The dark art: Airborne EA becomes 'the new black' for mission success

摘要

Modern multirole combat aircraft seek to incorporate the gamut of capability and performance attributes, but each generation has prioritised a particular trait to give it the qualitative edge over its competitors, be it in speed, stealth, manoeuvrability, or something else.With the advancement over recent years of ground-based air-defence (GBAD) systems and integrated air-defence systems (IADS) among countries and groups that would traditionally not have fielded such advanced capabilities, the feature of choice for today's generation of combat aircraft designers is electronic warfare (EW) in general and electronic attack (EA) in particular.