments
-Iranian Ghadir SSC Production

Once the December issue goes out to subscribers, I will make the 11 issues completed to date available for download here, along with the KML files distributed with each issue. I'll also post a list of the complete contents of each issue.

Worldwide SAM Site Overview

Click here to download

Current as of: 10 November 2011 (6827 locations, +77)

Asia

China: 3 EW, 96L6E, historic HQ-6D sites added
Turkmenistan: EW site added
Vietnam: inactive S-300P site added

Europe

Cyprus: 2 OTH sites added
Czech Republic: 6 EW sites added
Denmark: 2 inactive Nike radar sites added
Germany: 4 Patriot, inactive Patriot site, 7 Patriot garrisons added
Hungary: 16 EW, 2 inactive SA-2 sites added
Macedonia: EW site added
Romania: 3 EW sites added
Russia: 3 EW, 4 36D6, S-300PS, S-300PM, 2 inactive SA-2, 2 inactive S-300P sites added
Serbia: inactive SA-2 site, 2 SA-6 garrisons added
Slovakia: 2 EW sites added
Switzerland: 3 EW sites added

Middle East

Iran: HQ-2, SA-6, SA-15 sites added
Iraq: EW, 3 historical SA-3 sites added
Israel: Patriot site added
UAE: EW, 5 Skyguard SHORAD sites added

North America

Cuba: SA-3 site added

-Various site status changes incorporated

This reference work contains the locations of SAM sites and related air defense facilities identified in open source imagery, presented as a collection of Google eEarth placemarks. The downloadable file found above contains four separate folders: SAMs by country, SHORAD SAMs, Historical Sites, and Target Range SAMs. There is a fifth folder, Range Rings, which may be downloaded here: Range Rings. This is a link to where the file is hosted, right-clicking and selecting "Save As" might not work.

SAMs by country: This folder is at first organized identically to the Range Rings folder. Each geographic area features a folder populated by subfolders for each nation. A nation's subfolder will contain up to four folders of its own, depending on the types of systems or facilities identified therein: Active (containing subfolders for each active SAM system), Inactive (containing all inactive sites), Facilities (containing EW radar sites, SAM garrisons, and other related facilities), and Low resolution (containing SAM sites and known support facilities not visible in high resolution). Clicking on the folder name for a continent or a nation will cause a pop-up window to appear displaying the inventories of that continent or nation. Different icons denote different types of facilities. These are as follows:

Squares: facilities such as garrisons, test and training centers
Diamonds: EW radar sites
Circles: 36D6 and 64N6 radar sites, or other fire control radar sites associated with a non co-located SAM battery, such as Tien Kung LPARs or NIKE-HERCULES fire control sites.
Triangles: SAM sites

The icons in the SAMs by country folder as well as the representative range rings are color coded as follows:

Dark red: SA-2 and HQ-2
Bright red: S-300P series, PATRIOT, Tien Kung series, NIKE-HERCULES, Arrow II, 64N6 radars
Dark blue: EW radar, to include 36D6 radars
Faded blue: 55Zh6 radars
Bright blue: SA-3, Pechora-2M, HQ-7
Bright green: SA-6
Faded green: SA-4, SA-11
Lime green: HQ-12
Orange: HAWK, HQ-9, S-300V
Yellow: HQ-6D
Purple: SA-5
White: an unoccupied location
Brown: a general facility or garrison

An active S-300PS site will therefore display as a red triangle. An S-300P garrison will display as a red square, denoting the facility's affiliation. The placemark names are hidden for clarity, but will display when an individual site is clicked on in Google Earth, along with the identified components at each site and any other significant details. By manipulating the individual folders for each nation and employing the color scheme above, users should find this to be a useful visual representation of the available data.

SHORAD SAMs: This folder is populated with subfolders arranged similarly to the SAMs by country folder. This folder contains placemarks identifying various SHORAD SAM emplacements that have been identified, such as Rapier and Crotale positions. Range rings are not provided, given the short ranges involved.

Historical Sites: This folder is populated with subfolders arranged similarly to the Range Rings and SAMs by country folder. The intent is to separate SAM site locations pertaining to systems which are no longer in active service in respective nations from the main database. For example, two folders are present containing placemarks for the inner and outer SA-1 SAM locations surrounding Moscow. SA-1 sites containing other systems such as SA-10 or SA-20 batteries will remain marked as to their current occupant within the main portion of the database.

Target Range SAMs: This folder contains subfolders arranged by country. Each folder contains the locations of SAM-site configured targets on bombing and electronic combat ranges. Many of these sites employ emitters or actual hardware to simulate a given system.

Range Rings: This folder contains representative range rings generated for all SAM sites which are currently active. The folder is divided into various subfolders. First, there is a subfolder for each geographic area. This folder is divided into subfolders, one for each country in that area featuring identified SAM systems. Each country folder will contain various subfolders for each type of active SAM system or identifiable EW radar system. These folders contain the color-coded range rings. The range rings are color coded using the same system described in the next section. The ranges were taken from Jane's Land-based Air Defence and other industry-affiliated publications. System modifications such as the Pechora-2M, which increases the SA-3's range to 35km, have not been taken into account as these systems cannot be identified as of yet in Google Earth imagery. Also, ranges for the SA-2 and SA-5 are representative of either the system's maximum ranged variant (SA-5: 300 km), or the most common variant (SA-2: 43 km). A subfolder is also included where necessary containing range rings for low-resolution sites believed to be active.

Key Contributors

Various individuals have provided SAM site locations for inclusion into this database, and their help is greatly appreciated. These individuals include Lex2 and ChristianNL from the Google Earth Community, Hpasp, RoAF, p_shadow, and Planeman from the IMINT & Analysis forums, Tim Brewer, and all the readers who have posted site locations in the comments to this article.

Additional Discussion

Feel free to discuss the content of this file at the IMINT & Analysis Forum in the SAM Site Overview discussion thread found here.

Past Updates

Information regarding previous updates to this database has been archived in the comments page attached to this post.

I&A November Update

With the tehnical problems involving the distribution of October's issue in the past, I'm already putting together the November issue. The November issue is going to be largely contributor-driven, thanks to a large number of submissions waiting in the wings for Red October to get out of the way!

Topics being prepared by contributors are as follows:

Current Events: Umm Aitiqah AB, Libya (the lack of airstrikes)
Facility Analysis: SLOCs in the South China Sea
Tech Notes: Iran's Nahang SSC
Conflict Analysis (a new area): Nagorno-Karabakh
Facility Analysis: Denial and Deception at Bandar-e-Abbas

I may or may not insert the obligatory air-defense related piece. Right now, the issue doesn't seem to need it, but if I get a good idea there may be one stuck in there by the time the issue is released.

At any rate, November is looking very good so far! I'm very pleased with the work the contributors are doing to date, and I hope to see more from them in the future.

Oh, and sometime later this week, I'll update the SAM Site Overview file again.