Needles in the Haystack: hunting mobile electronic targets

Air & Space Power Journal, Spring, 2003 by Maj Michael Pietrucha

Electronic intelligence (ELINT) information, for example, can be used to update threat databases, characterize enemy radars, and analyze enemy tactics. The ability to bring back recorded data and conduct a postflight download will provide additional and essential intelligence, remembering that not everything of value is needed in real or near-real time.

An immediate benefit of using strike aircraft sensors is shortening the time required to engage mobile SAMs and other fleeting targets. Rather than have the targeting data pass from a sensor through a targeting cell to the Air Operations Center controllers, the information starts and ends where it can do the most good-in the cockpit. This is an important improvement because strike aircraft have a very small time window in which to engage between the time a threat emits radar energy and reveals its position and before it packs up and drives away in less than 10 minutes.

Our sensors and architecture should also take advantage of the Human-in-the-loop benefits of manned combat aircraft. We can make much better use of the crew than we currently do. These individuals are well trained in target recognition, threat knowledge, tactics, and weapons employment. The combat aircrew is accustomed to making rapid decisions on complex problems for high stakes. Given a set of well-written rules of engagement to operate under, the shooter is in an excellent position to make the decision to employ weapons.

Unattended Sensors

Shortly after ducking back into the mountains, the Strike Eagles make the most of the information gathered by the radar and onboard ES. The lead pair fires their first shots of the day, launching a total of four stealthy Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) at the enemy radars. The trailing element drops the last of their ordnance--another smaller group of MALDs with jamming packages and a handful of AGM-154A Joint Standoff Weapons (JSOW). The overworked SAM crews continue to engage the new threat, but the saturated computers allow three JASSMs through, and the target-engagement radars go down for good--victims of 1,000-pound unitary warheads. The JSOWs arrive later, scattering the target array with small submunitions, and destroying launcher vehicles and support equipment. Hidden among the submunitions scattered over the ground are small, covert sensors that will continue to pass data long after the fighters have gone.

Any sensor net can have its collection capabilities improved by the inclusion of remote, unattended sensors. In Vietnam, Igloo White sensors were dropped by aircraft along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to provide target-detection data to listening aircraft. While there are serious technical limitations on the sensing and communications capability of small sensors, even limited sensors can provide important information. Strike aircraft will often be the delivery platforms, although cruise missiles and 'rocket artillery can also be used to seed an area with sensors.

Unattended sensors can be seeded into preplanned areas to pick up specified types of data. But they may also be deployed on an ad hoc basis by strike aircraft. For example, a strike aircraft that had detected a radar threat, but not its precise location, could deploy sensors in the area and wait for the target to move. A beer-can-sized submunition similar to the BLU-97/B could be loaded in GBU-87 canisters or AGM-154A JSOW bodies for easy, predictable dispensing. (10)