Циркониада
I flew EW/ECM and Electronic Recon aircraft and taught the same on simulators. Any autonomous weapon guidance system has to, out of necessity, to emit and/or receive targeting data if it is to hit a target - especially a moving target. ECM (electronic counter measures) exploits that necessity by turning the weapon’s emissions and/or data reception against it - creating false targets and/or misdirection to its guidance. By any standard, our ECM systems are and have been in the past, very effective.
The simplest form of ECM isn’t even electronic - it is to fire flares which confuse IR guidance systems. Most combat aircraft have ECM flares - Even Air Force One has them.
As the methods of detection and guidance controls get more sophisticated, so too does the ECM methods and mechanisms. So far, there has not been a single autonomous weapon guidance system that has been successfully deployed for which there is no counter-measure.
There is an entire department on board carriers and most of its escorts dedicated to defensive ECM using the most sophisticated equipment in any military. Even some of the methods we used in Vietnam are still highly classified because they use methods that still work and are still largely unknown outside of the close knit ECM circles of the US military.
If I described some of these methods to you, you’d see why they are so effective…but then I’d have to shoot you. The methods I used have mostly been outdated - not because they don’t work anymore but because our ECM was so effective that they stopped making those weapons because they never hit their targets. I was in on some of the R&D of some of the later systems and it was clear that both offensive and defensive systems were getting very sophisticated.
If you want to read just how effective ECM can be, here is a story about the HMS Sheffield in the Falkland’s Island war. This is an excerpt of a report I wrote as a part of a larger report on how the US government manipulates the news and the public:
The Falkland Islands war began in 1982. One incident we had a lot of intelligence about was the sinking of several British warships. One of these ships was hit and sunk by an Exocet air to surface guided missile, despite the use of extensive electronic countermeasures. Or so that was the way it was reported in the US news.
The truth is that the use of electronic countermeasures by the British was nearly flawless in its effectiveness to divert or confuse these missiles. Despite this, the skipper of the HMS Sheffield, in the middle of a battle, ordered the electronic countermeasures equipment to be shut off because he could not get a message to and from Britain with it on. As soon as his equipment was off, the Argentine air force attacked from a Super Etendard and launched the Exocet. With the electronic countermeasures turned off, the Exocet easily struck the HMS Sheffield and sank it with the loss of many British sailors.
OK, this was a tragic screw up by a British officer but what our military planners and politicians did with it was the REAL tragedy. The bit about shutting off the electronic countermeasures equipment was deleted from all of the US news reports and only the effectiveness of the Exocet was allowed to be published by the US press. The Navy and the Air Force both used this event to create the illusion of an anti-missile defense gap in the minds of the public. The politicians used this to justify the release of massive contracts to purchase all new defensive systems and build new ECM ships at the cost of billions of dollars. This benefited all the military contractors and they, in turn, donated massively to the politicians. All based on a false report.
Despite the subterfuge by our government, this incident speaks of the effectiveness of the ECM equipment we had then and the vulnerability of guided missiles.
Another example is that during Vietnam, the Navy introduced the first aircraft dedicated to ECM - the EA-6B. It was a jet aircraft but was not designed for high performance. It did, however, carry very sophisticated ECM equipment. When they were first used on combat missions, the F-4 pilots and pilots of other fighters and attack bombers complained that the pokey, slow EA-6B was slowing down the entire attack squadron. There was also the general thinking that all the powerful (multiple kilowatt transmitters) on these ECM aircraft would actually act as a homing beacon and attract the SAMs. The F-4’s would often fly away and out ahead of the A-6 and they complained to the carrier air boss constantly and made jokes and teased the A-6 pilots.
After a few months, the statistics began to roll in showing that not a single aircraft, flying in formation with an EA-6B was ever hit with a SAM. It wasn’t long after that the carrier air traffic control operators noticed a change in the flying patterns of the F-4’s. They launched from the carrier and then would loiter in the area until the A-6 launched. Then they would tuck into a very tight formation - flying as close to the A-6 as they could get and still be safe. On radar, flights going into and returning from missions appeared as a single blip on the radar screens because the entire formation was flying so tightly around the EA-6B’s. Nobody complained about flying slow or made jokes any more.
You don’t hear about this kind of stuff for good reason. The people that make the missiles don’t want it widely known that they are mostly ineffective and have little chance of hitting their targets. The people that make the ECM equipment don’t want people to know that they can counter this or that guidance system so that the missile makers will keep using the systems for which we already have very effective counter measures. The government and lobbyists don’t want the public to know how effective our ECM is because they want to keep up the illusion that there is a serious threat out there so that they can continue to market and get support for more sales of bigger, faster and more effective …and more expensive systems to the military.
