Chaff has long been used as a self-protective measure for aircraft and naval vessels against active RF threats. In the naval environment chaff has been used for anti-ship missile defence (ASMD). The effectiveness of chaff tactics is dependent on many factors including multipath, sea state, wind conditions, threat bearing, ship and chaff radar cross section (RCS), maneuvers and the sophistication of the electronic counter countermeasures (ECCM) features of the threat missile. Under one set of conditions, chaff can offer adequate protection, but under slightly modified conditions it is of no use. The effective deployment of chaff must be made with consideration to many variables and therefore the subsequent optimization problem to develop a robust deployment scheme is complex. In this work, we present a graphical, computer based tool that can be used to study both monostatic and bistatic chaff cloud RCS behaviour. This tool can be used to define parameters used in testing chaff deployments in our chaff effectiveness simulator. This tool is based on a new mathematical model for computing the RCS of a chaff cloud. Both spherical and elliptical clouds can be studied and limitations due to the radar's tracking cell are also accounted for. The display gives curves of the behaviour of the RCS over time (and radius), frequency and angular dependence of the RCS for monostatic and bistatic tracking of the cloud.
展开▼
