If modern missiles can track targets from beyond visual range, how do their operators verify that they’ve acquired the targets they’re looking for?
In: Technology
The aircrafts’ radars guide the missiles until they are close enough to ‘see’ the target and guide themselves.
This generally means the firing aircraft has to maintain the radar lock for a time after firing.
I’m realising in hindsight I worded the title poorly. To reiterate my question:
How does the operator of a missile fired from beyond visual range know, without being able to confirm it visually, that the target the missile is tracking is what the operator intended to fire at? How do you know what you’re shooting at if you can’t see it?
Most modern missiles fired from beyond visual range aren’t tracking anything, not for most of the flight, that is. The missiles are receiving their targeting data via telemetry, which oftentimes (especially when the firing platform is a stealth aircraft) isn’t even coming from the firing aircraft. The missiles can receive their telemetry from any platform that has the necessary communication links.
The reason for this is simple: the second you light off a radar, *everyone* knows you’re there.
Patrols, strikes, escorts, etc. all want to be as stealthy as possibly, so while they *do* have onboard radars they usually won’t turn them on if they don’t have to while in potentially hostile airspace. A lot of times the carrier or it’s escorts likely won’t have them on, either, if there’s a possibility the battle group might come under fire.
Now, obviously you can’t hide the fact that a carrier group is in the area, but you *can* keep everyone from knowing where, exactly, it is and therefore limit its exposure to cruise missiles. That’s done by launching an E-2 Hawkeye, a propjob aircraft with a BIG radar dish on top. These bad boys fly away from the carrier group a bit and fire up their big ass radar, and send all of the information from that thing back to the battle group, to friendly aircraft, etc. via encrypted radio links.
*That’s* the bird that is doing the targeting. It’s feeding the bearing, distance, elevation, airspeed, and direction of travel of potential targets to everyone else. A friendly aircraft can take that information, relay it to the missile, and fire the missile all without emitting a signal of it’s own. The missile rockets off and glides most of the way to its target, then switches on it’s own radar for terminal guidance.
Take note, that it is entirely possible that this is the first moment the targeted aircraft had any idea it was being targeted, let alone shot at. It may not have even been aware of other aircraft in the vicinity.
It depends on what kind of missile and what kind of target.
An air-to-air missile shot from a fighter jet at another plane can use one of several types of seekers, with infrared (heat seeking) missiles primarily used in Short Range Air-To-Air-Missile (SRAAMs) situations that fall within 10-20 miles, or what is considered “within visual range”.
These are dogfighting missiles that maximize agility and are basically pointed at the enemy and allowed to track the heat of their exhaust.
Medium/Long Range Air-To-Air-Missiles are generally radar guided, either from the plane (or something like a command-and-control plane) or by providing targeting info and then using the missiles internal tracking systems.
In SRAAMs, the pilot can (theoretically at least) see what they’re shooting at.
For LRAAMs, the pilot bases targeting on what their/the control aircrafts long range radar is telling them, comparing it to known enemy radar signatures, and making decisions on when and with what to shoot at them.
Most aircraft that can fire missiles beyond visual range have an air to air interrogator. Every aircraft flying in FAA controlled airspace (or whatever your country’s aviation authority is) is required to have a transponder. It will reply with a code upon interrogation. Every pilot flying must file a flight plan with air traffic control. When they get into FAA controlled air space, the air traffic controller will assign them a squawk code the pilot will enter into the transponder.
Air traffic controllers track air traffic in their assigned air space 2 ways.
1. Radar will send out a pulse, anything big and metal in the sky will reflect that pulse, but it doesn’t really identify what that pulse is.
2. Alongside that radar pulse is an interrogation signal. That interrogation signal will tell the transponder on that aircraft to reply with whatever squawk code was entered.
These 2 signals are correlated to each other so that every radar blip should have a squawk code next to it
Military aircraft have another special reply their transponders can send called Mode 5 which is an encrypted code. In the US, all US and allied aircraft will have the same codes loaded to them for the entire month. The interrogator will send out an encrypted interrogation pulse and if the transponder’s codes can decrypt the encoded message, it will reply with an encoded reply.
If the aircraft does not reply, and there aren’t supposed to be any friendlies in that area, depending on the rules of engagement, you may be able to shoot. [That may not be enough to prevent friendly fire incidents though,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Black_Hawk_shootdown_incident) so sometimes visual ID is required. Though, in the 1994 Iraq incident, the pilots made visual contact with the helicopter and still shot it down. It’s also not uncommon for military aircraft to turn off their transponders when operating behind enemy lines.
