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v2.1.3 / chapter 5 of 6 / 01 nov 09 / greg goebel / public domain

* Following the introduction of ECM in World War II, in the postwar period the race between measure and
countermeasure became increasingly tricky and demanding. This chapter provides a survey of modern electronic
countermeasures technology.

[5.1] DEFENSIVE COUNTERMEASURES SYSTEMS

[5.2] DISRUPTIVE COUNTERMEASURES
[5.3] DECEPTIVE COUNTERMEASURES
[5.4] OFFENSIVE COUNTERMEASURES / SEAD
[5.5] STEALTH
[5.6] FOOTNOTE: INFRARED COUNTERMEASURES

* In the modern period, the development of sophisticated air defense systems with radar-guided anti-aircraft
artillery (AAA) and in particular surface to air missiles (SAMs), led to major improvements in ECM systems. In
World War II, everything was done more or less manually, for example with aircrew dumping chaff packets
overboard. Countermeasures receivers and active jammer systems also remained under crew control. Modern
ECM systems are much more sophisticated.

There are two broad categories of ECM systems: "defensive countermeasures" systems, which are carried by an
attack aircraft or other platform to prevent enemy defenses from drawing a bead on it; and "offensive
countermeasures" systems, in which a dedicated ECM aircraft or other platform attempts to disrupt enemy
defenses and protect air strike packages.

* A modern defensive countermeasures system is "intelligent", with its actions directed by a central processor
unit. The processor unit obtains inputs from a set of warning systems:

A "radar warning receiver (RWR)". Essentially, the RWR gives an alarm that provides a warning when the
aircraft is illuminated by a radar. However, RWRs can have a range of other capabilities.

A "missile warning system". Some early missile warning systems picked up the radio command or radar
signals associated with a SAM launch, but modern missile warning systems generally optically pick up the
flash of the launch of a missile. Modern missile warning systems are based on ultraviolet or infrared
sensors. Ultraviolet sensors are more effective at low altitudes, where solar ultraviolet is relatively faint and
thermal infrared sources are relatively bright. The reverse is true at high altitudes, where infrared sensors

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are preferred.

A "laser warning system", which announces that the aircraft has been illuminated by a rangefinding or
targeting laser.

Not all defensive countermeasures systems will have all these elements, though an RWR is essentially a common
denominator. A laser warning system is generally only seen on low-level battlefield aircraft, such as helicopter
gunships, since laser guidance is not used for long-range SAMs capable of hitting aircraft at altitude. The latest
missile warning systems may also include laser warning capabilities.

In any case, the defensive countermeasures system will alert the aircrew, generally providing an audio alarm and
also some sort of threat display to identify the type and bearing of the threat. A threat display system may be a
separate display in an older aircraft or one that has been fitted after the fact along with a defensive
countermeasures system, but in a modern combat fighter the threats will be integrated in a single display that
combines radar and other inputs to give the aircrew a "picture" of the combat environment.

* As mentioned above, different types of RWRs may have very different capabilities. The essence of an RWR is
a receiver to pick up radar transmissions. Early RWRs simply gave an alarm, and were only designed to pick up a
specific radar or a small set of specific radars. If a new radar was introduced that operated on a different band,
they were blind to it. Modern RWRs are based on wideband receivers backed up by a digital processor. The
processor has a "library" of signatures of specific radars, and such an RWR will not only give an alarm but will
identify the type of radar. It may also be able to indicate that a radar not in its library has illuminated the aircraft,
but will not be able to specify the type.

Very sophisticated RWRs will also be able to give the direction of the threat. One way to do this is to mount
receiver antennas on nose, tail, and the wingtips. The RWR will compare amplitudes or time of arrival of a
specific signal arriving at the four antennas to give the angle to the radar. A more sophisticated approach is to use
phase comparison of the signal to give the angle.

Confusingly, there are a number of different acronyms for a system that identifies and locates radars, and to
make matters worse the use of this terminology has evolved over time and may differ from source to source. In
general, the acronyms tend to more identify different missions instead of different technology. These acronyms
include:

Radar homing and warning system (RHAWS): This generally means a system designed to identify and
locate radars for targeting with missiles or other weapons. The term was mostly in use in the days when
RWRs didn't have the ability to locate radars, and it has now fallen into disuse. Such targeting systems are
now generally known as RWRs.

