Thread: Can AESA be jammed?

Originally Posted by Maxor

I am in the middle on this, if the side with aesa radars has good information security it is a major pain to jam completely and effectively. Tuned barrage jamming can limit the radar somewhat. Good deception jamming can seriousl mess it up if they know your radar systems well. You are essentially at the point where you can arms race with your enemy on radars versus countermeasures. In theory at least no radar is unjammable no countermeasure is unbeatable. Both sides are limited by equiptment agility, money, trasmiting power processing power, size of the equipment on the aircraft, and the resources put into doing either. Mostly I'd put it into the range of you can put enough clutter into the atmosphere to seriously reduce the usefullness of the radar but its not like they will be blind up there.

That's what I thought. Personally I've never understood by so few airforces take offensive EW seriously, it is such a massive force multiplier that it would surely be worth reducing the size of your fighter fleet to pay for a decent number of offensive jammers.

BTW, what do you guy's who are "in the know" think of this as a basic EW primer for the uninitiated?

Chapter 11 COUNTERMEASURES

Originally Posted by Aussiegunner

That's what I thought. Personally I've never understood by so few airforces take offensive EW seriously, it is such a massive force multiplier that it would surely be worth reducing the size of your fighter fleet to pay for a decent number of offensive jammers.

Because its not a huge/massive force multiplier long term. HARM missiles eat active jamming. To really power a big high powered jamming system you need a big plane with big antennas and even then your of jamming range is limited. It can also be counter productive for joint opperations as you have to be a really really close ally to give that sort of info out. Fighters are sexy especially to the mildly interested voter RC-135's aren't. Offensive jamming is also more of a warfare aid than a warfare weapon.

[QUOTE=Maxor;709470]Because its not a huge/massive force multiplier long term. HARM missiles eat active jamming.]

But the launch platform for the HARM missile or an AAM with a home on jamming capability would need to get in range of the jammer, which would mean getting past the fighters it is supporting. My understanding is that modern mraam's get their range by taking a ballistic flight path which would require range information that the jammed party wouldn't have, so they are going to have to get a lot closer, giving greater opportunity for the fighters to engage them.



"To really power a big high powered jamming system you need a big plane with big antennas and even then your of jamming range is limited."

Fair enough. What about using multiple smaller jammers to allow each to cover part of the spectrum and boosting range, while allowing more survivable types to be used?


"It can also be counter productive for joint opperations as you have to be a really really close ally to give that sort of info out."

Fair enough but the risk of information getting out is just a risk. Not having the jamming capability at all is a certainty.

"Fighters are sexy especially to the mildly interested voter RC-135's aren't."

Granted.

"Offensive jamming is also more of a warfare aid than a warfare weapon."

But if it allows your warfare weapons a chance when they previously had none, then it sounds like a good idea to me.

[QUOTE=Aussiegunner;709839]

Originally Posted by Maxor

Because its not a huge/massive force multiplier long term. HARM missiles eat active jamming.]

But the launch platform for the HARM missile or an AAM with a home on jamming capability would need to get in range of the jammer, which would mean getting past the fighters it is supporting. My understanding is that modern mraam's get their range by taking a ballistic flight path which would require range information that the jammed party wouldn't have, so they are going to have to get a lot closer, giving greater opportunity for the fighters to engage them.



"To really power a big high powered jamming system you need a big plane with big antennas and even then your of jamming range is limited."

Fair enough. What about using multiple smaller jammers to allow each to cover part of the spectrum and boosting range, while allowing more survivable types to be used?


"It can also be counter productive for joint opperations as you have to be a really really close ally to give that sort of info out."

Fair enough but the risk of information getting out is just a risk. Not having the jamming capability at all is a certainty.

"Fighters are sexy especially to the mildly interested voter RC-135's aren't."

Granted.

"Offensive jamming is also more of a warfare aid than a warfare weapon."

But if it allows your warfare weapons a chance when they previously had none, then it sounds like a good idea to me.

I forgot to add, even if barrage jamming didn't entirely disable the AESA that it is operting against, wouldn't it disable the ability of the radars on active MRAAMs to home in the terminal stage of the engagement?

Originally Posted by zraver

Lets say your jammer is sending out a signal that looks like ___________ a strong steady pulse over the entire spectrum. Now I am in an AESA equipped fighter and my signal thanks to coding looks like -------------. It has its own footprint for my receiver to pick up on. Combine the two _-_-_-_-_- If my receiver is sensitive enough its going to be able to filter out the noise that is either two strong or not coded right and we are back to ----- if with reduced range and capabilities.

If I read you, we are taking for granted that current jamming technology does not barrage hard enough to overcome AESA's receiver. Is that what you mean?