Usually, you’re not yeeting missiles at targets 40 miles away unless you’re very confident that it’s not a civilian or friendly aircraft. e.g. AWACS has been tracking them as soon as they took off from a known enemy airfield. There’s a reason why the A-50 shot down over Ukraine last month was such a big deal.
If the aircraft you’re interrogating isn’t replying with their transponder, you can do something called a lethal interrogation where if the aircraft you’re trying to interrogate doesn’t reply, because he’s got his transponder in standby, it will wake the transponder up to send a reply if the codes match.
Military intelligence. Warplanes are expensive and deadly and so are sent out on specific missions. For example, say an enemy helicopter in in an area and an infantry commander requests air support to destroy that helicopter, they will send the location and specs of the target. The fighter jet will be sent to the area with its active radar sensors sweeping for that target. To avoid accidentally striking friendly aircraft they can exchange radio messages called IFF, Identification Friend or Foe. If the fighter jet identifies the expected target radar signature and does not receive a friend code, they can launch their weapons. Basically instead of seeing with their eyes they are seeing over the horizon with their radar systems.
It is not that different than an infantry soldier being sent to an area and told to shoot some enemy soldiers. They are likely given intelligence on the target location, numbers, appearance, and capabilities of the target. Most infantry combat takes place at hundreds of meters, so they can barely see each other anyway.
So yeah, the most dangerous thing in a fight is not just being able to strike the enemy, it is knowing where the enemy is.
Basically, by staying aware of what’s going on. They work as part of a large team. Rules of engagement (when you shoot) are going to vary a lot depending on the situation.
So, e.g. in peacetime they’re going to rely on visual identification. Can’t go around blowing up every civilian who forgot to turn their transponder on.
In wartime, dedicated radar planes are going to try very hard to have a comprehensive picture of everything in the air. If something took off from a hostile airfield and is zooming towards your planes, you can draw some conclusions.
Warplanes are up there as part of a plan. There’s something called an Air Tasking Order and probably a lot more that plans all the air missions for each day. Pilots should have a good idea where all their friends are.
The tech stuff-radars that can id planes and IFF systems, etc., are, I think, secondary, with the big exception that a friendly IFF is probably an near-absolute don’t shoot. But I think if it gets to that point, a lot of things have already failed.
[Here’s](https://theaviationgeekclub.com/eagle-vs-foxbat-when-usaf-f-15s-dogfighted-with-iraqi-or-russian-mig-25s-during-operation-desert-storm/) a first person account of what starts as a beyond visual range engagement that turns into a dogfight.
In other words “How do you know what you are shooting at is actually a threat?”
Radar can pick up the signature of an aircraft which can help with identifying what it is, but it’s not really reliable (these exact capabilities are also highly classified so we don’t know exactly what modern radars are capable of in this regard)
Friendly aircraft are equipped with IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) a device that sends a signal on command to identify if it’s a friendly plane or not.
Powerful radars like AWACS are also used to scan threats on the battlefield, and radar operators can track where they came from to identify if the plane took off from an enemy airfield for example.
The problem though becomes Rules of Engagement
These are rules defined by commanders and politicians that pilots have to follow.
The most famous one is “do not fire unless fired upon”
They may for example apply a rule that says “You MUST visually identify a target before shooting” to prevent civilian causalities. For example in a contested air space they don’t want to accidentally shoot an airliner as that would result in a massive scandal.
So even though you have a beyond visual range capability the Rules of Engagement effectively forbid you from using it.
But this depends on the conflict. In a hot war such rules may not apply depending on the situation.
Define visual range …
The F-14 had the Northrop AAX-1, a television camera system that allowed visual identification of larger target aircraft at ~100km distance. Of course, the AIM-54C missile on the Tomcat could make a kill at nearly twice that range.
Extra info from the world’s biggest net of information. All ground radars, jets, AWACS, and sensors communicate to each other over a link. There are people constantly monitoring this link. For a track on the link to warrant scrambling a jet it already has some factors making it worth engaging.
By the time the jet takes off it probably knows why it’s taking off, what its rules of engagement are, and all of the information available about the track.
The point of origin, the speed, altitude, bearing, detected length, transponder codes, and even the method in which it intakes air can be used to help identify a track through sensors. Hell if you can’t get enough information one of the last resorts before engaging with a ground based system is a visual identification from a friendly jet.
Before a track is ever engaged it has been examined closely by a ton of different levels and decisions have been made on how it will be engaged. Air defense is a giant interconnecting machine that very rarely falters.
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