Electronic counter-countermeasure

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM) is a part of electronic warfare which includes a variety of

practices which attempt to reduce or eliminate the effect of electronic countermeasures (ECM) on electronic
sensors aboard vehicles, ships and aircraft and weapons such as missiles. ECCM is also known as
electronic protective measures (EPM), chiefly in Europe. In practice, EPM often means resistance to
jamming. A more detailed description defines it as the electronic warfare operations taken by a radar to
offset the enemy's countermeasure.[1]

History
Ever since electronics have been used in battle in an attempt to gain superiority over the enemy, effort has
been spent on techniques to reduce the effectiveness of those electronics. More recently, sensors and
weapons are being modified to deal with this threat. One of the most common types of ECM is radar
jamming or spoofing. This originated with the Royal Air Force's use of what they codenamed Window
during World War II, which Americans referred to as chaff.[2] It was first used during the Hamburg raid on
July 24-25, 1943.[3] The night fighters outfitted with Window had prong antennae stuck out from their
noses, allowing their radars a range of four miles in a 70 degree cone.[3] Jamming also may have originated
with the British during World War II, when they began jamming German radio communications. These
efforts include the successful British disruption of German Luftwaffe navigational radio beams.[4]

In perhaps the first example of ECCM, the Germans increased their radio transmitter power in an attempt to
'burn through' or override the British jamming, which by necessity of the jammer being airborne or further
away produced weaker signals. This is still one of the primary methods of ECCM today. For example,
modern airborne jammers are able to identify incoming radar signals from other aircraft and send them back
with random delays and other modifications in an attempt to confuse the opponent's radar set, making the
'blip' jump around wildly and become impossible to range. More powerful airborne radars means that it is
possible to 'burn through' the jamming at much greater ranges by overpowering the jamming energy with
the actual radar returns. The Germans were not really able to overcome the chaff spoofing very successfully
and had to work around it (by guiding the aircraft to the target area and then having them visually acquire
the targets).

Today, more powerful electronics with smarter software for operation of the radar might be able to better
discriminate between a moving target like an aircraft and an almost stationary target like a chaff bundle.
The technology powering modern sensors and seekers allow all successful systems partly due to ECCM
designed into them. Today, electronic warfare is composed of ECM, ECCM and, electronic
reconnaissance/intelligent (ELINT) activities.[5]

Examples of electronic counter-countermeasures include the American Big Crow program, which served as
a Bear bomber and a standoff jammer.[6] It was a modified Air Force NKC-135A and was built to provide
capability and flexibility of conducting varied and precision electronic warfare experiments.[7] Throughout
its 20-year existence, the U.S. government developed and installed over 3,143 electronic counter-
countermeasures to its array of weapons.[6] There is also the BAMS Project, which was funded by the
Belgian government since 1982. This system, together with advanced microelectronics, also provided
secure voice, data, and text communications under the most severe electronic warfare conditions.[8]

Specific ECCM techniques

The following are some examples of EPM (other than simply increasing the fidelity of sensors through
techniques such as increasing power or improving discrimination):

ECM detection

Sensor logic may be programmed to be able to recognize attempts at spoofing (e.g., aircraft dropping chaff
during terminal homing phase) and ignore them. Even more sophisticated applications of ECCM might be
to recognize the type of ECM being used, and be able to cancel out the signal.

Pulse compression by "chirping", or linear frequency modulation

One of the effects of the pulse compression technique is boosting the apparent signal strength as perceived
by the radar receiver. The outgoing radar pulses are chirped, that is, the frequency of the carrier is varied
within the pulse, much like the sound of a cricket chirping. When the pulse reflects off a target and returns
to the receiver, the signal is processed to add a delay as a function of the frequency. This has the effect of
"stacking" the pulse so it seems stronger, but shorter in duration, to further processors. The effect can
increase the received signal strength to above that of noise jamming. Similarly, jamming pulses (used in
deception jamming) will not typically have the same chirp, so will not benefit from the increase in signal
strength.

Frequency hopping

Frequency agility ("frequency hopping") may be used to rapidly switch the frequency of the transmitted
energy, and receiving only that frequency during the receiving time window. This foils jammers which
cannot detect this switch in frequency quickly enough or predict the next hop frequency, and switch their
own jamming frequency accordingly during the receiving time window. The most advanced jamming
techniques have a very wide and fast frequency range, and might possibly jam out an antijammer.[9]

This method is also useful against barrage jamming in that it forces the jammer to spread its jamming power
across multiple frequencies in the jammed system's frequency range, reducing its power in the actual
frequency used by the equipment at any one time. The use of spread-spectrum techniques allow signals to
be spread over a wide enough spectrum to make jamming of such a wideband signal difficult.