Electronic support measures (ESM): In contrast to an RWR, which is a self-defense system, the term ESM
generally describes an intelligence collection system, carried on reconnaissance aircraft to identify and

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locate radars or other "emitters".

Electronic intelligence (ELINT): Electronic intelligence simply involves collecting intelligence on

adversary electronic systems. An ESM is a type of ELINT system, but ELINT may also involve
communications intercept ("listening in" on adversary communications), telemetry intercept, and so on.
The purpose of ELINT is to catalog enemy electronic systems in a battle theatre, or in other words obtain
the "electronic order of battle".

* The defensive countermeasures system will also automatically respond to deal with the threat. There are three
classes of threats:

Radar-guided AAA, SAMs, and AAMs. Since this is a document on radars, the discussion will focus on
radar countermeasures.

Infrared heat-seeking SAMs and AAMs. This is a bit off-topic, but since a defensive countermeasures
system has to deal with such threats, infrared countermeasures are discussed as a footnote below. For the
moment, all that needs to be known is that the classic defense against heat-seeking missiles is to dispense
thermal flares to draw them off.

Laser-guided weapons. As mentioned, such weapons are really only a concern in the low-level battlefield
environment. Although long-range SAMs rarely if ever use laser guidance, it is commonly used by
battlefield missiles. Laser-guided weapon countermeasures are not discussed further in this document.

BACK_TO_TOP

* One of the first lines of defense against is to dispense "expendables", meaning chaff packets and flares, from a
chaff-flare dispenser. The latest dispensers can cut chaff, in the form of metalized glass fibers, to the appropriate
length for a particular threat radar, with the defensive countermeasures automatically programming the proper
length and dumping the chaff. Modern pulse Doppler radars tend to cut through chaff fairly easily, because the
chaff quickly slows down relative to the launch aircraft. One refinement is to use chaff to reflect active jamming
transmissions; with the use of "jammed chaff" or "jaff", a missile will not merely be confused by the chaff, it will
actually home in on it.

As mentioned earlier, active jamming can be either "disruptive" or "deceptive" in nature. Disruptive jamming can
be subdivided into "broadband" or "barrage" jamming, in which noise is tossed out over an entire range of
frequencies; and "spot" jamming, in which the noise is tossed out on the precise band an adversary radar is
transmitting on.

The nice thing about a broadband jammer is that it can interfere with any radar operating over its band. The bad
thing is that it spreads its power over the entire band, meaning it only generates a fraction of that power against
any specific radar. An analogy to radar jamming is the idea of generating sound noise to drown out someone
trying to talk. If the person can shout loud enough to be heard over the noise, the jamming doesn't work.
Similarly, if a radar produces more powerful than the noise generated by a jammer, the radar will still work,
though the noise is a nuisance. This is called "jamming burn-through".

A spot jammer can focus all its power on a particular band, making burn-through more difficult. It has problems if
a radar can jump from band to band, or if multiple radars operating on different bands are present. If several
aircraft are in an attacking formation, they can carry spot jammers operating on different possible bands. The
processor unit in a modern defensive countermeasures system will monitor adversary radar operation using its
RWR, switching spot jamming frequencies accordingly and breaking radar lock. This technique can be effective
against multiple radars as well, at least up to a point, with the defensive countermeasures system breaking the

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lock of one radar, jumping to another band to break the lock of another, and so on.

One problem with noise jamming in general is that missiles can be designed with a "home on jam (HOJ)"
capability, zeroing in on the jammer module from its strong emissions. A formation of aircraft, each carrying a
noise jammer, can present a diffuse target, complicating life for the HOJ seeker; two aircraft can also alternate
activation of their jammers, a scheme known "blinking" that confuses the missile HOJ seeker. HOJ doesn't work
so well with a deception jammer, since the missile may not be able to figure out where the target really is.

BACK_TO_TOP

* Since disruptive jamming tends to require large amounts of power, deception jamming tends to be more useful
for defensive countermeasures systems. There are many deceptive jamming schemes and some are very
ingenious.

The simple pulse repeater deception jammer has been mentioned. There are variations on the theme, such as
"terrain bounce". As can be seen from watching a sunset on a beach, the flat surface of water reflects light well,
and damp soil can similarly reflect radio waves. A terrain bounce jammer is a pulse repeater carried by low-flying
aircraft that bounces the repeated pulses back at the ground at an angle, in hopes of persuading a missile to fly
into the ground.

