AirForces Monthly – September 2019

The new-generation Meteor beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile (BVRAAM) fi rst entered service with

the Swedish Air Force’s JAS 39C/D Gripen. Use of a ramjet motor is one way to expand the weapon’s

fl y-out and engagement ranges – matching the detection ranges of modern fi ghter radars and

increasing ‘reach’ to put standoff surveillance aircraft and other high-value assets under threat. MBDA

Defence contractors in the East and West are increasingly tailoring air defence

radars to detect low-observable combat aircraft, as stealth is recognised as a

key threat. Saab’s Giraffe 4A is based on active electronically scanned array

(AESA) technology and it uses gallium nitride to get more energy out in the

air from a radar with limited antenna size. Saab

64 // September 2019 #378 http://www.airforcesmonthly.com

Column

systems and can include the use of standoff,

supporting or deployable decoys. Indeed,

much of the recent hype about swarming

drones hints towards this use for cheaper,

expendable platforms that can act as a

diversion for other more valuable platforms.

I have, of course, grossly oversimplified

some rather sophisticated physics and

technologies, but the basic principles

hold good for radar-guided systems. Of

the other detection measures, increased

performance in sensors and processors

is making the broader spectrum (visual,

infrared and noise) increasingly exposed

and cannot be discounted as a growing

vulnerability in the coming years.

Clever tactics

So much for the science, what about the art

form known as cunning. There is an old fighter

pilot adage that ‘if you’re not cheating,

you’re not trying’, and nowhere is this

more true than in the tactics employed to

avoid detection. SAM battery operators

are trained to spot patterns or assume

certain behaviours. There have been

numerous recent examples, in relatively

benign circumstances, where air defence

weapon systems have engaged friendly

aircraft that either weren’t exhibiting certain

behaviours or became confused with nearby

platforms that were hostile. Saturating a

defensive system or creating a complex or

conflicting picture can buy precious time to

decrease detection or at the

very least decrease reaction

time to engage; and in

this case anything goes

to try to create maximum

confusion. The rest, my

friend, is classified, but

let your imagination

run wild, the less

predictable the better.

I hope I have painted a

rather more nuanced picture

of a battle to reduce detection

times to such an extent that

any reaction is too slow

to carry out a successful interception. Rarely

will this result in a totally one-way fight. The

history of air power is littered with surprising

shoot-downs of platforms that were considered

immune to attack, and these will not be the last.

Control of the air remains a key foundation of

air power doctrine, but what was once largely

a battle between aircraft is now a far more

complex equation, but one where ‘he who

sees first wins’ still holds as valid today as it

did over the battlefields of World War One.

NEXT MONTH: Twenty-fi rst century

aircrew training

AFM

Above: A Serbian 2K12 Kub (SA-6 ‘Guideline’)

mobile surface-to-air missile system fi res during

the multinational live-fi re training exercise

Shabla 19, in Shabla, Bulgaria, on June 12. While

the latest SAMs are increasingly exploiting the

electronic spectrum to aid the detection of stealth

aircraft, even Cold War-era systems like the Kub

can pose a serious threat to unwary aviators. US

Army/Sgt Thomas Mort

‘If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.’ Added to the menu of scientifi c counters to detection,

fi ghter pilots are trained to employ the ‘dark art’ of cunning to survive the modern battlespace

unscathed. In this example, an RAF Tornado GR4 gets down low ‘among the weeds’ in a Welsh valley

before the type’s retirement earlier this year. Crown Copyright

Commander’s Update Briefi ng

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