Counter Radar Tactics

Approximately two years ago only Discovery Wings, produced a program entittled, "Red October." It took place October 17th to early November, since the F/A-18's flew across the Atlantic Ocean in two separate flights one on the seventeenth and the other on the eighteenth of October 1996. I taped the two hour special and have viewed it several times to extract information.

It was about a group of eight US Navy F/A-18C's and two "D's" that flew from Oceana NAS, Virginia, USA to Laage, Germany for a two weeks syllabus on how best to fight the MiG.-29 Fulcrum. Some time later at Aviano, Italy a group of F-16C's also had a syllabus with the MiG.-29's of the 73rd Fighter Squadron.

During the program Red October, mention was made of tacticS on how (the MiG.) could "win" in the BVR arena and penetrate to the WVR arena. On the chalk board was a diagram of the "beam maneuver" being used. As the Luftwaffe and Navy pilots talked (a BS session), mention was made to other tactics to penetrate the BVR arena and get past the radar and radar lock-on of Western fighters.

A little later there was a discussion about tactics on how to penetrate in the WVR arena and get to the gun range/furball..... past the HMDS! On day three one F/A-18 was one the other side of a turning circle against a MiG.-29. Gun camera video shows the F/A-18 firing at 2,400 feet slant range on the MiG.-29. After seeing that portion of the video several times I could see the little black rectangle in the upper left portion of the screen indicating the gun being fired.

They both were nearly in the vertical plane. The F/A-18 was nose down and the MiG.-29 was nose high. When looking across the turning circle the F/A-18 pilot could see the MiG. slowly getting the advantage. So the F/A-18 extended a little then pulled his nose high in AOA (relative to his course) and got a guns kill on the MiG.-29. Until the F/A-18 extended a little then pulled his nose high in AOA, the MiG.-29 was close to being able to kill the F/A-18 with the HMDS!

Does anyone know about the tactics to avoid or break radar lock-on in BVR other than the beam maneuver) or, the tacticS of how to get past the HMDS and get within gun range in WVR of which they can describe?

Adrian

Either borrow an F-117 or F-22 or turn on the cloaking device ! Sorry avon1944, but the members of this site who know anything about this are not likely to reply to this - OPSEC . Good luck with your search !

I refer you to the Falcon 4.0 manual and the game. Real world yeah right.

Hi avon1944, thanks for posting this kinda interesting information. Could you tell us a bit more about the beam maneuver? Is it a high-G 90 degrees turn that breaks the lock or anything else?

Just to add one more interesting thing:
I've read about Su-27s using Cobra and the "Bell" maneuver to break the lock of doppler radars (this is achieved by the rapid loss of airspeed at the peak of the maneuver).

Iceman

IIRC "beaming" is a technique to defeat Doppler radars - if you fly orthogonal (90 degrees) to the beam then your Doppler shift is near zero, and the Doppler radar has a difficult time acquiring the target.

Thanks for reply, habu2.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but (as far as i know) the Doppler effect is based on the fact that the object is moving faster than the radar. So, if the target will be flying at exactly the same airspeed as the aircraft with the radar and in the same direction (their velocity vectors will be colinear), then the doppler shift would be zero, right?

Iceman

You have to consider what the 'shift' is relative to. The radar knows how fast it is going relative to the earth, and tends to filter out all returns that are not moving relative to that reference - and in the direction of the radar. So, if a jet is crossing perpendicluar to the path of the radar beam, the (doppler) radar cannot distinguish the target because it appears to be moving towards the radar at the same rate as the earth/sky/ground reference frame. Google on "doppler range gates" but be warned, it gets pretty deep (technically) pretty quick.

Oh, I see (didn't know the thing with the earth reference frame ). The PD radar tends to put out all returns that seem to be static. So either if the target flies perpendicular to the radar beam or if it moves in the same direction as the radar and has zero mutual speed (as mentioned above), the radar does not distinguish it....

Thanks for explanation, habu

Cheers,
Iceman

Heh heh!

Parrothead has it right.

Do not believe for one second that a AI radar that is already locked on cannot track you during a 'beam' maneuver. And some planes have other sensors, duh?

Best way to break lock is to get a mountain between you and the other troop. They still don't have a radar that can see thru granite, and I am here to prove it from real life experience.

RCS is a real big player these days. Think about it.

Finally, one of our great axioms was, "An eyeball is worth a thousand mile radar contact"

out,

If I could just chuck in my 15 cents worth...for the less-than-technically inclined audience, whenever I explain doppler shift, I used the old "train whistle comin' at ya" example. The whistle pitch increases comin' at ya and decreases goin' away. The pitch shift is the Doppler effect, or Doppler Shift. The shifting effect also works for radar waves and even light waves.

In very simplistic terms, after lockup the FCR says to itself "on the next sweep, check for any doppler shift". If it sees it, tracking is a no-brainer. If the shift (signal return time - usually in microseconds) is longer than the previous sweep, the bogey/bandit is opening in range and vice versa. When you're 90 degrees to the radar antenna look angle (not the jet's long axis) the doppler shift isn't as apparant to the radar, so the it has to do some tricks that I won't get into to maintain the lock. If it can't determine doppler shift for x-amount of seconds it may, just may, drop lock. But like Gums says, any AI radar worth it's salt can overcome this.

Note: Webmasters: Feel free to censor me if you think there's too much sensative stuff in there.

Yo ho!

Simdude is on to something.

All potential enemies and friends should be advised that there are radar modes that do not use doppler techniques. And there are other sensors, as well. I even flew with and operated one of them in my single-seat fighter way back in 1965. Our neatest trick was to lock on and keep the radar sweeping back and forth. The poor gomer didn't know we had locked on until the missile hit him, heh heh. And we could see the gomer head on at a fairly decent range.

All potential enemies should be advised that there are 'ways' to show enemy position that do not require our radar to even be turned on!

Be afraid, be very afraid.

out

SimDude and Gums are correct - I was only trying to describe the unique aspects of (pure) Doppler mode, without any specifics as to the actual radar operation (for obvious reasons).

Also, to expand on SimDude's comment about the look angle, this is why Doppler has a "hole" at the boresight (think about it)