![]() Another issue is handling potentially hazardous materials at passenger terminals. Fueled decoys must be refueled and battery-operated decoys need to be recharged or replaced, requiring costly and time-consuming ground operations. Decoys must also radiate considerable IR power, which limits operating duration or requires significant power-carrying capacity by the tether. Non-predeployed recoverable decoys must be deployed quickly after receiving a warning, which places stringent requirements on the tether line and requires a complex release and recovery system. Recurring false alarms would likely cause unacceptable hazards from flares to people and property. Dispensing flares or recoverable decoys when an attack is detected requires a sophisticated and costly missile attack sensing system. Routinely dispensing flares to draw possible MANPAD missiles away from a transport is clearly unacceptable. Pyrotechnic flares are used traditionally for this purpose, but have short effective time durations. Nevertheless, although the stakes are high, the probability that any particular transport would ever be attacked is very low. Also many landing approach profiles require prolonged flight at low altitudes over populated areas. The most vulnerable phases of flight are during landing approach and immediately after takeoff. Heat-seeking MANPAD (Man Portable Air Defense) systems such as the FIM-92 Stinger missile present a critical and pressing terrorist threat to commercial air transport aircraft. More particularly, IR missiles detect the heat signature (i.e., infrared light) which is emitted by hot structures, for example, engines of the aircraft, to track the aircraft in an attack. IR missiles include an IR detector, which allows the IR missile to detect and track a target. Man portable air defense systems (MANPADS) which are shoulder launched missile systems typically include heat seeking or infrared (IR) missiles and are a threat to aircraft and other types of transportation. There are already a number of countermeasures against RF seekers. Of course, except in the case of autonomously guided missiles, countermeasures against the ground (or hostile aircraft) tracking and command guidance system could still be effective (as in the case of conventional RF countermeasures). ![]() When an aircraft has been detected, targeted, locked-on, and the missile fired, the emphasis has to shift to defeating the in-flight missile. The IR sensor is also susceptible to atmospheric conditions (haze, humidity), the signature of the aircraft and its background, flares, decoys, and jamming. The operator must track the target with the seeker caged to the LOS until it is determined that the IR sensor is tracking the target and not any background objects (natural or man made objects to include vehicles, the sun, or reflected energy from the sun off clouds, etc.). IR missiles require the operator to visually detect the target and energize the seeker before the sensor acquires the target. This proliferation has forced air mobility planners to frequently select less than optimal mission routes due to lack of defensive systems on airlift aircraft.Īll Infrared direct threat weapons require line of sight to be established prior to launch and the in-flight missile must maintain LOS with the target heat source until impact (or detonation of the proximity fuse). Over 400 casualties in 27 incidents involving civil aircraft over the previous 19 years. ![]() According to a 1997 CIA Report, MANPADS have proliferated worldwide, accounting for These systems are lethal, affordable, easy to use, and difficult to track and counter. Man Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) are the most serious threat to our large, predictable, and slow flying air mobility aircraft. Both IR SAMS and IR air-to-air missiles have seekers with improved Counter-Countermeasures (CCM) capabilities that seriously degrade the effectiveness of current expendable decoys. ![]() fixed-wing aircraft losses in Desert Storm were from ground based Iraqi defensive systems using IR SAMS. The lethality and proliferation of IR surface-to-air missiles (SAMS) was demonstrated during the Desert Storm conflict. By one estimate more than 500,000 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles exist and are available on the worldwide market. The US military has recognized the increasing threat to its tactical aircraft from anti-aircraft infrared (IR) guided missiles. Infrared Countermeasures Systems Systems DIRCM ![]()
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