back to article Radar missile decoys will draw enemy missiles away from RAF jets

Britain's Tornado fighter jets may soon be deploying with missile-jamming decoys on board after the MoD signed a £2.5m order with Leonardo-Finmeccanica. The BriteCloud decoys are about the size of a can of Coke and can be fired from the jets' flare dispensers. The electronic gizmo uses “powerful radar emissions” to draw enemy …

  1. frank ly

    Security by melting?

    Do they have a built in time-delayed thermite charge to destroy the innards, to stop them being found and any classified data being extracted? Or wouldn't finding an intact one be all that useful to an 'enemy'?

    1. joeW

      Re: Security by melting?

      Given the height they're going to free-fall from I think their self destruct mechanism is known as "the ground".

      1. Julz

        Re: Security by melting?

        Hum, splash...

      2. Martin an gof Silver badge

        Re: Security by melting?

        Re: "the ground" - don't flares and the like generally come down under parachute to maximise time in the air confusing things?

        M.

        1. Canker

          Re: Security by melting?

          You're thinking of signal flares. Not the same as the missile countermeasure variety of flare.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Security by melting?

        their self destruct mechanism is known as "the ground".

        "And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ow … ound … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!

        I wonder if it will be friends with me?"

        1. Frederic Bloggs

          Re: Security by melting?

          "Oh no, not again!"

        2. 's water music

          Re: Security by melting?

          "And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round

          What are the chances...?

      4. JeffyPoooh
        Pint

        Re: Security by melting?

        joeW "I think their self destruct mechanism is known as 'the ground'."

        Perhaps they'd be non-functional after impact, but impact with "the ground" isn't going to protect the presumably-secret design in the slightest.

      5. paulc

        Re: Security by melting?

        not hard enough...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Security by melting?

      I imagine the Welsh will be delighted to have incendiary bombs falling on them. If your idea is followed perhaps that guy who has just been sent to prison for firing lasers at training jets disturbing his sleep will be replaced with people firing actual 20mm cannon at them because they don't want their houses burnt down.

      1. Martin an gof Silver badge

        Re: Security by melting?

        I imagine the Welsh will be delighted to have incendiary bombs falling on them

        I've seen plenty of low-flying aircraft dodging in and around the hills and valleys (there are several places where you can be walking a ridgeway and have fast jets flying below you in the valley) but never seen one actually firing anything. I believe they keep that sort of shenanigans out to sea in this country, or go abroad to use dedicated ranges (as mentioned in the article).

        Here's an old map (pdf).

        M.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Security by melting?

          "I imagine the Welsh will be delighted to have incendiary bombs falling on them..."

          And how many will inexplicably land on Holiday Cottages?

          1. Martin an gof Silver badge
            Coat

            Re: Security by melting?

            And how many will inexplicably land on Holiday Cottages?

            Don't need help with that...

            Ta ta, tai ha'

            1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

              Re: Security by melting?

              "And how many will inexplicably land on Holiday Cottages?"

              "Come home tl a real fire. Buy a cottage in Wales." -- NTNOCN

          2. Korev Silver badge
        2. Tom 7

          Re: Marin an gof

          I used to hike around Snowdonia - and the Lakes - I'm pretty sure I could have taken out a few of the buggers with a hand thrown rock.

          Where I am in Devon I could probably bring one down with a RaspberryPi controlled melon hurler!

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Security by melting? - but never seen one actually firing anything

          Using facts to depreciate my little joke, eh?

          @Tom 7

          "Where I am in Devon I could probably bring one down with a RaspberryPi controlled melon hurler!"

          And you are now on a list in Cheltenham. Make sure you buy your melons cash only and don't use your Nectar card.

    3. Chris King

      Re: Security by melting?

      Who says it's going to survive its encounter with its new friend, Mr Missile ?

      A proximity-fused warhead big enough to down an aircraft will probably make that new friendship very short, very intense and very terminal.

