Techniques To Defeat Anti-ship Missiles
A dangerous task carried out by Sea Kings was to act as decoys, to deflect sea-skimming missiles away from surface ships. This was achieved by hovering close to the ship and as the radar seeker could not resolve targets in azimuth the ship/helicopter combination appeared as a single target. If the helicopter was not too high the missile guidance system would aim for the centroid of its apparent target and hopefully pass between the two. Prince Andrew at one point flew his helicopter as an Exocet missile decoy. Chaff rockets aim to seduce a missile with a similar technique by increasing the apparent length of the target.
The size of the ship's radar cross section (RCS) was too great to allow chaff decoys to be effective and their employment would have been unlikely to have affected the outcome. It has also been claimed—incorrectly—that the hull of the ship acted as a decoy against a subsequent Exocet attack.
Read more about this topic: SS Atlantic Conveyor
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