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Old 07-05-2011, 12:45 PM
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pmulcahy11b pmulcahy11b is offline
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You have that essentially correct -- the Vietnamese learned to launch their SAMs with a quick initial fix (and some Russian-built radar-guided SAMs can initially be aimed by eyeball-type sights -- the SA-2 can actually be guided by conventional sights the whole way to the target, but that method is extremely inaccurate), and then then on their radars for a second of two for a quick midcourse correction, then once more when near the target. Everyone, even NATO and the US, has been using that method ever since. Of course, this requires a skilled crew, and much of this procedure has become automated in later missile systems.

To counter this, the US, NATO, and later the Russians and Chinese invented missiles like the HARM, which can pick that initial or later radar bursts and home in on the target radar even after the radar is turned off. This of course leads to ECM and ECCM being protecting SAM radars, and missiles which have the capability to "home-on-jam" -- they can actually home in on a jamming source. And this tit for tat will probably never end. I can't remember the name, but there's a British missile in development which is simply fired into the vicinity of a radar site, flies up and away from the firing aircraft, then pops a parachute and hangs there waiting for a radar burst, at which point it fires a second motor and goes at the radar site -- and it has both memory functions and home-on-jam capability. And one rumored reason they retired the F-117A was because the Russians figured out how to track that design of stealth aircraft.
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