From the Magazine: ARMED AND DANGEROUS – TARGETING ENEMY DEFENCES

Anti-radiation missiles (ARMs) are at the sharp end of electronic warfare, and have proven their immense worth in combat over the last half century from the Israeli victory against the Syrians in the Bekaa Valley in 1982, to Desert Storm when coalition forces launched over 2,000 anti-radiation missiles to wipe out Iraqi air defences. Nations around the world continue to invest in these niche missiles, as well as anti-radiation loitering munitions.

For friendly combat aircraft, electronic countermeasures (ECM) and self-protection systems that use chaff, flares or directed energy can only temporarily keep enemy missiles at bay, while jammers are only effective whilst the jamming device is present. Permanently destroying enemy air defences and pre-emptively taking them out before they can engage is a better solution, hence the concept of suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD) or destruction of enemy air defences (DEAD). The latter generally refers to missions that use conventional attack weapons rather than the specialist weapons and electronics carried by SEAD aircraft like the EA-18G Growler or ‘Wild Weasel’ F-16CJ Fighting Falcon.

Anti-radiation missiles are the main tools used to attack air defence radars, but they are only able to home in on radiation-emitting targets and not missile launchers and associated anti-aircraft equipment. With this in mind, some SEAD aircraft will drop cluster munitions to take out other infrastructure around the radar emitter. Once the radars are disabled, air defences can be destroyed by other weapons.

Although anti-radiation missiles are generally designed for air-to-surface use against ground-based radars in the SEAD role, they can also effectively be used as strike weapons, especially against ships, as they can lock onto a platform’s radar. Surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles can also function as ARMs – for example, missiles like the P-700 Granit or Exocet can home on enemy emitters.

This is an excerpt from APDR. To read the full story click here.

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