[QUOTE=Aussiegunner;709839]

Originally Posted by Maxor

Fair enough. What about using multiple smaller jammers to allow each to cover part of the spectrum and boosting range, while allowing more survivable types to be used?

If you want to boost range & power, wouldn't that oblige you to put all of the little jamming platforms in close proximity to each other, thereby broadcasting their location? If you spread them out, wouldn't that defeat the purpose and make each system easy picking for AESA?

Originally Posted by NUS

What technology? AESA was in extensive use since 1960's. Do you really think nothing was developed since then to counter it? In best case all you need to do is to rewrite a software for new types of radar.

AESA tech in the 60's is hardly comparable to what is in service today. In fact array technology on the 60's suffered from high unavailability rates due to the technology curve not even remotely meeting the operating specs and parameters. Comparing array tech from the 60's to contemp AESA is akin to comparing ASDIC to a contemp ASW system on a modern skimmer.

Originally Posted by NUS

Look, AESA is not something new or totally magical. It has it's problems too. For example, current problems with thermal stabilization of AESA modules in airborn radars makes most theoretical advantages of AESA only theoretical possibility unreachable in practice.

In my experience claims by vendors usually fall 20% short of their articulated parameters - and its usually under their predetermined conditions. (FLIR and IRST being good examples of systems I've been involved with where the manufacturers claims were rather "generous" - and that applies to non US vendors as well.

Systems are tested against the users (warfighters) defined conditions, not on the vendors.

You guys are so brainwashed by Lockheed marketing it's not even funny.

Thats an interesting concept when we actually go out and test gear against vignettes designed and determined by the warfighting community. We don't just take "marketing material" and ask to go out and buy it. procurement may have its ups and downs, but its a tad more sophisticated than going off the marketing brochures. BTW, there are other players besides LM who have AESA build and development capability.

I've worked on some shocking procurement projects (in a number of countries) - generally I would have to say that the rigour and vim applied to those in the 5I community is a bit more robust than the assessment teams eyes glazing over because someone else has been exposed to a death by powerpoint proposal and has "oohed and aahed" because they (the original senior star audience) may not have had an overall appreciation of whats needed to do the job.

[QUOTE=Triple C;709847]

Originally Posted by Aussiegunner

If you want to boost range & power, wouldn't that oblige you to put all of the little jamming platforms in close proximity to each other, thereby broadcasting their location? If you spread them out, wouldn't that defeat the purpose and make each system easy picking for AESA?

Put it this way, if you have a flight of SU-34 or F-18G jammers close together all jamming different frequencies and a missile comes at them, they can manouver quickly in all different directions and if one of them gets destroyed then the rest can still continue with the job. They also have a pretty serious self defence capability. An RC-135 can't do that.

[QUOTE=Aussiegunner;709840]

Originally Posted by Aussiegunner

I forgot to add, even if barrage jamming didn't entirely disable the AESA that it is operting against, wouldn't it disable the ability of the radars on active MRAAMs to home in the terminal stage of the engagement?

I am or was a 2a1x7 (ews guy) not a weapons guy but my understanding is the following.... 1 most missiles modern use both the aircraft radar and the on board radar to home and track. 2. You go after their jamming platforms first which are usually big slow moving aircraft and ground platforms. Fighter based jammers don't have the manning, or the anntenna to lay down really effective wide area barrage jamming.the closest thing in existance that I know of is the EA-6B prowler. The pod based systems on most fighters aren't a match for most radar systems availible and perform more of a countermeasures role to guidance and tracking radars for missiles and targeting systems. (In my opinion th growler is not a true replacement for the prowler and while the prowler needed to be replaced the backseater in the growler will be overload trying to do everything that prolwers did) Its a cost saving measure that hopefully won't come back to bite people due to lessened capability.)

It also becomes appearent that the enemy is using large ammounts of active jamming fairly early in the conflict and you start putting a harm missile or two on most fighters (most missions are flown with no where close to a full weapons payload the extra weight saved gives manuverability speed and more fuel.) When your RWR picks up the direction or the massive ammounts of power being actively transmitted you send the harm missiles out. Interesting thing about almost any signal is that you can see the signal about 2.5 times farther out than they can hope to see bounceback with the same size and senativity of equipment. This is why jamming is effective as all, it is also part of why jamming is hazardous because if the signal is strong enough to jam a radar they also know its general bearing (yes there are deception jamming techniques that can counter this to an extent but we are going simplistic here). At that point once the homing antiradation missiles are launched you have the choice between stopping the jamming or trying to dodge a missile in your big relatively unmanuverable plane. Jamming goes down and you've still got a fighter with a number of other missile to shoot at your airplane.

Also due to antenna and transmitter size as well as fueling factors most really effective area denial jamming systems tend to be ground based in trailors. Which have an even harder time dodging a missile.