Bottom line is that our carriers are targets and do get shot at but other than by manned aircraft and kamikaze’s, no US carrier has ever been hit with a missile or bomb.
The simplest form of ECM isn’t even electronic - it is to fire flares which confuse IR guidance systems. Most combat aircraft have ECM flares - Even Air Force One has them.
As the methods of detection and guidance controls get more sophisticated, so too does the ECM methods and mechanisms. So far, there has not been a single autonomous weapon guidance system that has been successfully deployed for which there is no counter-measure.
There is an entire department on board carriers and most of its escorts dedicated to defensive ECM using the most sophisticated equipment in any military. Even some of the methods we used in Vietnam are still highly classified because they use methods that still work and are still largely unknown outside of the close knit ECM circles of the US military.
If I described some of these methods to you, you’d see why they are so effective…but then I’d have to shoot you. The methods I used have mostly been outdated - not because they don’t work anymore but because our ECM was so effective that they stopped making those weapons because they never hit their targets. I was in on some of the R&D of some of the later systems and it was clear that both offensive and defensive systems were getting very sophisticated.
If you want to read just how effective ECM can be, here is a story about the HMS Sheffield in the Falkland’s Island war. This is an excerpt of a report I wrote as a part of a larger report on how the US government manipulates the news and the public:
The Falkland Islands war began in 1982. One incident we had a lot of intelligence about was the sinking of several British warships. One of these ships was hit and sunk by an Exocet air to surface guided missile, despite the use of extensive electronic countermeasures. Or so that was the way it was reported in the US news.
The truth is that the use of electronic countermeasures by the British was nearly flawless in its effectiveness to divert or confuse these missiles. Despite this, the skipper of the HMS Sheffield, in the middle of a battle, ordered the electronic countermeasures equipment to be shut off because he could not get a message to and from Britain with it on. As soon as his equipment was off, the Argentine air force attacked from a Super Etendard and launched the Exocet. With the electronic countermeasures turned off, the Exocet easily struck the HMS Sheffield and sank it with the loss of many British sailors.
OK, this was a tragic screw up by a British officer but what our military planners and politicians did with it was the REAL tragedy. The bit about shutting off the electronic countermeasures equipment was deleted from all of the US news reports and only the effectiveness of the Exocet was allowed to be published by the US press. The Navy and the Air Force both used this event to create the illusion of an anti-missile defense gap in the minds of the public. The politicians used this to justify the release of massive contracts to purchase all new defensive systems and build new ECM ships at the cost of billions of dollars. This benefited all the military contractors and they, in turn, donated massively to the politicians. All based on a false report.
Despite the subterfuge by our government, this incident speaks of the effectiveness of the ECM equipment we had then and the vulnerability of guided missiles.
Another example is that during Vietnam, the Navy introduced the first aircraft dedicated to ECM - the EA-6B. It was a jet aircraft but was not designed for high performance. It did, however, carry very sophisticated ECM equipment. When they were first used on combat missions, the F-4 pilots and pilots of other fighters and attack bombers complained that the pokey, slow EA-6B was slowing down the entire attack squadron. There was also the general thinking that all the powerful (multiple kilowatt transmitters) on these ECM aircraft would actually act as a homing beacon and attract the SAMs. The F-4’s would often fly away and out ahead of the A-6 and they complained to the carrier air boss constantly and made jokes and teased the A-6 pilots.
After a few months, the statistics began to roll in showing that not a single aircraft, flying in formation with an EA-6B was ever hit with a SAM. It wasn’t long after that the carrier air traffic control operators noticed a change in the flying patterns of the F-4’s. They launched from the carrier and then would loiter in the area until the A-6 launched. Then they would tuck into a very tight formation - flying as close to the A-6 as they could get and still be safe. On radar, flights going into and returning from missions appeared as a single blip on the radar screens because the entire formation was flying so tightly around the EA-6B’s. Nobody complained about flying slow or made jokes any more.
You don’t hear about this kind of stuff for good reason. The people that make the missiles don’t want it widely known that they are mostly ineffective and have little chance of hitting their targets. The people that make the ECM equipment don’t want people to know that they can counter this or that guidance system so that the missile makers will keep using the systems for which we already have very effective counter measures. The government and lobbyists don’t want the public to know how effective our ECM is because they want to keep up the illusion that there is a serious threat out there so that they can continue to market and get support for more sales of bigger, faster and more effective …and more expensive systems to the military.
Bottom line is that our carriers are targets and do get shot at but other than by manned aircraft and kamikaze’s, no US carrier has ever been hit with a missile or bomb.