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Newbie Joined: Jun 26, 2007 Posts: 2 Status: Offline

Hello all,
I was wondering how the RWR knowns when to sound the launch warning, say, when a semi-active radar homing SAM is launched at the aircraft? Is the RWR capable of distinguishing between a radar lock and a launch (is there a difference at all) ?
Thanks in advance!

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Enthusiast Joined: Jul 31, 2006 Posts: 23 Status: Offline

Discussing the capabilities of the RWR system is not something anyone should be discussing on a open forum. I would ask what your need to know this information is? I read this forum quite often & enjoy it very much. As a Viper maintainer (Avionics) myself I am suspicious when I see folks asking about sensitive information on this site. I would caution anyone from discussing RWR particulars on this forum. You never know who is reading this!

Newbie Joined: Jun 26, 2007 Posts: 2 Status: Offline

Hi there,
Well, I was simply curious that's all...no spy or anything like that, besides I think this ability exists on all sides of the border...
I was just flying my Falcon 4.0, and it caught my attention. I don't think it's such a huge secret, and besides, there are lots of other semi "classified" data around here (capabilites of missiles, for example). Very Happy

Enthusiast Joined: Nov 27, 2003 Posts: 35 Status: Offline

Tamirmichael! Maybe you are a shiny young simnerd, or a spy from a rouge state, or a non-state actor. But I think a first poster still deserves a few words.

The public domain is full with general explanation of how these stuff work. And not so general...knowledge what many in the service never heard of, or forget about since training.

However, because of sensistivities experienced in forums, it's better to go to libraries, or buy books on the topics.

Just an Amazon link to start with:

http://www.amazon.com/Ew-101-Electronic-Warfare-Library/dp/1580531695

Cheers!

Just use the same answer that we would always give for either questions that we shouldn't be answering (or that we didn't know the answer to...)

"It's MAGIC!"

...and then leave it at that...

Mike

Vader7043 wrote:

Discussing the capabilities of the RWR system is not something anyone should be discussing on a open forum. I would ask what your need to know this information is? I read this forum quite often & enjoy it very much. As a Viper maintainer (Avionics) myself I am suspicious when I see folks asking about sensitive information on this site. I would caution anyone from discussing RWR particulars on this forum. You never know who is reading this!

Elite 1K Joined: Apr 26, 2004 Posts: 1215 Status: Offline

We need Gums to explain nuclear weapons again......Oh Gums.......

Elite 1K Joined: Aug 19, 2004 Posts: 1092

I don't know the specifics, but the basics aren't secret or "magic". For a sem-active radar homing SAM, a launch warning is given when a guidance uplink signal is detected (indicating that the SAM is being guided by the SAM's fire control radar system). An aircraft's RWR might also give a launch warning when a SAM radar switches to a different "mode". Some missile systems switch to a different radar frequency to guide missiles onto target (a higher pulse repetition frequency I suppose?). I think the only way an RWR will specifically tell you a launch has occurred is when it detects an uplink guidance signal, however. The SAM radar operator could probably fool an enemy aircraft into thinking it had been fired upon by manually changing radar modes to the one generally used to guide missiles onto target. This would probably just make the RWR show that you were being continuously tracked. This doesn't necessarily mean that a missile is in the air though. You CAN find a lot of stuff about electronic warfare (unclassified) on certain technical report servers. STINET is a good one.

Don't take these responses personally, tamirmichael; there have been a number of people around here who didn't understand what "classified", "for official use only", and "need to know" meant.....and they were tolerated to a point before they were flat out squashed because they kept asking for things that don't need to be in a public forum. Yes, you probably can find many of these things from other resources - but that does not mean the information should be out there, ya know? Folks here will usually be very polite about not answering something, until the matter is forced. If a question is asked, and someone - regardless of who, if they have 10 posts to their credit or 2000 - says "you shouldn't ask that", then simply take it for what its worth. Not everyone knows the first time if their question is considered sensitive Smile

Forum Veteran Joined: Dec 14, 2006 Posts: 505

Purplehaze wrote:

We need Gums to explain nuclear weapons again......Oh Gums.......

You're joke leads me to digress from the main topic with this response.

Most of the information is readily publicly available to build a rudimentary nuclear fission bomb. However it still is a major task to bring one to fruition, unless you just happen to have some weapons grade uranium. Even if you can build a rudimentary nuclear device, that doesn't mean it is easily deliverable or tactically practical. North Korea seems to have nuclear bombs, however the quality of their bombs seems to be very low and they still seem to be quite large and heavy for their aircraft or missiles to carry.

Most of the rudimentary information was made public in the naïve and idealistic “Atoms for Peace” program. Most of the rudimentary information is available at advanced colleges, the Library of Congress, and from what I hear on the Internet.

Just because you know the rudimentary information doesn't mean you can practically make a weapon or that would be practical (competitive/tactical).