      1. Tikimon
        Mushroom

        Re: Security by melting? - proximity warhead

        I'm not so sure that the incoming missile explosion would hit the decoy. Proximity fused missiles are tasked with putting a few fragments into an aircraft over 50 feet long and damaging something important. Hitting something as small as this decoy is much less probable.

    4. Keith Glass

      Re: Security by melting?

      Let's hope so. Impact might bend the microwave framework, but unless you melt it AND the onboard chips, data and design can be reverse engineered (I did radar engineering ~20 years ago, and worked on an earlier, towed decoy. . .we thought about that issue back then, and incorporated a destruct mechanism. . . )

      1. SharkNose

        Re: Security by melting?

        Pretty sure that the Soviets were able to glean useful data from the wreckage of the U2 they shot down with an SA-2, and that was from 70,000ft! Impact with the ground may not do the job!

        Then again, all these new countermeasures are really just a receiver which is used to then program a transmitter. I'm sure any serious enemies have the knowledge to build similar already, if they don't have the same thing in service.

  2. RJChurchill

    Re: Security by melting?

    I would image a radar emitting decoy would be easy to identify as NOT an airplane if its velocity matched that of an object descending at parachute speed. An airplane that isn't moving but rather slowly descending probably isn't much of a threat and the missiles onboard computers will probably be quickly patched to not home in on parachutes. Which makes me wonder why flares and foil chaff are still being used as decoys. Perhaps "used successfully" is the better phrase.

    1. Remy Redert

      Re: Security by melting?

      The answer is that flares are getting pretty ineffective. Lots of flares can still generate a big enough signature to just straight up blind an IR guided missile, increasing the chances of it missing by enough to not kill your airplane.

      Chaff remains somewhat effective by the same principle. Your radar signature becomes so big and indistinct, it's hard for the missile to actually get close enough to kill your plane.

      Any active decoy will very quickly run into the same problem flares ran into. Weapons will get smart enough to disregard a return that suddenly goes ballistic and chase the one that didn't go ballistic instead.

      1. SkippyBing

        Re: Security by melting?

        Range Gate Pull Off should solve the problem of it being relatively slower than the launch platform. In essence you provide a much stronger return which should cause the auto gain in the targeting radar to escalate ignoring smaller returns like your aircraft, the decoy itaelf etc you can then delay the return echo so it looks like the target us further away.

    2. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: Security by melting?

      Sure, a missile theoretically could be upgraded to detect these, but realistically?

      Most of the anti-air missiles the RAF has been worried about recently are MANPADS (ie shoulder fired) that were manufactured decades ago, and are kept in leaky warehouses and operated by untrained idiots.

      If the RAF ever comes up against a opponent with competent AA defences in the future, then they'll just have to hope that one of the twelve aircraft they'll own by that point can get through. (Or the aircraft will broadcast the jamming frequency while the canister does an imitation of the plane)

  3. Steve 13

    "Exactly how much use it is against passive homing missiles, such as types that track infra-red emissions such as those given off by a jet using full afterburner while trying to shake off a threat, remains to be seen"

    Errr, no, it doesn't remain to be seen. It will be precisely zero use against an IR missile as it's designed as a counter to a radar guided missile. Duh. You've even written in the article that it's designed to replace foil clouds, not IR flare decoys...

    1. gazthejourno (Written by Reg staff)

      I'm experimenting with being diplomatic. "It will be completely bloody useless against passive seekers but hey, the MoD's main purpose of providing jobs for industry has been met yet again!" seemed a bit cynical.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I'm experimenting with being diplomatic

        Why? We don't come here for diplomatically written stuff, and despite trying, you'll need to put in a lot more practice with the rose-tints if you're looking to make it as an MoD PR oik.

        Say it how it is.

      2. imanidiot Silver badge

        So the jets get loaded with alternating IR flares and these new doohickeys. Wahey, IR AND radar decoy deployment at the push of a button. (Pretty much how it works now anyway.)

        I can't find any indication these would full up replace all flares, so I don't see why you need to be so cynical in the first place (in this case).

