Fading Signal: The Neglect of Electronic Warfare.

On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 13:50:59 -0800, "W. D. Allen"
wrote:

"...Perhaps the time has come to put the Navy in charge of all joint
electronic warfare activities...."

Now it can be told...

In 1966 the North Vietnamese with their Russian instructors began shooting
down U.S. aircraft over NVN. Someone in the Navy had the wisdom and
foresight to have on hand 1,000 ALQ-51 deception repeaters originally
dedicated to aircraft protection during execution of the Navy portion of the
SIOP.

Let's note that the North Vietnamese air defenses began claiming US
aircraft in 1964 and throughout 1965 as well. The ill-fated first SAM
raid in which six F-105s were lost was conducted in July of 1965.
Let's not rewrite history.

The first USAF Weasels, the F-100F aircraft equipped with APR-25/26,
began flying SAM suppression raids on 1 December 1965.

When I started F-105 training at Nellis in September of 1965 we began
to get aircraft back from depot maintenance with three cannon plugs
installed in the inner bulkhead of the main gear wheel wells to
provide the power connection to the QRC-160 ECM pods, a software
upgradeable noise jammer.

You are correct that the Navy had the ALQ-51 in many aircraft by late
1965. It was a "gate-stealer" which delivered a delayed pulse back to
the emitting radar to confuse the range estimation of the system.

The essential difference is that the noise jammer was broad-band and
worked on a number of frequencies including those of both Fan-Song and
Firecan (gun-tracking) radars. The gate-stealer was optimized for SA-2
freqs.

The USAF lagged in getting the pods to the field with the first pods
not showing up until October of 1966. (I flew my entire 100 mission
NVN tour without ever carrying an ECM pod.) We did however lead the
USN in deployment of our RHAW gear and the delivery of the relatively
sophisticated Wild Weasel aircraft, particularly the F-105F which
arrived in theater in May of '66. The Weasel equipment and tactics
proved considerably more effective than the USN's A-4 led Iron Hand
systems.

Rapid delivery of upgrades to the AGM-45 Shrike software as well as
pod deployment after the summer of '66 pretty much kept the USAF ahead
of the sailors after that period.

Today I don't think either service is doing poorly when it comes to
degradation of defenses.
Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
www.thunderchief.org
www.thundertales.blogspot.com