Passenger jets may get anti-missile systems

miami herald ^ | 1/11/04

[XHogPilot]

There are far better things to spend money on than in the war on terrorism than airliner Infrared Countermeasures, IRCM. Active IRCM (flares)for an airliner would be cheap but probably not be highly effective. Passive IRCM, such as the Matador AN/ALQ 204 is far more effective and expensive.

[XHogPilot]

Matador AN/ALQ 204

[HiTech RedNeck]

it follows something that looks like an airplane

I was waiting for someone to point this obvious thing out. I imagine the US arsenal has even more sophisticated things, and China for one is rapidly getting savvy enough to crank out a fair copy of just about anything we could make.

[AntiKev]

If you are waiting to turn with a 747 at the last minute with the missle tracking you, the end of your day is not going to turn out like you hoped it would.

You mean the roll rate isn't 360 degrees per second?!?!? Uh oh, there are going to be a lot of p*ssed off fighter pilots. Oh wait...

[U S Army EOD]

Nope you got to rely on the stewardess with the flare pistol.

[USNBandit]

Since the missiles target the i-r spectrum the dazzlers do the same thing, you shouldn't see it. The visual spectrum light that you see from flares dispensed from military aircraft is basically wasted energy. That is why the article mentions flares that the passengers won't be able to see. It isn't because they burn so quickly...that wouldn't decoy anything. The new flares target the ir spectrum used by the missiles using rapid oxidizing metals which you can't see burn. The problem is that you still have burning metal dispensed from low flying aircraft over civilian areas

A dazzler doesn't have to use a laser, either. If you know the frequency as which your targeted sams, SA-7 SA-14 SA-18, scan at you send pulses of ir energy at that frequency and you induce an angular error until the target aircraft exits the field of view. The required miss distance to defeat these weapons is not that much.

[U S Army EOD]

I know nothing at all about the dazzal technoligy and have been out of the loop on SAM's for quite a few years. We were still learning Render Safe Procedures on Slingshots used to bring down your common duck when I first went into EOD.

My only experience with dazzal was what I saw the left wing, peudo-interlectual college professors were telling their "usefal idiot anti-war protestors" in the 60's about how life should be when they had never lived off the campus nor associated with anybody that had ever done anything interesting in their lives.

[AdamSelene235]

Terminal guidance systems are using broad spectrum IR imaging to find their target i.e. it follows something that looks like an airplane as viewed in a broad IR spectrum. Laser spectrums are too narrow,

That's why you need to use more than one laser. Or you need to spoof or destroy the sensor with a powerful laser. Not much time to do all these things.

[USNBandit]

What you described was an imaging array. That is the kind of detector used on advanced air to air weapons. Manpads still use older types circular scans. Based on the detecting material they can look for plume heat or skin heat, but they still can't compare for aircraft shaped targets. That would be too expensive.

[Joe Hadenuf]

Passenger jets may get anti-missile systems

Huh? This is like something out of Mad Magazine.

[tortoise]

What you described was an imaging array. That is the kind of detector used on advanced air to air weapons. Manpads still use older types circular scans. Based on the detecting material they can look for plume heat or skin heat, but they still can't compare for aircraft shaped targets. That would be too expensive.

For what definition of expensive? This is 1980s technology; the civilian sector uses much better hardware on the cheap.

Broad spectrum infrared imaging elements are not particularly expensive, particularly not at the resolutions these things run at, and can be quite compact. As far as picking an aircraft out of an image, that is just software, and the bandwidth of the modern seekers allows it to see a hell of a lot more than conventional thermal imaging. Imaging based guidance is also what allows modern IR seekers to be effective from all aspects.

The state-of-the-art for IR spectrum discrimination and guidance in US weapons use a CPU that was obsolete when Clinton first took office. Wide spectrum thermal imaging elements are compact and cheap. The software for IR imaging based guidance has been around since at least the late 1980s. What part of this is too expensive or too large for a MANPAD? We're looking at components that add up to a small fraction of the entire missile cost, in a very compact package, running really old guidance and discrimination software.

And, a quick Google search seems to indicate that the guidance package on the Stinger missile is in fact some type of IR imaging array controlled by software and an embedded CPU, and has been for a long time. So I'm not really sure what kind of MANPAD you were referring to. We've been doing it this way for a long time.

[tortoise]

I should note that original guidance system on the Stinger was completely replaced some time around the late 1980s and has been incrementally upgraded since. The platform is the same as the original Stinger, but the guidance system is now software and imaging based.

[USNBandit]

The imaging array you are talking about is on the Block II RMP Stinger which has not as of yet been funded. If we can't keep it off the streets when our own troops don't have it then we really have problems.