Electronic Warfare
SPREADING ALARM ALARM had a long and distinguished career. The weapon was subsequently deployed to support the RAF and coalition allies during every major air campaign involving the RAF where adversary Ground-Based Air Defences (GBAD) posed
a clear and present danger. It won further accolades in the skies above the Balkans supporting the NATO’S 1995 Operation Deliberate Force and 1999 Operation Allied Force, both mounted to bring an end to the genocide blighting the former Yugoslavia. An upgraded version of the missile returned to Iraq in 2003 supporting Operation Telic, the UK’s contribution to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the US-led effort to remove Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein from power. Less than ten years later it was in action once more supporting the combined NATO and U.S. operations Odyssey Dawn and Unified Protector waged in 2011 to protect Libyan civilians from forces loyal to that country’s dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. The missile retired in 2013 and it appeared that the air force’s ability to perform air defence suppression retired with it. True, the RAF could perform Destruction of Enemy Air Defence (DEAD) missions by which conventional kinetic effects are brought to bear against elements of an IADS or GBAD on the battlefield. Yet ALARM’s retirement meant the RAF was bereft of the unique suppressive qualities that this weapon could bring, chiefly encouraging radars to remain off the air without the blue force necessarily knowing where those radars are. Sometimes launching a few anti-radar missiles pre-
emptively to protect a strike package which are detected by red force radar operators persuades the latter to switch off their equipment. DEAD is a vital mission but is dependent on knowing where the IADS or GBAD targets are you wish to strike.
NATO
ALARM was designed to attack during any conflict in Europe pitching the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact against one another. Systems like the SNR-75 (NATO reporting name Fan Song) S-band (2.3 gigahertz/GHz to 2.5GHz/2.7GHz to 3.7GHz) and P-35M/37 (NATO reporting name Bar Lock) C-band (5.25GHz to 5.925GHz) series of groundbased air surveillance radars were supplied to Iraq by the Soviet Union and were among the radars ALARM was designed to find and kill. Readers can learn more about the missile in the author’s article entitled ‘When They Sounded the ALARM’ posted on the Armada International electronic warfare website. Suffice to say that it performed with aplomb hitting Iraqi radars providing fire control to surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft artillery batteries deployed to protect airfields and other targets being attacked by the Tornado GR.1s and other coalition strike packages.
ECRS MK.2 The good news is that the RAF will soon be back in the air defence suppression game, thanks to two new capabilities it is expected to receive in the future. The first is an electronic attack function to augment the new BAE Systems/Leonardo ECRS Mk.2 X-band (8.5GHz to 10.68GHz) fire control radar destined to equip the Tranche-3 variants of the RAF’s Eurofighter Typhoon FGR.4 combat aircraft. The second is the MBDA Select Precision Effects At Range Capability-Electronic Warfare (SPEAREW) loitering electronic attack system. Both effectively perform a similar function to ALARM but do so electronically. One of ALARM’s attributes was that it could be used pre-emptively. The weapon’s flight profile meant that it could be launched at high-speed and low altitude when a jet was doing its best to stay below radar coverage. Once launched the missile would climb to 40,000 feet (12,192 metres). This gave its radar seeker a ‘God’s Eye’ view of the terrain below. The missile would
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