        1. BoldMan

          Of course its going to be bloody useless against passive, but its not designed for them its designed for ACTIVE seekers! You are just wasting pixels with that paragraph, just because you are desperately trying to put some sort of negative spin on a defence article...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Encrypted chirps...

    Should be enough to bypass replay trickery.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Encrypted chirps...

      Personally I'd be less worried about the security of this baked bean tin full of tricks than about the survival of the aircraft it is supposed to protect. All that talk of "looking up the pre-programmed threat library", and "applying advanced algorithms" persuades me that this is military snake oil. How well does it work against threats not in that look up table? Presumably not very, otherwise you'd build it as a hard-coded generic device in the first place.

      In the safe, contained environment of a Qinetiq test, I'm sure it can be demonstrated to work. Against the poorly known capabilities of unfriendly regimes I'm wholly unconvinced. But given the poor suitability for purpose of so much of our military kit, what's another few million up the wall?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Coat

        Re: Encrypted chirps...

        "All that talk of "looking up the pre-programmed threat library", and "applying advanced algorithms" persuades me that this is military snake oil."

        At least we know it runs Android rather than iOS, because "Pre-programmed threat library" suggests they aren't planning any security updates.

      2. Sgt_Oddball
        Holmes

        Re: Encrypted chirps...

        Well it's not as if the devices these things are meant to protect against change on a frequent basis. It's also a case of physics kinda limits just where and what frequencies you can use (even the most recent of advances such as solid state radar still use specific well known frequencies).

        So yes, they might tinker around with it abit but unless they start using some hithero unknown spectrum, it doesn't take much processing to figure out a radar signal and what it expects to see echoing back. The bigger trick is getting said box o' tricks to understand the sort of radar image to give back (ie. if the missile is smart enough to tell one plane from another) so that it's not returning an image like a C-130 instead of a tornado GR-4 which might not fool smarter missiles.

        I'd be interested to see if ever any missiles lock onto radio transmissions such as F.o.F (friend or foe) signals and track those instead?

      3. Matt Bryant Silver badge

        Re: Ledswinger Re: Encrypted chirps...

        ".....Against the poorly known capabilities of unfriendly regimes I'm wholly unconvinced....." If you had done a little reading you would know that is a very small problem and easily solved. Firstly, the majority of those unfriendly regimes get their fighters, ground radar, AAMs and SAMs from two sources - China and Russia. We already know when most if the sale of such kit occurs because the companies involved gleefully make press releases (such as when the Russians sold the Syrians M300s). All in all that's less than twenty models of radar to provide a counter to. There are two ways to fill in the gaps - espionage and drones. Espionage told us exactly what models of radar were in use in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya and Syria. It was confirmed with drones - you fly one over the target area and capture all the radar emissions as it gets painted by the local radar systems and fighters. Most of those unfriendly regimes do not have the training or smarts not to resist the temptation to turn their radars on the drone. This then gives you your threat library updates (if required). The Israelis have regularly used drones to gather info on Hezbollah's radar, who never know if the drones are real hitters with missiles or just cheaper decoys sent out to make them turn on their radar. If your enemy is too scared to turn on his radar then it's job already done.

  5. Thunderbird 2

    Not matter the radar cross-section, faked emissions or not, surely today's missiles have enough cpu capability for some bright spark of a programmer to give them the ability to detect the difference between a baked bean tine sized canister falling on a gravity driven parabolic trajectory and a fighter-jet thrusting away on afterburners.

    1. Rich 11

      And it seems today's decoy canisters have enough CPU capability to emit a signal which defeats such attempts at identification.

      You can be pretty sure that the team of specialists who spent a couple of years of their lives developing devices like this will have thought of all the angles which the average commenter can come up with.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Rich 11 "You can be pretty sure that the team of specialists who spent a couple of years of their lives developing devices like this will have thought of all the angles which the average commenter can come up with."

        The average El Reg commenter is well above typical Internet average. It's likely that at least some of the El Reg Commentards here could mark the exam papers of the typical designer of such systems.

        1. SkippyBing

          ' It's likely that at least some of the El Reg Commentards here could mark the exam papers of the typical designer of such systems'

          It's actually fairly easy to mark exam papers, they give you the model answer to compare the students with...

