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by dylan604 840 days ago
> One of the downsides is that it jams the AESA radars of friendlies in the area, including the plane using the jammer itself.

So you just lob in a heat seeker at the middle of the noise, and hope.

Then again, if you have an airborne source of jamming, you know you have bigger problems following. How much effort do you spend trying to knock out the jamming vs preparing for what is inevitably following? Flying in jammers from the opposite direction of an attack to draw in fighters to the wrong area is as elementary as attack options go.

2 comments

> So you just lob in a heat seeker at the middle of the noise, and hope.

There's already another category of missile for that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-radiation_missile

and Iraq I, Iraq II, and UKR-RUS have shown that they freakin work
It's even easier than that. You use a missile (or bomb) programmed to lock onto the source of the jamming.
Except the jammer oversaturates your receiver or even burns it out. Or causes it to see ghost targets.
The heat seeker would have problems unless you launched from behind it, which would be problematic if you're launching from the ground, depending on the jamming plane. A steathly plane with the heat sources minimized might not be detected by a heat seeker if launched towards an oncoming source
heat seekers havent been rear aspect only in decades, all aspect IR missiles are the norm now. the main issue is that most NATO IR missiles are very short range. much easier to instead program your radar guided missile to lock the big glowy thing and explode in its face