Terrain bounce is a form of "angle deception". Another form of angle deception is "sidelobe jamming",
mentioned briefly in an earlier chapter. The idea is to pick up the transmission from a radar sidelobe, well off the
boresight of the radar, and then ram a large return back down the sidelobe. The radar interprets the return as
being on the mainlobe and so fails to lock onto the jammer source. Sidelobe jamming can be countered by adding
a simple omnidirectional receiver antenna to the radar system; if the omnidirectional antenna detects a "true"
return signal that is much more powerful than the one that the radar appears to be picking up, that's a big hint that
sidelobe jamming is in progress.

Yet another angle deception scheme is known as "crosseye jamming". This involves fitting transmitter-receiver
modules to each wingtip of an aircraft. In a typical scenario, the module on the left wingtip will receive a radar
signal, shift it forward in phase, and pass it on to the module on the right wingtip to be transmitted back to the
radar. At the same time, the module on the right wingtip will receive the same radar signal, shift it back in phase,
and pass it on to the module in the left wingtip to be transmitted back to the radar. The phase-shifted signals will
add up at the radar receiver to make the signal appear as if it came from some other direction -- it's much the
same principle as used in a phased-array radar for electronic beam steering, except that the phase manipulation is
being performed by the target. The crosseye jammer can slowly adjust the phase of the two return signals to
"walk" the radar tracking off the aircraft.

* "Inverse gain jamming" or "inverse amplitude jamming" is an angle-deception technique used to disrupt
tracking radars that use a sweeping procedure, such as the old nodding height-finder radars and conical scan
radars. An RWR system will detect such radars from their cyclic fluctuation in intensity, and then will activate
the inverse-gain jammer in response. The inverse gain jammer feeds back an enhanced return during the
low-intensity part of the scan cycle and little or no additional return during the high-intensity part of the scan
cycle. This fools the radar into either believing it has a lock on target when it doesn't, or doesn't have a lock on
target when it does.

There are counter-countermeasures against inverse gain jamming. One is to use two antennas, one for transmit
and one for receive, and only rotate the receive antenna to perform conical scan -- eliminating the telltale cyclic
fluctuation of the transmit signal. This scheme is known as "conical scan on receive only (CSORO)" or more
generally "Lobe On Receive Only (LORO)". An inverse gain jammer can counter this countermeasure to an
extent by blindly generating its inverse-gain cycle and testing it to see if it forces the radar to break lock.

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* There are also "range deception" techniques. The simple pulse repeater is an example of a range deception
scheme, but there is a more sophisticated variation on the same theme, known as "range-gate pull-off (RGPO)".
When an aircraft is illuminated by a range-tracking radar, the RGPO jammer initially acts like a radar
transponder, picking up the radar pulse, amplifying it, and sending back immediately. This actually increases the
magnitude of the return, which would seem counterproductive. However, the jammer is simply "setting up" the
radar to be tricked, using the strong echo to force the radar receiver's automatic gain control to reduce gain.

The RGPO jammer then emits a delayed pulse along with the instantaneous pulse, gradually increasing the power
of the delayed pulse while pulling down the power of the instantaneous pulse down to zero. When this occurs, the
radar remains locked on the delayed pulse, which is still powerful enough to ensure that the receiver's AGC
remains set to a low level. Under such conditions, the radar will not notice the actual echo from the aircraft and,
because of the strong delayed pulse, will not be able to correctly estimate the distance to the aircraft.

The jammer will then increase the pulse delay, making the aircraft seem even farther out of range. The jammer
then switches off, leaving the radar with a broken target lock. If the radar tries to lock onto the aircraft again, the
range deception jammer plays the same game once more. Radars can defeat this range deception game by varying
PRF or pulse band, forcing the jammer to start over. Radars can also monitor the magnitude of the return,
checking to see if the return seems to brighten excessively; if so, the radar can then track on the "leading edge" of
the return, focusing on the actual return and ignoring the delayed pulse.

There is a similar "velocity gate pull-off" scheme that works much the same way, except that the frequency of
the deception signal is adjusted instead of the time delay to give a false Doppler frequency for the target.

