Grisha's Radar

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Last Updated: Mon Jan 27 11:18:09 UTC 2014

Grisha's Radar Fry-Off

Air Power Australia -Australia's Independent Defence Think Tank

Air Power Australia NOTAM 13th April, 2008

Colonel of Aviation Grigoriy "Grisha" Medved(retd)

Contacts: Dr Carlo Kopp Peter Goon

Mob: 0437-478-224 Mob: 0419-806-476

Radomes for Antennascompositeradomes.com

For land & shipboard applications. Designs to 32 GHz, Sizes 1m to 25m

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Su-35 demonstrator with exposed Irbis-E phased array. The now well established trend in

Russian sensors for BVR combat is increasing range performance and countermeasures

resistance. The 20 kiloWatt peak power class Irbis E ESA radar is the most powerful in itsclass. (KnAAPO).[Click for more ...]

Good Friends,

Grisha has some new stories to tell. Two new radio locators [Ed: radars] to discuss. NIIRFazotron make Zhuk-AE for MiG-35, and plan much bigger Zhuk-ASE for Flankers, TikhomirovNIIP make IRBIS-E for Su-35BM. These are in English say 'very hot items' and performancein these radio locators like best Amerikanski radio locators. Now we have fry-off contest tosee who does what to who and first.

Make observation. To dazzle enemy, need three factors: power, antenna size and duty cycle.Chuck often laugh at big Russki warplane, but as Comrade Stalin used to saying, quantityhas a quality of its own. In these big FARs [Ed: FAR=ESA; AFAR=AESA radars] 'quantity ofchannels has a quality of its own.

This t ime, the 960 mm size o f the Sukhoi antenna has many uses. More power, sharper

beam, more signal detect, more place to remove heat. Amerikanski AFAR modules nowbetter than Fazotron modules, but Russia catch soon. Sukhoi can take better AFAR modulesin IRBIS-E or ZHUK-ASE upgrade, but Super Hornet, Lightning II and Raptor cannot takebigger antenna. Then Russki overpower Amerikanski stuff - zap Super Hornet, fry LightningII and even burn tail-feathers of Raptor.

So, how to use these new killer-watts and big antenna? Russian Institute of Radio Physics

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and Electronics says Zhuk-AE and IRBIS-E see Super Hornet outside AIM-120D range.Lightning II only safe from head on and if clean two Sukhois fly around Lightning II inpincer manoeuvre to take side or rear shot. Sukhoi has choice of missiles R-172, R-37, R-27 and R-77M. RVV-AE-PD ready soon.

Here is Su-35 fight tactic. Detect APG-79 / APG-81 radio locator transmiss ions long way outwith Khibiny complex [Ed: Radio Frequency Surveillance (RFS) system] and big FAR antenna,climb to 15,000 metres and Mach 1.5. When detect Super Hornet or Lightning II, fire salvo,and turn 110 degrees while directing missile s to Amerikanski fighter. IRBIS-E has hydraulicslew on antenna, so can retreat and still guide missiles. Give AIM-120D long chase henot catch Grisha.

Amerikanski think to use AFAR to blow up incoming missiles. Russian Institute of RadioPhysics and Electronics think of this too. Have upgrade kit for all new style Russkimiss iles. Add protection to radio-locator inputs, and antenna servoes. Take old radio fuzeout and replace with laser fuze, cover hole with metal grid so no energy gets inside. Bodycovered with special coating to spread radio waves and stop radio locator energy gettinginside to fry electronika.

Self guidance head [Ed:seeker] software upgrade tilt antenna reflection away from target souse phase stee ring to track. Lot of SHF absorber material [Ed: RAM - radar absorbentmaterial] behind self guidance head. Some fancy shapes near rocket motor exhaust tospread creeping radio location wave. This upgrade not cost much, but send reflection awayfrom target so missile get very close to target before detection, and make much harder to

kill with AFAR beam. Also, salvo firing force AFAR radio locator to jump beam betweenincoming missiles.

Maybe Chuck not thinking of attack geometry. Grisha likes towed decoys when missilewarning complex [Ed: MAWS] goes off, turn to put incoming missile 130 degrees off nose sodecoy masks aircraft. Amerikanski AFAR sweep 60-70 degrees off nose, so to fry missile,Chuck must turn to face incoming. This time a ircraft mask decoy. Not s o good. I think Chuckvery brave or very stupid to rely on AFAR to blow up missile s. This tactic may blow up in hisface and cook his own pidgeon.

