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gambit
If an aircraft like the Growler is engaged in jamming, cannot an aircraft find the source of the jamming.
It depends on the tactical jamming method at that time.
If the jamming is omni-directional, meaning as much of the 360 deg as possible, then at best you will know the general direction/location of the jammer source, but probably not the individuals themselves, because there could be more than one who are transmitting.
If the attack is highly directional, then with sufficient triangulation from receivers that are not affected by the jamming, you could narrow down to more than just general direction/location. How precise is up to your capability.
There are times when EM saturation attacks precede the physical attacks. This is to produce initial confusion on the defenders. Directional EM attacks with multiple transmitters with diversion/seduction is one tactic. Induce attention to one area of the sky while your force enters from another.
As in, it too would be emmiting radio signals and hence will be susceptible to a anti radar weapon?
Beamrider missiles needs 'clear' space in order to discriminate out the transmission. The word 'clear' here means an area of the sky that is not saturated with jamming signals. The receiver inside the missile detect some parts of the sky as with no transmissions and one direction as with transmission. The system then performs the necessary elimination and home in on the transmission. Beamrider missiles are best against active seeking radar transmissions, not so good against a blanket wide area EM transmission.
Here is an example of this...It is called 'blinking'...
Center for Army Lessons Learned - Thesaurus
These upgrades will provide increased capability against target shutdown, blanking, and blinking.
When ground air defense radar stations wish to counter beamrider missiles, they would coordinate their 'blinking' tactic. One station would actively transmit then shut down, the other would immediately transmit then shut down. If the stations, two or more, are widely spaced enough, the beamrider missile could be sufficiently confused.
The tactic cannot work this unless there are areas of the sky that are clear of any transmission, meaning the stations must be highly directional, as how seeking radar transmission usually are. So if a beamrider missile cannot detect any area of 'clear' space, it have no reference to perform the necessary discrimination.
Also, what do you think of the Knirti SAP 518 ECM? How would an aircraft with this be inferior to a Growler?
Sorry, but size do matter in this area. Self protection jamming systems, or pods, are good enough only up to a point. The main weakness of ad-hoc, meaning at one's convenience, is power and antenna arrays. Ad-hoc systems are removable at will and as such, their small sizes have limited capabilities in terms of radiating power, which is vulnerable to 'burn through' if an adversary just happened to have a more powerful transmitter. That does not mean they are useless. We have them. But we also note their limits in certain tactical situations and that is why we have dedicated EW platforms.