* One of the latest fads in defensive countermeasures is the "towed decoy". A towed decoy is a pulse repeater,
containing a miniature TWT to echo radar signals tracking the aircraft, causing a radar-guided missile to home on
the decoy. Signals and power are provided over the towline, and the assembly is cut loose with a "guillotine"
assembly before landing.

The first to be used in action was the Raytheon "AN/ALE-50", which was towed by behind B-1B bombers and
F-16 fighters during the NATO Kosovo campaign in the Balkans in 1999. It worked so well that crews called it
the "Little Buddy". It has been followed by the "AN/ALE-55" towed decoy, which uses a fiber-optic cable
instead of an electrical cable. Other nations have now introduced towed decoys into service. Some pilots were
dubious of towed decoys at first, but modern radar-guided AAMs and SAMs are hard to trick, and they can pull
up to 40 gees in turns, making them impossible to outmaneuver.

Another interesting concept in modern deceptive countermeasures is to build a jammer system that actually sends
an antiphase copy of the radar signal back at a radar receiver, with the antiphase signal mostly or completely
eliminating the return echo, rendering the jammer platform invisible to radar. This is very tricky to do and it is

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unclear if any contemporary jammer systems can do it, but it may be a feature of some modern jammers whose
details remain classified.

BACK_TO_TOP

* Offensive countermeasures systems tend to be more "brute force" than defensive countermeasures systems.
Offensive jamming is generally based on high-power disruptive jamming schemes. The idea behind deception
jamming is to make a platform seem to be something or somewhere it's not; in offensive jamming, concealing the
jamming platform is not the objective, it's ensuring that other platforms can't be seen on radar. A dedicated
jamming platform can commit large amounts of power to its disruptive jamming systems, giving them greater
effectiveness.

Of course, disruptive jamming can also be used against communications signals, and in fact communications
jamming well predates radar jamming. It is somewhat more difficult than radar jamming; jamming a radar means
dealing with a relatively faint return trace, while jamming a communications channels means dealing with a
strong direct transmitter channel. One trick is to feed back a voice conversation after a delay, resulting in an
incoherent garble. In some cases, communications jamming is used in complement with radar jamming, in
attempts to block channels used by ground controllers to communicate with interceptor aircraft.

If a jamming aircraft actually accompanies aircraft on strikes over defended airspace, it is a "penetration
jammer". If it remains outside of defended airspace, it is a "standoff jammer".

The best-known Western offensive jamming aircraft is the Grumman "EA-6B Prowler". It carries a four man
crew, features a built-in ELINT receiver system feeding a digital processor, and can be fitted with up to four
AN/ALQ-99 jamming pods, each powered by a turbine spinner on the nose. One Prowler, it is said, could
completely disrupt civilian radio and TV communications over the entire US East Coast. It is now being replaced
by the Boeing "EA-18G Growler" ECM derivative of the Super Hornet fighter.

* There is a more drastic approach to dealing with enemy radars: destroy them, a scheme referred to as
"Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD)". The US found this an urgent need during the Vietnam War,
leading to the development of two pieces of technology: a RHAWS, to detect, classify, and target radars, and an
"antiradar missile (ARM)" to home in on the radar and destroy it. A series of "Wild Weasel" aircraft were fitted
with a RHAWS and with ARMs to have it out with enemy radar sites. Once the radar was destroyed, the
"blinded" air-defense site could be pounded with bombs.

The first US ARM to go into widespread operational service was the "AGM-45 Shrike", which was a Sparrow
AAM with a radar seeking head. It was replaced by the current Western standard ARM, the "AGM-88
High-Speed Antiradiation Missile (HARM)", which is something like a scaled-up Shrike, with much improved
systems. Shrikes had to be fitted with a different anti-radar seeker head before a mission, depending on what kind
of radar they were intended to engage. A HARM is bigger, faster, and carries a single seeker that can home in on
a wide range of radars. EA-6B Prowlers may carry HARMs along with their jamming equipment to provide a
more aggressive antiradar capability.

BACK_TO_TOP

* Along with jamming, spoofing, or destroying enemy radars, there is another option for neutralizing them:
"stealth", or making the target impossible to pick up on radar.