Of course, two can play the fry the missile game. Su-35 has OLS-35 detector to see hotmissile incoming, so have two complex to find missile. Turn radio locator antenna onincoming missile, so Snow Leopard can jump and fry its brain with 20 KiloWatts . NewFazotron Zhuk-ASE AFAR even better. More kiloWatts so can fry more AIM-120D.

Maybe Chuck in Super Hornet or JSF with little AFAR antenna should think more aboutwarming Pizza than stopping our Vympels [Ed: Russian missile manufacturer].

Critical AnalysisDr Carlo Kopp, SMAIAA, MIEEE, PEng

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Editor APA

The notion of using a high power electronically steered radar to 'fry' the onboard electronicsof a guided missile is neither new nor particularly original. The idea emerged during the1990s in the aftermath of the debate surrounding E-bombs and other electromagneticweapons. The essence of the concept is that modern missile seekers and guidance systemsare complex digital electronic devices which can suffer electronic upsets or even electricaldamage if exposed to microwave radiation of sufficiently high intensity.

The reasoning behind this regime of electronic attack is that rather than to deceive theinbound missile as to the location of the target, i.e. defending aircraft, the target actively

defends itself by using the very high power rating of the radar and its exceptionalbeamsteering agility - virtually identical for all electronically steered US AESAs and Russianhybrid ESAs or AESAs - to illuminate the incoming missile and cause either an upset to itsguidance electronics or lethal electrical damage to its analogue and/or digital electronichardware.

The idea was so popular during this period that it spawned a specialised product, theground based Raytheon Vigilant Eagle, essentially a very large AESA radar intended toprotect airliners from shoulder launched missile attacks by illuminating them with anmicrowave beam of very high power to cause electronics failures. There are however someimportant differences between fighter borne AESA/ESA radars and the multiple square metrearray of the Vigilant Eagle system, primarily in the intensity of microwave illumination theycan produce.

To what extent are claims of using a fighter AESA radar as a microwave beam weapon toelectrically kill inbound missiles reasonable?

A senior US Air Force officer was quoted in the September 5, 2005, issue of Aviation Week &Space Technology, thus: "AESA radars on fighte r ai rcraft aren't particularly suited to createweapons effects on missiles because of limited antenna size, power and field of view...".

This observation is entirely correct, for a number of good technical reasons. These all haveto do with how much microwave power is needed to disrupt or damage electroniccomponents versus how much power can be delivered by a fighter carried radar into thetarget missile.

A number of studies have been performed in recent years to determine the electrical fieldstrengths needed to achieve disruptive and lethal effects against electronic equipment,mostly in the context of High Power Microwave weapons such as E-bombs. The results are

essentially that electrically lethal effects are produced at field strengths of kiloVolts/metre,and disruptive effects at hundreds of Volts/metre. These studies generally involvedcommercial electronic equipment, rather than hardened military equipment, and usuallyinvolved direct exposure of the equipment to microwave radiation.

If we plot the achievable field strength against distance, for a number of Russian phasedarray radars, we get interesting results:

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Potentially lethal effects are produced only inside 100 metres range, and disruptive effectsat distances of the order of one kilometre. Radars with lesser power-aperture performance,such as the APG-79 (Super Hornet) and APG-81 (JSF) would produce lesser effect at a givendistance. This is contingent on the assumption that the internal electronics of the missileare exposed to the full intensity of the impinging microwave beam.

The latter is very optimistic for a variety of reasons. Microwave radiation can couple into amissile via two paths.

1. Direct coupling occurs when an antenna is illuminated and becomes a path into theinternals of the missile. Typical air to air missiles have a nose mounted seeker antennapointing at the target, and if equipped with a radio or radar proximity fuse, sidemounted fuse antennas, and if the missile is built for beyond visual range combat, anaft mounted datalink antenna.

2. Indirect coupling occurs when radiation enters the target via a path other than anantenna, such as through a gap between panels or some other exposed area, such asthe bulkhead openings behind the missile's radome or infrared window.

Fighter radars largely operate in the X-band (~7 to 12 GHz). The most frequency agileAESAs might be capable of covering most or all of this band, but no more. At the upper endof the X-band, the physical spacing of antenna elements restricts how far the antenna canbe steered, and at the lower end of the band, the cutoff frequency of the individualelements comes into play.

