5 ms·

Call it a hunch, but if the flares spew dirty and irregular, maybe there's an awareness that this sloppy spread of IR readings has benefits.

digi_owl 9y ago
Would not surprise me. Soviet era designs and engineering seems to always having been more pragmatic, out of basic necessity.
- mgamache 9y ago
  The other way to read the article is to blame Soviet quality control. If we assume the variation in burn is random, it may mean overall better protection of your airborne resources, but you could not assess the protection of any individual aircraft. That sounds Soviet to me.
  - _e 9y ago
    Like taking a vaccine. There will be a few who have a negative reaction but the positives greatly outweigh the negatives which makes it worth it for the greater good.
angry_octet 9y ago
Usually you would want the flare to mimic the spectrum of your own engines. I don't know if by irregular they meant in spectrum or illumination level. There is not a lot of short term variation in a jet exhaust due to thermal mass and the need for thrust to keep maneuvering, but the aspect changes. So sensors are not assuming a straight tail chase. I consider it much more likely that the Russians at some point obtained some AIM-9X seekers and tweaked their flares and/or engines to make it less effective. The is also the concept of the 'war load' or 'war paint'. In normal operation planes will have their radar cross section increased and corner reflectors added, engine burn is tweaked, etc, anything that could be leaked or sensed remotely (when flying in international airspace, or from space, or covertly through radar backscatter). When you think things will get serious you pull out those chunks of superfluous steel, tweak the engine exhaust nozzle, load different firmware onto the missiles and the EW system. If actual combat occurs there may be different war-only RADAR wave forms. Probably none of those are available to Syria (and the US has been building RADAR signatures of them for many months), except maybe an upgraded flare dispenser.
_e 9y ago
Interesting. Sloppy is random is simple is robust. This reminds me of a story where the USA got its hands on a new MiG and when they opened it up found that it used some kind of antiquated technology. Some time later the USA found out that this was intentional because the older tech could withstand nuclear radiation whereas the new tech would instantly fail.
- noir_lord 9y ago
  Was the Radar on the Mig-25 that a defector landed in Japan, they used Valves when all the US radars had moved almost entirely to transistors. Fun history, the Russians demanded it back off the US/Japanese so the Japanese government let the US take it apart, photo and test the parts (as quickly as possible) then shipped it back in crates and billed the Russians for the shipping. Which iirc they never paid.
  - _e 9y ago
    Thank you! I searched for more background and found another guess why the Soviets used valves instead of transistors: "Unable to afford the thermal-resistance provided by a titanium frame, the MiG-25’s designers used vacuum tubes over transistor-based modern electronics — which made the planes resistant to high-temperatures and cheaper to maintain."[0] [0] http://warisboring.com/one-soviet-defector-shoved-japan-into-the-superpower-struggle/ http://warisboring.com/one-soviet-defector-shoved-japan-into...
  - gnu8 9y ago
    I think that detail about the billing USSR for the return shipping of the plane is propaganda meant to humanize the US/Japanese side and dehumanize the USSR side by showing that we have a sense of humor and they don't. USSR could have replied by sending an invoice for the rental of the plane, reassembly of the components, and the intellectual property licensing for all of the technical data obtained. All of that would no doubt ought weigh the cost of crating and shipping the plane by orders of magnitude. Not that either side would ever have considered paying, of course. In reality, some entirely secret concession could have been made that we might never find out about unless it was documented and is some day declassified.
jandrewrogers 9y ago
The AIM-9X uses an infrared imager which is why it is "all aspect" -- it is chasing a plane and not a hot spot per se. Dirty flares should not impact this too much in principle. Given the age of the software in these missiles, the issue is likely relatively weak and brittle classifiers being used to separate noise from signal. It is not based on any kind of modern deep learning techniques.

digi_owl 9y ago

Would not surprise me. Soviet era designs and engineering seems to always having been more pragmatic, out of basic necessity.

mgamache 9y ago
The other way to read the article is to blame Soviet quality control. If we assume the variation in burn is random, it may mean overall better protection of your airborne resources, but you could not assess the protection of any individual aircraft. That sounds Soviet to me.
- _e 9y ago
  Like taking a vaccine. There will be a few who have a negative reaction but the positives greatly outweigh the negatives which makes it worth it for the greater good.

angry_octet 9y ago

Usually you would want the flare to mimic the spectrum of your own engines. I don't know if by irregular they meant in spectrum or illumination level. There is not a lot of short term variation in a jet exhaust due to thermal mass and the need for thrust to keep maneuvering, but the aspect changes. So sensors are not assuming a straight tail chase. I consider it much more likely that the Russians at some point obtained some AIM-9X seekers and tweaked their flares and/or engines to make it less effective. The is also the concept of the 'war load' or 'war paint'. In normal operation planes will have their radar cross section increased and corner reflectors added, engine burn is tweaked, etc, anything that could be leaked or sensed remotely (when flying in international airspace, or from space, or covertly through radar backscatter). When you think things will get serious you pull out those chunks of superfluous steel, tweak the engine exhaust nozzle, load different firmware onto the missiles and the EW system. If actual combat occurs there may be different war-only RADAR wave forms. Probably none of those are available to Syria (and the US has been building RADAR signatures of them for many months), except maybe an upgraded flare dispenser.

_e 9y ago

Interesting. Sloppy is random is simple is robust. This reminds me of a story where the USA got its hands on a new MiG and when they opened it up found that it used some kind of antiquated technology. Some time later the USA found out that this was intentional because the older tech could withstand nuclear radiation whereas the new tech would instantly fail.

noir_lord 9y ago
Was the Radar on the Mig-25 that a defector landed in Japan, they used Valves when all the US radars had moved almost entirely to transistors. Fun history, the Russians demanded it back off the US/Japanese so the Japanese government let the US take it apart, photo and test the parts (as quickly as possible) then shipped it back in crates and billed the Russians for the shipping. Which iirc they never paid.
- _e 9y ago
  Thank you! I searched for more background and found another guess why the Soviets used valves instead of transistors: "Unable to afford the thermal-resistance provided by a titanium frame, the MiG-25’s designers used vacuum tubes over transistor-based modern electronics — which made the planes resistant to high-temperatures and cheaper to maintain."[0] [0] http://warisboring.com/one-soviet-defector-shoved-japan-into-the-superpower-struggle/ http://warisboring.com/one-soviet-defector-shoved-japan-into...
- gnu8 9y ago
  I think that detail about the billing USSR for the return shipping of the plane is propaganda meant to humanize the US/Japanese side and dehumanize the USSR side by showing that we have a sense of humor and they don't. USSR could have replied by sending an invoice for the rental of the plane, reassembly of the components, and the intellectual property licensing for all of the technical data obtained. All of that would no doubt ought weigh the cost of crating and shipping the plane by orders of magnitude. Not that either side would ever have considered paying, of course. In reality, some entirely secret concession could have been made that we might never find out about unless it was documented and is some day declassified.

jandrewrogers 9y ago

The AIM-9X uses an infrared imager which is why it is "all aspect" -- it is chasing a plane and not a hot spot per se. Dirty flares should not impact this too much in principle. Given the age of the software in these missiles, the issue is likely relatively weak and brittle classifiers being used to separate noise from signal. It is not based on any kind of modern deep learning techniques.