Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses - Weapons

Weapons

The weapons most often associated with this mission are anti-radiation missiles (ARMs) such as the American AGM-88 HARM and British ALARM. Weapons used for SEAD missions can be anything which damages or destroys a component of an air defense system. A Paveway LGB, for example, is not a SEAD-specific munition but, when used to destroy a radar antenna, it achieves the objective of Suppression of Enemy Air Defense.

Possibly the most effective type of unguided ("dumb") weapon used during SEAD strikes are cluster bombs, because many SAM sites are dispersed over a fairly wide area, in order to increase the difficulty of inflicting serious damage on the battery, and the relative "softness" of the targets (missile launchers, exposed radars, etc.). The Mk-20 Rockeye II anti-armor cluster munition and the CBU-87 general-purpose cluster munition are often used against these fixed-location SAM sites, often for "clean-up" of a site whose radar or C&C facilities are first destroyed by a longer-range ARM or AGM. The relatively new American AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon is a valuable SEAD weapon due to its fairly long standoff range which allows the launching aircraft to avoid being threatened by all but the longest-range missiles, and its relatively large area of destruction against soft targets.