The RCS of an aircraft or other platform is dependent on a number of factors, including size; the materials it is

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made from, with metals providing a high RCS and composite graphite-epoxy a lower RCS; and the shape, with
sharp boxed-in corners acting like corner reflectors and increasing the RCS. Work on "low-observable" aircraft
with a low RCS goes back to the 1960s.

In the early 1960s, the Air Force obtained a series of high-altitude reconnaissance variants of the Ryan Firebee
target drone. The Firebee was small, meaning it had a low RCS to begin with, and modifications were made to
reduce its RCS further. One modification was to put a mesh screen over the engine intake. The moving
compressor blades of a jet engine tend to be very "bright" on radar, sort of like a spinning disco ball flashing in a
spotlight, a phenomenon known as "glint"; the screen kept the radar pulses from entering the inlet. Blankets of
"radar absorbing material (RAM)" were also applied to the sides of the Firebee to soak up radar pulses.

In the 1970s, the US developed the first operational aircraft designed from the ground up for "stealth", the
Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk. This aircraft had a "faceted" design, with an airframe composed of flat planes that
reflected radar pulses in angles away from the transmitter beams, and was heavily coated with RAM. Doors had
"zigzag" edges to break up radar returns. The engine inlets had a "serpentine" design to prevent the engines from
being visible to radar.

The F-117 also had wide, flat engine exhausts that reduced the aircraft's infrared signature. It did not carry a
radar since its emissions might announce the aircraft's presence, instead using an inertial navigation system for
guidance and an infrared video camera for targeting. Radars can be made more compatible with stealth by
designing them for LPI operation. Unfortunately, having a radar tends to reduce stealth even if the radar isn't
working. This is because the radar has a reflecting dish or a radar array that is only concealed by a radome that is
necessarily transparent to radar, and that dish makes a nice radar target for hostile radars. However, with AESA
it's possible to make antennas with configurations that are poor radar reflectors.

The F-117 was followed by the much larger Northrop Grumman B-2 Stealth bomber. This aircraft uses most of
the same principles, but the implementation is different in many ways. For example, instead of having a faceted
airframe like the F-117, the B-2 features smooth curves. Incidentally, a stealthy aircraft is optimized for stealth
from the forward bottom viewpoint, which is what a hostile radar would be tracking as the aircraft came up on
the target. It is difficult to make an aircraft stealthy from all points of view.

Many modern combat aircraft that weren't designed to be highly stealthy like the F-117 or B-2 still have some
stealth features -- not to make them invisible, but to reduce their RCS and so make their countermeasures
systems more effective.

Interestingly, low-frequency radars are better at picking up stealth machines than high-frequency radars. In
addition, if a radar operating on a high-altitude platform scans a stealth aircraft flying at low altitude, it will be
able to spot it as a "hole" in the radar returns from the ground clutter.

BACK_TO_TOP

* Countermeasures against heat-seeking missiles have improved alongside improvements in radar

countermeasures. Flares have been around a long time and have evolved considerably. Ordinary signal flares
were used at first, shot from the door of a transport aircraft with a flare pistol, and then simple flares were
designed so they could be fired from chaff-flare dispensers.

These early flares simply burned bright and hot, but soon missiles got smart enough to recognize the difference
between a jet exhaust and a flare. That led to the design of "hot-cold" or "hot-hotter" flares whose behavior
changed during operation. Smarter missiles meant smarter flares, and the latest generation of flares don't so much
as burn as they "rust rapidly", not generating enough heat to set a pile of dry leaves on fire. Flares have also been
built in the form of small rockets that can lead a heat-seeking missile on a mad chase.

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Of course, the problem with expendables is that once they have been expended the target is defenseless.
However, helicopters and some tactical fixed-wing aircraft will carry "disco light" infrared countermeasures
(IRCM) units that look something like a beacon. They generate a thermal signal that switches on and off. A
missile will get a lock on the jammer and then the thermal signal will fade, with the missile changing its course
away in response to try to acquire the target again.

The disco light jammer won't fool the most modern heat-seeking missiles. A more effective and sophisticated
approach is the "directed infrared countermeasures (DIRCM)" approach, which is now going into service. A
DIRCM will baffle heat-seeking AAMs by shining lasers or other light sources into the missile seeker optics. Of
course, once high-powered tactical lasers become practical the defensive system could simply shoot down the
missile, but that remains a future option.

BACK_TO_TOP

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