If you have viewed “Top Gun”, you may have noticed that the countermeasures of the F/A-188 use Chaff/Flare. Although both KAF and torches are used by military aircraft to defend themselves against incoming rockets, they are both different types of Lokvogels used to confuse the enemy. At the moment there are two primary types of rockets used by military armed forces: radar -led and heat visiting.
Fighter pilots, especially from NATO alliance, actually say what type of rocket they are launching to warn their wingmen which type they just launched; Warning their allies that there is an active ammunition in the air and to prevent friendly fire. However, the plane on the receiving side of the rocket would not know what kind of species is on its way. That is why the countermeasures installed on military aircraft must work for both types of rockets. This is where Kaf and torches come in.
According to the National Center for Biotechnology -InformationChaff consists of aluminum-coated glass fibers about 0.75 cm long, about the size of the charging gate of your phone. Each cartridge releases between 500,000 to 100 million fibers: when it is distributed in the air, it creates a radar reflecting cloud that creates thousands of false goals for the Radar-Homing rocket to connect instead of the target plane. On the other hand, torches are used to defend themselves against heat -seeking rockets. These are often made with magnesium and burn thousands of degrees, making a target hotter than the engines of the aircraft.
Other ways in which aircraft avoid enemy fire
These two countermeasures are often considered part of the last line of defense of an airplane against rockets. That is why the newest fighter jets, such as the F-22 Raptor, use Stealth Technology. After all, if their opponents cannot see them on radar, they cannot be involved. The F-35 Lightning II also uses special technology to reduce the heat signature, making it more difficult for infrared looking for missiles to lock on them.
Apart from these technologies, the army also uses electronic warfare (EW) to prevent enemies from seeing and locking their aircraft. This technique, also called jamming, floods the air waves with electromagnetic sound to disrupt radar systems used by opposite forces. Many aircraft in the US inventory have EW equipment to prevent them from being detected, including the F-15, F-16, F-22 and F-35 fighter jets, as well as the UH-60 Blackhawk and AH-64 Apache helicopters.
The US even have aircraft devoted to this mission, with American Marine aircraft carriers armed with EA-6B Prowler, a special EW version of the A-6 Intrader Ground attack plane. This jet had a long lifespan of more than 50 years, before it was finally replaced by the F/A-18-based EA-18G Growler in 2019. The US Air Force also has several dedicated EW aircraft such as the Gulfstream G550-based EA-37B commass call summit. But despite all these advanced and dedicated countermeasures, many military aircraft still wear chaff and flare to protect them.
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