paritosh
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2008
- Messages
- 3,363
- Reaction score
- 0
- Country
- Location
Well I just guessed because they are of different origins? Something about the guidance or something. Is the AIM-120 so easy to jam? Considering that it has Home-On-Jam capability it seems really surprising.
yes..it is supposed to be not easy to jam...switching from active to passive...but going passive is not all that good for a missile which has a BVR target...
since the Aim-120 has an active seeker....it emits it's own radiation and sees the target through the reflected 'echo'...now a target can jam the aim-120 by canceling out the incident radiation from the missile by producing an opposite radiation of it's own...
the aim 120's home-on-jam capability makes the seeker of the aim-120 to jump from the active mode to the passive mode(active-throws out radiation of it's own...passive-seeks radiation of the target without producing it's own radiation)...now if the switch occurs very early into it's flight against(because of the target a/c using a strong jammer)....the missile flies in the passive mode...now if a good software were to be on the target a/c as well(the EW suite on modern a/c is much better than that nowadays) the target a/c's EW suite would judge from the sudden fall in the incident radiation, a switch to passive mode...and hence it will switch too...not to a fully passive mode but a 'sleep' mode...wherein the a/c's radar's Tx intensity is reduced so that the passive seeker of the missile(which switched from active to passive at a BVR range) would find it difficult to guide the missile to the target plane....