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
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.
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