Generic model of aircraft susceptibility to radar under conditions of electronic counter measures

Abstract

This paper is only concerned with the susceptibility. Susceptibility of an aircraft is influenced by the following factors: 1) the location, number, and capabilities of the enemy air defense weapons; 2) the aircraft's basic design (e.g., geometric shape and the use of radar absorbing materials to degrade the enemy's radar detection capabilities and speed or agility to avoid any approaching enemy missiles) and onboard equipment or weapons (e.g., the use of onboard electronic attack equipment to degrade enemy missile guidance systems and antiradiation missile (ARM) to destroy the enemy air defense systems); 3) the tactics that are employed by the pilot. We can't “control” the location, number, and capabilities of the enemy weapons. Once the aircraft enters the service, its basic design cannot be changed any more. For the aircraft in service, its susceptibility can be further reduced by adding more advanced onboard equipment or weapons and employing more flexible tactics. The advanced aircraft in development (e.g., the fifth generation fighter aircraft) may exhibit a lower degree of susceptibility when they first enter the service, however, this superiority will be gradually eliminatedby proliferating threats [4]. The most advanced aircraft today also face the problem of reducing their susceptibility in the future. We present a generic model to gain insight into how electronic counter measures (ECMs) affect the susceptibility of aircraft. Our main purpose is to reduce the susceptibility of the aircraft in service, by applying airborne ECM techniques. Although some advanced stealth aircraft have been put into service in some countries, more aircraft in service are not stealthy, especially in developing countries. Compared with stealth coating and other techniques, ECMs have some advantages in reducing the susceptibility of aircraft in service. For example, the stealth coating is often sensitive to the radar frequency, and the maintenance cost of the stealth coating may be too high for some aircraft [5]. Shaping the surface of the aircraft to obtain a smaller radar cross section (RCS) value may be effective to decrease monostatic radar's returns, but this does not apply to bistatic radar [6]. Moreover, it is almost impossible to change the geometric shape of the existing aircraft.