The process of placing a decoy missile "MALD-J" on the suspension point of a strategic bomber B-52H
According to the report of the information and analytical resource "Military Parity" on July 12, 2016, citing Western sources, the US Navy signed a 35 million contract with the Raytheon company for the modernization of ADM-160 "MALD-J" small decoy / electronic warfare drones. … Having taken off for the first time 17 years ago, the prototype of the decoy / simulator rocket was constantly improved, due to which the current modification has a 2 times increased flight range (from 450 to 925 km), as well as a more advanced element base of the RER and EW complex. The first information about the acquisition of operational readiness of a promising decoy missile came to the media flightglobal.com on December 16, 2014, when the tactical aviation of the United States Marine Corps successfully tested the latest version of the product. And now, incredibly large stakes are being made on the MALD-J program in the US Air Force, Navy and ILC, sometimes even reaching such strategically important projects as JASSM-ER / LRASM, because the missile is planned to be used in the most critical air operations. including SVKNO, where the enemy's air defense and missile defense systems are capable of partially or completely arresting the MRAU of the American fleet and the Air Force when the latter uses standard types of high-precision weapons.
"MALD-J", on the other hand, should complicate the work of ground and airborne AWACS and RER to such an extent when the computing facilities of surveillance radar systems, airborne radars of fighters and air defense missile systems will be overloaded, and their operators are psychologically depressed due to the huge number of airborne simulators of American aviation, which will exceed the capacity of any type of modern radar.
Yes, such a concept is indeed one of the most important keys to a successful military operation, but is this missile as perfect as the marketing and sales department of Raytheon makes it?
"SELECTION" OF TARGET CHANNELS AND IMPLEMENTATION OF EW IS ONLY HALF WHEN MODERN RER SYSTEMS COME INTO THE GAME
The ability of "MALD-J" to "steal" important target / targeting channels of multifunctional radars (illumination and guidance) and surveillance systems really creates huge difficulties for the calculations of even modern anti-aircraft missile systems, as well as AWACS aircraft operators, since a "smart" drone simulator can very accurately repeat the effective scattering surface of most modern air attack weapons, which perfectly confuses the selection capabilities of the radar. But real effectiveness from the new American "decoys" can only be achieved in conjunction with strategic cruise missiles of the Tomahawk type, as well as tactical AGM-158A / B and Taurus, which can follow the target, guided only by the GPS module and own INS with the use of thermal-optical correlation sensors. The possibility of autonomous flight with passive navigation systems on the trajectory and guidance suggests that these missiles do not use active radar guidance and do not differ in any way from the EPR ADM-160 "MALD-J" simulating them. A completely different situation is observed during the use of "MALD-J" to simulate tactical and strategic aircraft.
Cruise missiles "MALD-J" are executed in a compact angular fuselage with a length of just over 2 m made of composite materials. There is a radio-transparent fairing, under which a passive antenna of the RER complex and a multifrequency emitter of reflected simulating electromagnetic waves of the millimeter, centimeter, decimeter and meter ranges with a powerful amplifier are installed. Before modeling a certain frequency and power of the emitter, which correspond to the type of the enemy's irradiating radar and the set RCS level to simulate the MALD-J, the decoy missile's onboard RER antennas identify and store the parameters of the irradiating signal, after which the data is sent to the generating device. As a result, target markers appear on the enemy radar indicators, corresponding to the EPR of a pre-selected aircraft (F-15SE or F-22A "Raptor"). But all this is only before the fighter's airborne radar, the REP complex and tactical information exchange systems are turned on.
The modes of operation of these complexes are much more diverse than the spectrum of the imitation radiation of the MALD-J transmitter, which is easily intercepted and selected by modern electronic reconnaissance means, including the Tamara and Valeria ground complexes, as well as the Tu-214R air systems. All these means have modern computerized computing bases with physical drives, on which a regularly updated list of enemy emitting systems (radar, communications, electronic warfare, radio altimeters, etc.) is installed, and therefore it will be quite possible to distinguish the ADM-160 from a fighter that will require the combat aviation of the NATO Joint Forces, at the moment of entering the zone of probable action of our SRTRs, to be in radio silence with switched off electronic warfare and airborne radars, only receiving a tactical "picture" from remote RTR facilities. But in conditions when our Air Force has such machines as the Su-35S and Su-30SM, the turned off radars of American fighters will lead to inevitable defeat.