  6. niksgarage

    Old news ..

    During the Falklands conflict, I seem to recall helicopters being flown with passive (but efficient) radar reflectors a little way off the stern of a valuable resource (aircraft carrier for instance) so missiles would either pass between the two, or be misdirected to try to explode a hundred pounds of metal ..

    1. BoldMan

      Re: Old news ..

      Very true but this development's innovation is that the device is now small enough to be ejected from existing countermeasures dispensers - thats the news.

    2. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: Old news ..

      They were... but there was always the chance the missile picked the chopper for a close encounter, but then the navy figured a chopper and a couple of pilots was cheaper and more disposable than an aircraft carrier.....

      1. x 7

        Re: Old news ..

        " but then the navy figured a chopper and a couple of pilots was cheaper and more disposable than an aircraft carrier....."

        that's why Prince Andy was given the job. Most disposable pilot on hand........

        1. SkippyBing

          Re: Old news ..

          They were actually active decoys dating from around WW2. The helicopters were fairly safe, the missiles were sea skimming and didn't care about the elevation of the target as most ships are handily at sea level. As long as they stayed above the terminal skim height of the missile it'd just fly underneath.

          1. x 7

            Re: Old news ..

            "They were actually active decoys dating from around WW2."

            Who told you that one? Some at least were new lash-up devices broadcasting on the missiles radar wavelength. Joint effort between Westland and (from memory) Ferranti. The chaps on the squadrons at the time were told to keep their mouths shut but info leaked out both from the Navy and Westland

            "The helicopters were fairly safe, the missiles were sea skimming and didn't care about the elevation of the target as most ships are handily at sea level. As long as they stayed above the terminal skim height of the missile it'd just fly underneath."

            If the cabs had stayed above the Exocet skim height then they wouldn't have been picked up and the role would have been pointless......the whole point was to attract the missile onto the helicopter at low level, then climb quickly hoping the missile tracked the aircraft not the ship, and at the last second kill the radar emissions so the missile lost track and passed over the ship.

            On occasion the cabs went actively hunting for missiles - for instance Exeter's Lynx spent time off Port Stanley emulating a ship in an attempt to attract an attack from one of the land-based Exocets. Hardly a "safe" role. Suggesting otherwise seriously discredits the people involved

  7. JaitcH
    FAIL

    That's Fine, Unless They Change Transmitted Patterns Or End Run Using Lasers

    QUOTE: "BriteCloud detects RF emissions and cross-references them against its pre-programmed threat library. Upon finding a match, the decoy applies advanced algorithms and emits a deception signal to defeat the threat radar and incoming missile.”

    We must agree with our enemies they won't make changes to their transmitted patterns OR to switch to laser guidance for the last few seconds. Then it might work.

    1. Charles 9

      Re: That's Fine, Unless They Change Transmitted Patterns Or End Run Using Lasers

      "We must agree with our enemies they won't make changes to their transmitted patterns OR to switch to laser guidance for the last few seconds. Then it might work."

      The can may be able to adapt to patterns (the lookup table may be based on frequencies and strengths to distinguish ground from aerial radar). As for the laser, that may have limited functionality in an air-to-air encounter where the quarry is moving at over Mach 1 and can turn pretty sharply, which is why most A2A trackers today have pretty large fields of "vision".

  8. Alistair
    Windows

    @JaitcH

    Oh, that agreement's already been written.

    <what, me, cynical bastard? hell no, I'm full on tinfoil>

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    lightly biased here...

    In a previous life... I used to work in the Air Warfare Centre at RAF Waddington... the holiest of holies... writing pre flight modules for Tornado aircraft so that they could fly over hostile territory and get timely warning of what was tracking them and launching on them.

    your data is only as good as your electronic intercepts... so things are reactive with a heavy reliance on trying to trick them to use their wartime settings...

    these modules will be heavily reliant on the intercept data as well

  10. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    Re: looking up the pre-programmed threat library etc

    Should at least work well enough against "friendly fire", so one worry less...