If the aim is to couple into the missile via its seeker antenna, this will only be feasible forolder semi-active homing missiles like the AIM-7 and R-27R series, which rely onillumination by the launch aircraft and thus must operate in the same band as the radarguiding the missile. Most active radar guided missile seekers operate in the Ku-Band orabove it, as a result of which most of the impinging X-band radiation will couple in verypoorly as the missile antenna is designed for half the wavelength, or less, compared to anX-band radar. Another consideration is that many missi le seekers in this class will includeactive protection devices designed to protect the sensitive receiver circuits from leakagefrom the missile's transmitter circuits. So what X-band radiation can get in via the antennais apt to be soaked up by the protection devices.

Radar fuses and datalink antennas are potentially more susceptible to penetration as theyare low gain designs which are inherently wideband, and likely to lack protection devices.However, the fuse antennas point sideways relative to the target until the missi le is within

milliseconds of impact, and the datalink antenna is always pointing away from the target.Therefore the combination of antenna location and low gain makes them poor candidates fordelivering a lethal dose of X-band radiation. The electronic warfare literature is very specificabout the challenges in jamming these channels, as exceptionally high power is required foreffect. Microwave lethal effect requires even more power.

Indirect coupling via cables and through hole apertures behind an antenna or infrared seeker

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head, or via the missile umbilical connector on its back should also be considered, as theseare the only other apertures usually available on an air to air missile.

The former might be feasible if the missile designers did not take care to put protectiondevices and proper shielding in. If the drive transistor on the antenna gimbal servo melts,the missile will be killed. Unfortunately for the attacker in this game, such components arevery robust, and shielding and protection devices easy to add in.

The bottom line in this game is that other than some very specific missile types with X-

band antennas, and specific vulnerabilities in particular active radar guided or infrared

homing missiles, the opportunities to deliver lethal electrical damage with forseeable

fighter radar technology will not be many. The defensive countermeasures an opposingmissile des igner can apply are neither expensive nor technically difficult to implement. Most

would not require replacement of the missile seeker, but rather depot level fixes whichcould be applied during scheduled missile servicings.

So Colonel Medved's arguments stand up to scrutiny here, and only a very courageous airforce would rely on using a fighter radar to burn out an incoming missile guidance system in

a real combat environment.

Further Reading:

1. C Kopp, Considerations on the use of airborne X-band radar as a microwave directed-energy weapon ,

Journal of Battlefield Technology, vol 10, issue 3, Argos Press Pty Ltd, Australia, pp. 19-25.2. Air Power Australia - April 2008 - Flanker Radars in Beyond Visual Range Air Combat3. Air Power Australia - March 2008 - The Russian Philosophy of Beyond Visual Range Air Combat4. Air & Space Power Chronicles, Maxwell AFB - 1995 - The Electromagnetic Bomb - a Weapon of Electrical

Mass Destruction - Russian Translation Part 1, Russian Translation Part 2 , [email protected],

Mirror@APA

5. RAAF APSC Working Paper 50, An Introduction to the Technical and Operational Aspects of theElectromagnetic Bomb

6. Fulghum D.A., E-10 Radar Secretly Designed To Jam Missiles; MP-RTIP radar, built for the E-10 aircraft, hasbeen secretly designed to jam cruise missile electronics,Aviation Week & Space Technology, Volume 162,

May 30, 2005, p. 24. URL: http://esc.hanscom.af.mil/ESC-

PA/The%20Integrator/2005/July/07072005/07072005-14.htm, accessed April 2008.

7. Fulghum, D.A., Barrie D., Radar Becomes A Weapon, Aviation Week and Space Technology, Volume 162Number 8 Sep 2005, URL: http://www.space4peace.org/articles/radar_becomes_weapon.htm.

8. Fulghum, D.A., Zap Its Here,Aviation Week and Space Technology, Volume 163 Number 9 Sep 2005, pp52.

9. Piotrowski, A., Susceptibility of a personal computer to radar, International Conference RADAR 2003,Adelaide, 3-5 September 2003.

Footnote:

Col. Grisha Medved is a former retired fighter pilot.

Air Power Australia Website- http://www.ausairpower.net/Air Power Australia Research and Analysis- http://www.ausairpower.net/research.html

Artwork, graphic design, layout and text 2004 - 2014 Carlo Kopp; Text 2004 - 2014 Peter Goon; All rights

reserved.Recommended browsers. Contact webmaster. Site navigation hints. Current hot topics.

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