Antenna post SRTR "Valeria" with a circular passive PAR is placed on a telescopic hydraulic boom with a height of more than 20 m, which gives additional opportunities to detect low-altitude radio-emitting air objects at a distance of 35-40 km
This fact shows that in relation to the imitation of tactical aviation, "MALD-J" is a rather ineffective unmanned aircraft complex, the operation of which can be quickly calculated against the background of the frequency diversity and emitting complexes of modern fighters and bombers. But the Americans continue to fight for an ambitious program, and here the network-centric capabilities of the equipment of the American multi-role fighters of the 4 ++ / 5 generations come into play. The highest network-centric level today is observed in the Navy and US Air Force units equipped with multi-role fighters F-35A / B / C, F / A-18E / F / G and F-22A, and the carrier-based aircraft of the fleet recently received a good lead in terms of systemic linkage. While the Raptors have a standard Link-16 communication bus, the deck F / A-18E / F, Growlers, F-35B / C and E-3D, in accordance with the concepts of naval air and anti-ship defense NIFC-CA and ADOSWC receive specialized communication equipment with MADL (Small Data Pipe) and TTNT (Link-16 / CMN-4 subchannel) channels.
The TTNT radio channel is located in the decimeter wavelength range and is capable of operating effectively over several hundred kilometers. Imagine the situation: there is a squadron of Super Hornets carrying about 30 MALD-Js and several anti-ship LRASMs. The task is to break through the air defense KUG / AUG of the Chinese Navy with the subsequent destruction of the Type 52D EM covering the aircraft carrier. To create a surprise effect, F / A-18E / F will approach the Chinese AUG with the radar off, at the same time launching a couple of dozen MALD-Js to “load” the ship's air defense systems, imitating the EPR of both Super Hornets and anti-ship missiles. LRASM . While decoy missiles will rise to a height available for detection by Chinese general ship radar and radar, real F / A-18E / F with combat anti-ship missiles will carry out an attack, and then either engage in aerial combat with deck-based J-15S, or begin return to aircraft carrier based. Naturally, before the MALD-J approaches at a distance of less than 25 km, the operators of the Chinese air defense missile systems will not be able to recognize the absence of the American Super Hornets and LRASMs in the main distracting link, since television optical sighting devices on destroyers, due to the atmospheric factor, do not recognize the exact type of targets. And then, in the remaining couple of minutes, it will be very difficult to distinguish 10 real anti-ship missiles from 20 decoy missiles.
The whole operation will be carried out by correcting actions on the TTNT channel from the remote Advanced Hawkeye or the F-35B / C, without outgoing packets of information from the attacking Super Hornets. This will prevent Chinese radio technology from distinguishing American fighters from decoy missiles.
Millimeter channel "MADL" (11 - 18 GHz) can also play a large role in this kind of operations. The antennas for its operation are precisely directional, which will make it possible to conduct a two-way instant exchange of information during the operation of the MALD-J decoy missiles. Its range is only a few tens of kilometers, but it is not so easy to locate it with the help of the RER: the signal strength is very low.
These two channels of tactical information exchange demonstrate that with the help of modern network-centric capabilities, in some cases, it is possible to correct the multiple shortcomings of various weapons systems, including the ADM-160 "MALD-J" decoy missile. But this does not mean that the shortcomings of this missile have been completely eliminated. Its carriers will not be able to fly with the onboard radars turned off in all combat situations, since during the superior numbers and technical capabilities of enemy combat aircraft, the need for radar operation will arise for all Super Hornets or other machines without exception, and the presence of flying tricks will be instantly revealed …
In addition, the maximum speed of "MALD-J" does not exceed 1200 km / h, which does not allow it to simulate supersonic aircraft, and the range of 925 km gives only some tactical advantages in conducting air operations at a short distance from the most active part of the theater. A small decoy rocket simply will not reach the rear zones of large states. The infrared "luminosity" of the turbojet engine's jet gases is much lower than that of the JASSM-ER or Tomahawk, and therefore at short distances it will be very different from other air attack weapons, in fact, as in a television channel due to its smaller geometric dimensions and bright pronounced engine air intake.
The effectiveness of this decoy rocket is only several times higher than that of an ordinary Luneberg lens, which hides the real EPR of 5th generation fighters in peacetime, the installed electronic warfare and electronic warfare systems slightly brighten the situation, but for use against advanced aerospace defense systems with attached complexes RER and optical-radio-technical reconnaissance, this "Rayton" drone has not matured yet. In the future, we will monitor the MALD-J modernization program using the example of new versions of the MALD-N missile for the fleet and the MALD-X missile with enhanced data exchange capabilities.