  11. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    "these modules will be heavily reliant on the intercept data as well"

    Indeed.

    Also how much of a steer can they get from the aircraft (presumed) radar warning receiver.

    If they can be preset by a data link from this they are half way home and it's the air forces job to supply the list.

    If not then they are pretty clever at building both a RWR and a radar jammer (presumably both are SDR's running on some fairly beefy processor or custom ASICs). the other challenge is giving them enough output power to swamp the signal from the real target (probably less than people think)

    Of course the $64 question is of course how commons are radar homing missiles in the arsenals of the various assorted bad guys that the RAF is facing at present? I'm guessing any such that IS would be using will be abandoned kit from the armies of whatever country they are in.

  12. Jan 0 Silver badge

    Luton?

    How did illustrious names like Aermacchi and Agusta get associated with Luton*? Where's John Hegley when you need an explanation?

    *The Petaluma of the Home Counties.

  13. rtb61

    Add Camera Easy Thwart

    It's like they are complete idiots. Smarter missiles are coming and one quick squiz before boom and "hey wait up, that's not a plane, that's a missile, oh, there's the plane". It boils down to cost efficiency and how much you can put up in the air. Smart Drones that use multiple methods to track targets, direct radar, water vapour density radar, heat and final visual inspection, all come into play for a smart drone, before it flies up along side the target, tells the pilot to land or bail out before blowing up directly over the cockpit.

    Long range, compact, smart drones, will not be fooled by simple tricks and ramming speed is the best detonation method ie if you hit it hard enough to blow up, than it is the target you wanted and not a flare or chaff or a tiny missile.

    Drones will keep trying to take out a target they miss, making those multiple passes you always see in sci fi movies and a manned plane with 4 missiles and a gun will simply lose when ten smart drones go hunting (keep in mind you can land them, make the safe, refuel them and send them up again, so guaranteed kill numbers become the norm ie ten fighter bombers come in so 100 drones are sent to take them out, likely twenty drones will come back to be refueled and sent up again, ten fighters take out ten drones but the next ten drones take out the fighters in a air space cluttered with 90 targets).

  14. Francis Vaughan

    Seriously, the vast majority of the comments clearly have no clue as to what the device is, or how it works. Everyone seems to be thinking of tech they read about decades ago. First up, look at the name of the technology. "Digital radio frequency memory". There is a clue here.

    Radar works by the missile sending a pulse out, and listening to the return. In modern systems that pulse shape can be very smart, and radars can see a lot about the target from the pulse return. Not just signal strength, but doppler shift and a host of second order clues. The point of a DRFM system is to spoof the missiles radar, knowing that this is the sort of thing it is going to be trying to do. So how? In principle it is easy. Receive the pulse, record it (the "memory" bit of the name) slam it into a custom bit of seriously fast custom silicon or FPGA, and work out what the return pulse needs to look like to make the missile think what you would like it to. It isn't necessarily a matter of making the can look like your plane directly. The can can spoof the doppler profile expected from your plane. Even if the missile changes its pulse profile, the DFRM system will continue to work, as it records and replays each pulse as needed. This is not your grandmother's radar jammer.

    As to optical missile and guidance systems. Active laser systems are already available with the ability to blind incoming missiles. There will always be a mix of radio and optical threats, the presence of one does not mean you discard managing the other.

    It is exactly an arms race. Missiles can have upgraded software to try to work past DFRM systems, and those same DFRM systems can have upgraded software to cope with that.

    1. Charles 9

      Not to mention a modern missile has to lock onto a plane that can move and turn very quickly, which is why the modern Sidewinder missile (one of the most ubiquitous infrared-homing air-to-air missiles in modern military history) has the capacity to keep tracking up to 90 degrees off boresight: so it can still track plane as it turns, something a laser tracker will have a harder time doing, which is why it normally isn't used in air-to-air situations. The only laser-guided missiles in use in the US at the moment are air-to-ground missiles: the Hellfire and certain versions of the Maverick.

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