It takes a considerable amount of money, know-how and effort to make a bomb that is reliable, efficient and is small and light enough to have much tactical capability.

I suspect Iran might already have the nuclear bomb, if they do it is probably not light, reliable, efficient or small enough to be much tactical/strategic use.

Elite 1K Joined: Apr 26, 2004 Posts: 1215 Status: Offline

Hey ATFS....have you read all of Gums post on the subject? He really has a knack of making light of it.......

Purplehaze wrote:

Hey ATFS....have you read all of Gums post on the subject? He really has a knack of making light of it.......

I, for one, firmly believe that Gums is one of the few people in the world who is fully capable of making a nuke from bubble gum (as long as it's "Big League" brand), water, scotch tape, two paper clips, and a yellow sticky note. The guy is brilliant! Sometimes I wonder if he's even really human....

I too would claim opsec on this question and decline to answer, but you can find this out by reading any number of military aviation novels (Coonts, Brown, Bond, Clancy, etc). Most will give you what Raptor one gave you, an overall general explanation.

Enthusiast Joined: Aug 11, 2006 Posts: 25 Status: Offline

The only thing that I can disclose is that with the older radars and missiles (e.g. Sparrow on F-4s), the wavelength of the radar emission was changing in order to "light" for the radar returns for the missile (semi active guidance). As a note, this information is not classified, and any radar tech would you ask he will give you this exact answer. Hope I covered you!

Salute!

Well, gotta get some doofer on these boards to let me know when my name and sacred honor is being bandied about with great reverence ( as is due) or in a flippant manner.

Lajes-breath has a good link ( mandatory reading for those of you students that haven't had to learn the stuff while a SA-2 was actually in the air and tracking you. $90 sems a cheap price compared to what we early RHAW users went thru), but we can discuss a few things here, amongst careful and security-concious folks, can't we?
*************************

Let's face it, you can buy decent RHAW gear to let you know that a county mountie has already nailed your puny butt for zipping along ten MPH above the speed limit. You can even buy some stuff that interferes with the dude's radar gun. Hmmmmm, tink we old farts and our even older brethren thot of all that way back in WW2.

So the principle is so damned easy I must laugh.

Use your basic radio doofer to find electromagnetic waves of interest - like the ones associated with a radar-guided missile or radar-controlled ack or search radars or heightfinders. Geee.....

I mean, hell, I can drive down the road and tell you the power company has a bad transformer, or that there's a leaky DSL line. I do it by listening to "talk radio" on my AM radio in my truck. You see, I was trained in the really old days when we listened to the actual radio wave decoded audio. Could tell the difference between a FireCan or a FanSong or whatever. Have some neat tapes we'll get here one day so's I can show you how they all sounded.

Funny, but the TWS from a Fan Song sounded like a rattlesnake as the gomer zeroed you in. I ain't kidding. The FireCan sounded like some joker behind you beeping his horm. The jammers we carried sounded like a bee's nest. A2A radar from your buddy or a Mig sneaking up behind you sounded like a broom brush - swish, swish, swish. The newer pulse-dopplers sounded like musicical notes from a cheap Yamaha electronic piano.

********************

The secret, and I ain't/can't tell you exactly how they do it, is not so hard to understand.

You must also realize that the theory is simple, but the implementation ain't.

So for your next high school science project, here's what you do.

1) Determine the threat to your well-being. The hip-hop FM radio station may be irritating, but forget it, move on.

2) Analyze the characteristics of the threat. That means freq, pulse repitition freq, changes in both when the threat is searching, tracking, locked on, etc.

3) Come up with some way to portray all this, or to activate your countermeasures ( see Gums' idea for the "Thumper Buster"), and all that stuff.

4) Train yourself to realize a threat exists and to take appropriate action. This could mean anything from "gee, I got three FanSongs looking for me and 5 FireCans tracking me, but that swish from the Mig back there is more important", to " sheesh, BREAK RIGHT and right now!!" or "O.K. dude, your 200 watt amp and 12-inch speakers in that puny import are about to EXPLODE!!"

****************

The new stuff is likely cosmic, but I doubt the newbies have access to the raw audio that we had so many years ago. Most pilots turned it off and let the RHAW gear pierce your eardrums with the "new guy audio chirp", or the "activity" tone, or the dreaded "LAUNCH" signal. But I gotta tell you that you could listen to 3 radios and the raw audio in the background without seeing a single warning light and yet know you were O.K. or under attack.

*****************

So ends Lesson One of RHAW gear as remembered by Gums-breath

out,

F-16.net Editor Joined: Sep 23, 2003 Posts: 2862

Would be cool from a historical perspective to have audio of all those old spike noises Gums described from the Vietnam days- Good project for an avionics company to come up with for some fun, for the purpose of it's historical value.

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How does the launch warning work?