Electronic Counter-countermeasures - History

History

Ever since electronics have been used in battle in an attempt to gain superiority over the enemy, effort has been spent on techniques to reduce the effectiveness of those electronics. More recently, sensors and weapons are being modified to deal with this threat. One of the most common types of ECM is radar jamming or spoofing. This originated with the Royal Air Force use of what they codenamed window during World War II, which is now often referred to as chaff. Jamming also may have originated with the British during World War II, when they began jamming German radio communications.

In perhaps the first example of ECCM, the Germans increased their radio transmitter power in an attempt to 'burn through' or override the British jamming, which by necessity of the jammer being airborne or further away produced weaker signals. This is still one of the primary methods of ECCM today. For example, modern airborne jammers are able to identify incoming radar signals from other aircraft and send them back with random delays and other modifications in an attempt to confuse the opponent's radar set, making the 'blip' jump around wildly and be impossible to range. More powerful airborne radars means that it is possible to 'burn through' the jamming at much greater ranges by overpowering the jamming energy with the actual radar returns. The Germans were not really able to overcome the chaff spoofing very successfully and had to work around it (by guiding the aircraft to the target area and then having them visually acquire the targets).

Today, more powerful electronics with smarter software for operation of the radar might be able to better discriminate between a moving target like an aircraft and an almost stationary target like a chaff bundle.

With the technology going into modern sensors and seekers, it is inevitable that all successful systems have to have ECCM designed into them, lest they become useless on the battlefield. In fact, the 'electronic battlefield' is often used to refer to ECM, ECCM and ELINT activities, indicating that this has become a secondary battle in itself.