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Indeed! And form working with guys in the stealth/radar biz, there's a saying about trying to use radar to guide your missiles: "He who lights up first gets sm
by toss1 7y ago
Indeed! And form working with guys in the stealth/radar biz, there's a saying about trying to use radar to guide your missiles:
"He who lights up first gets smoked"
As in, once you turn on your tracking radar, you effectively shine a really bright beacon for anyone to see. If you are the ground station trying to get a lock on the thing that the long-range area radar saw, suddenly you are the brightest target in the area. You might have a few seconds before the plane you are trying to hit sends a missile right down your beam. Same for a pilot if he tries to scan for a target.
- azernik 7y agoSimilar to the logic of using artillery against a modern conventional army. Counter-battery radars can pinpoint a gun or ballistic launcher by tracking the shells/missiles, so you've got to either shoot and scoot with self-propelled guns or do like Hamas does and remotely fire missiles from an expendable launcher.
- tempguy9999 7y agoA couple of questions from a civvie: does one physically separate the radar from the (manned) station using it so you only get borked cheapish equipment rather than dead people and expensive ground-based station wrecked? And isn't faking a few radar 'lights' a good way to use up the opposition aircraft's missiles? Naive I know but it's not my area.
- azernik 7y agoThe radar is usually one of the most expensive components in the system. Yes, they're usually separate trailers from other components of the system, but losing a precious radar is still a big blow.
- SEJeff 7y agoExcellent question, and it is standard operating procedure. We had ~100m cables for our actual dishes that we used to control the Shadow 200 and always kept them far away from where we were flying if at all feasible. Most nations do this, however some missiles are set to go towards the rf and then switch to visual identification of targets to say blow up the control station.
- kuzehanka 7y agoRussia's S-400 completely decouples radar from launchers. Both are highly mobile. Both work in networks. A decoy RF source wouldn't make much sense. To be a viable decoy it would need to have a similar ERP to the real thing. And at that point it already costs almost as much as the real thing, so you might as well go all the way.
- trhway 7y ago>As in, once you turn on your tracking radar, you effectively shine a really bright beacon for anyone to see. If you are the ground station trying to get a lock on the thing that the long-range area radar saw, suddenly you are the brightest target in the area. You might have a few seconds before the plane you are trying to hit sends a missile right down your beam. reminded https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown#Downing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown#Downing " According to Lieutenant Colonel Đorđe Aničić, who was identified in 2009 as the soldier who fired the missiles, they detected the F-117 at a range of about 23 km operating their equipment for no more than 17 seconds to avoid being locked on to by NATO anti-air suppression." Typically (at least in USSR/Russia) a couple of radar stations would take turns each staying on only for those few seconds.
- smallstepforman 7y agoSerbia in 1999 used modified microwave ovens as an Anti Radar missile honey pot. You light the sky with a decoy, the plane activates its defenses, and now the hunter is the hunted just having exhausted its defenses. Decoys are cheap.
- blackflame7000 7y agoThere are passive ways to detect a tracking radar, it's the same principle is used in dashboard speed-radar detectors. The anti-aircraft batteries are going to have to send out the first ping otherwise they would never know the aircraft is there. Anti-Aircraft batteries are constantly searching the skies with powerful radar beacons and the moment it hits the aircraft the aircraft will know where it came from.
- greedo 7y agoSome of the older Soviet era SAMs have optical guidance/cueing as well to fall back up on in the face of jamming, or wishing to avoid SEAD attacks.
- SEJeff 7y agoAnd many of the missiles SEAD strikes would use against SAMs also include visual identification for the terminal phase of flight.
- blackflame7000 7y agoOn airforce one, there is an active anti-missile laser-based system designed to send a high-intensity pulse into the optical/IR tracker on a missile warhead effectively disabling it. There's also one that uses an EMP pulse for missiles that use radar tracking instead of optical.
- SEJeff 7y agoMost of the countermeasures aboard air force one are classified.