Interview with Navy Officer

[Dogsbody]

Very interesting Interview with an US Navy EA18G Growler Electronic Warfare officer.

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/confes ... 99/+travis

[thewood1]

That is a very cool article.

[magi]

thank you ... just checked it out... nice... will read tomorrow morning with a fresh pot of coffee....

[mikkey]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing Dogsbody.

[Dogsbody]

Thxs, your welcome guys[:)]

[DirtyFred]

thanks for this very informativ article

there are about 50 F-18Grizzly's in service with about 20 more requested by navy and possibly used by airforce if b-52 jammers are not enough... the f-35 debacle demands more EW aircraft between 2020 and 2050.

see:
http://www.businessinsider.com/f-35-nee ... 014-4?IR=T

[magi]

That was very insightful… Thank you Dog....

[ckfinite]

I do question the veracity of those slides rather a lot - there are some major issues with them, at least to my understanding of the EW problem.

There's a fundamental difference between EW/ECM and stealth that those gloss over, namely that stealth works by reducing signal from the real platform, whereas ECM works by either increasing noise (noise jamming) or by making contacts that don't actually exist (deception jamming).

This creates a problem with ECM that stealth doesn't have - it can be countered by software alone. Stealth is a physics thing - a stealth aircraft can always get closer to an emitter than a non-stealth one, no matter the generation of radar involved or what software it has. ECM however is a bag of clever tricks, each of which can be countered by another clever trick on the other side. As such, ECM systems are playing a game of cat and mouse with radars that stealth systems don't have to do.

The real solution is a synergistic combination of the two technologies. EA-18Gs or F-35s with NGJs (as the F-35 is planned to receive the pod) can cover F-35 strike packages, reducing signal while increasing noise.

[thewood1]

What is an F-18Grizzly? Never heard that term before...is it new?

[ExNusquam]

ORIGINAL: thewood1

What is an F-18Grizzly? Never heard that term before...is it new?

The aircraft is officially called the "Growler". However, carrier aircraft are landing they identify themselves to the landing signal officers, including type and fuel state so they have an accurate weight setting for the arresting cables and the glideslope lens is set properly. Because there needs to be as little ambiguity as possible, many aircraft use names different from the official nickname, and within the pilot community these names come into common use. To avoid confusion with the Prowler that was still in service upon the -18Gs introduction, they used "Grizzly" for the -18G. Similarly, the Super Hornets use "Rhino" to avoid confusion with "Hornet".

[thewood1]

Yeah, that avoids all kinds of confusion. Thanks for the info.

[HaughtKarl]

Interesting article especially with regards to the technical limitations of the EF-111.

My question is do Growlers/Prowlers go in with strike packages or do they orbit out of harms way to safely jam enemy radars?

[magi]

I usually have the jammers nearby… But separate…… And as they are valuable I try to have a defender in the vicinity to support if necessary…