TECHNOLOGY SURVEY: A SAMPLING OF AIRBORNE ELECTRONIC WARFARE SUITES

摘要

Airborne Self-protection EW suites were introduced into fighter aircraft, such as the F-15A and F-16A, in the 1970s. Along with the radar, communications and other systems in the aircraft, the EW suite had become automated enough by that time to enable a single person to pilot the aircraft and operate all of its systems. (Admittedly, a single pilot had quite a workload to manage in an engagement- monitoring a number of displays and tracking the status of various weapons.) In the decades that followed, airborne EW suites continued to evolvetying together more sensors and countermeasures and presenting more fused information to the pilot. There is no hard and fast definition for what an EW suite is, exactly. But EW suites imply the integration of one or more types of sensors, such as a radar warning receiver (RWR) or electronic support measures (ESM) system, a missile warning system (MWS) or a laser warning system (LWS), with one or more countermeasures systems via a suite controller or some sort of EW management system. The objective, as explained above, is to automate the process of threat detection/identification and to determine and initiate an optimal countermeasures response. An EW suite can be as sophisticated as the one on the F-35, which is really part of a full sensor suite that fuses inputs from the aircraft's radar, Electro-Optical Targeting System, EO/ IR Distributed Aperture System, and ESM system to present a single situational awareness picture to the pilot. The aircraft also supports weapons selection and automates the counter-measures response. At the other end of the spectrum, on a utility helicopter for example, the EW suite can be as simple as an RWR and MWS feeding inputs to a suite controller/manager, which automatically cues a chaff and flare dispenser.