Sidelobe blanking

Radar jamming can be effective from directions other than the direction the radar antenna is currently
aimed. When jamming is strong enough, the radar receiver can detect it from a relatively low gain sidelobe.
The radar, however, will process signals as if they were received in the main lobe. Therefore, jamming can
be seen in directions other than where the jammer is located. To combat this, an omnidirectional antenna is
used for a comparison signal. By comparing the signal strength as received by both the omnidirectional and
the (directional) main antenna, signals can be identified that are not from the direction of interest. These
signals are then ignored.

Polarization

Polarization can be used to filter out unwanted signals, such as jamming. If a jammer and receiver do not
have the same polarization, the jamming signal will incur a loss that reduces its effectiveness. The four
basic polarizations are linear horizontal, linear vertical, right-hand circular, and left-hand circular. The signal
loss inherent in a cross polarized (transmitter different from receiver) pair is 3 dB for dissimilar types, and
17 dB for opposites.

Aside from power loss to the jammer, radar receivers can also benefit from using two or more antennas of
differing polarization and comparing the signals received on each. This effect can effectively eliminate all
jamming of the wrong polarization, although enough jamming may still obscure the actual signal.

Radiation homing

Another practice of ECCM is to program sensors or seekers to detect attempts at ECM and possibly even to
take advantage of them. For example, some modern fire-and-forget missiles like the Vympel R-77 and the
AMRAAM are able to home in directly on sources of radar jamming if the jamming is too powerful to
allow them to find and track the target normally. This mode, called "home-on-jam", actually makes the
missile's job easier. Some missile seekers actually target the enemy's radiation sources, and are therefore
called "anti-radiation missiles" (ARMs). The jamming in this case effectively becomes a beacon
announcing the presence and location of the transmitter. This makes the use of such ECM a difficult
decision – it may serve to obscure an exact location from non-ARMs, but in doing so it must put the
jamming vehicle at risk of being targeted and hit by ARMs.

See also
Jamming
Electronic warfare
Electronic warfare support measures
Wartime reserve mode

References
1. Cheng, Chi-Hao; Tsui, James (2021). An Introduction to Electronic Warfare; from the First
Jamming to Machine Learning Techniques. Oxon: CRC Press. p. 47. ISBN 978-87-7022-
435-2.
2. McArthur, Charles W. (1990). Operations Analysis in the United States Army Eighth Air Force
in World War II, Vol. 4. Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society. p. 254. ISBN 0-
8218-0158-9.
3. Air Force Magazine. Air Force Association. 2007. p. 68.
4. Sterling, Christopher H. (2008). Military Communications: From Ancient Times to the 21st
Century. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. p. 138. ISBN 978-1-85109-732-6.
5. Boyne, Walter J.; Fopp, Michael (2002). Air Warfare: an International Encyclopedia, Vol. 1,
A-L. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. p. 191. ISBN 978-1-57607-345-2.
 6. Against the Wind: 90 Years of Flight Test in the Miami Valley. Miami: History Office,
Aeronautical Systems Center, Air Force Materiel Command. 1994. p. 96.
7. Air Defense Trends. Fort Bliss, TX: US Army Air Defense School. 1974. p. 50.
8. "BAMS Association Momentanee". Signals. 49: 128. 1995.
9. "Russia surges ahead in radio-electronic warfare | Russia & India Report" (https://web.archiv
e.org/web/20170815042828/https://in.rbth.com/economics/2014/05/15/russia_surges_ahead
_in_radio-electronic_warfare_35247). Archived from the original (http://in.rbth.com/economic
s/2014/05/15/russia_surges_ahead_in_radio-electronic_warfare_35247) on 2017-08-15.
Retrieved 2015-12-22.

Raytheon ECCM-capable radio set (https://web.archive.org/web/20050205235221/http://ww

w.raytheon.com/products/starblazer_ground/)
Camp Evans Engineers develop World War II counter-measures with the help of Allen B.
DuMont. (https://web.archive.org/web/20120426194744/http://www.campevans.org/news/17
1-camp-evans-played-role-in-wwii-countermeasures-cs-2003-06-05.html)

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