Question
: I know that a flare released from an aircraft disrupts a short range heat-seeking missle by creating a huge amount of heat in one area, but how does chaff disrupt radar-guided missiles? Can laser guided missiles be disrupted by using an electronic jammer?
Answer : Thanks for a very insightful questions! Let’s take them one at a time.
First, chaff disrupts radar in much the same way as a flare disrupts an infrared seeker, it overpowers it. Chaff is made of fine metal (usually aluminum) strips that are cut to lengths that correspond to different frequencies of radars. The chaff hits the airstream and disperses quickly (called “bloom”), which make the radar transfer lock to the chaff, thereby allowing the aircraft to get away from radar and its missile. The only problem with chaff is that it slows very quickly, and some radars can sense this and continue to track the aircraft. Pilots need to change altitude, heading and/or airspeed very quickly after dispensing chaff to make it effective.
For your next question, there are not really any laser-guided missiles that are fired from the ground against aircraft. But in the F-16, we did drop laser guided bombs (LGBs), that homed in on a spot the pilot selected through his targeting pod display. There are jammers that can try to decoy the LGB, but the bomb also has some classified ways of ignoring the jamming.
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