What are these oddly shaped devices next to the Rafale's inlets?

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EmotioneelKlootzak@reddit

Antennas for the SPECTRA ECM system.

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Phil-X-603@reddit

How do ECMs work though? Does it make it harder for enemy fighters to lock on?

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Imagine that instead of giving of the RCS and shoving up as a blip on the enemies radar, you BECOME the RCS by sending back false signals to the enemy radar making you a big blob on their radar instead of a small one so they cant pin point your posistion.

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Banfy_B@reddit

Sort of, the most primitive forms of ECM are just noise emitters that makes it impossible to discern targets on a radar screen. The more advanced ones can give false signal returns to incoming radar waves or try to cancel out the returns altogether (like the active stealth marketed on the Rafale).

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The_1ndiegamer@reddit

Some even create duplicate returns, iirc gripen has this.

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UnluckyObject5777@reddit

>try to cancel out the returns altogether (like the active stealth marketed on the Rafale). Active stealth? What kind of bullshit marketing claim is this? Lmao

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cleanshotVR@reddit

You forget that stealth does not mean invisible. That just isn't feasable. Stealth looks to enable aircraft to get as close as possible to the target before being detected. And if this gets you close enough for missles, it's worth it. Even if not entirely, every minute before you actually get detected buys you options.

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nuapadprik@reddit

Stealth makes ECM easier.

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Thorimus@reddit

are you aware the us has built hundreds, if not thousands of aircraft that do exactly this? what was the point of the ea-6, ea-18, f-16 with the spine, etc. if the technology doesn’t actually do anything?

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Soundwave_irl@reddit

Active noise canceling on headphones works too

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JunkbaII@reddit

“There is no way a signal can be detected, processed, a response wave generated and emitted in the perfect pattern so that…“ This part of your doubtfulness is what enables a different capability for active EW systems. Advances in processing power have driven some really interesting things you can do with incoming RF energy

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Jackmino66@reddit

You realise this isn’t exactly a novel concept. Radar waves aren’t “patterned” in a way that makes them difficult to counter (unless you’re using very fancy AESA stuff found on modern warships, which this system isn’t designed to counter anyway) functioning ECM technology like radar jamming has been around since the development of radar. It was fairly common to mimick radar returns to confuse an operator in the 1970s. 50 years of electronic development later and these systems are a little more capable

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UnluckyObject5777@reddit

Boy I've been ratioed, fair enough, but since you didn't roast me I'll answer. While I'm thinking about the technical implementation of this, of which I'm still skeptical, there are some questions that torment me. Why are the French Neuron drone and concept for SCAF fighter shaped like that? Why do they have internal carriage space if you could just carry more loads under wings and actively suppress your RCS with spectra ? Why no other manufacturer ever claimed something like that, and Americans, Chinese and other European manufacturers started developing RAMs and stealth shapes, if this is such a well known thing? Are the French engineers the only ones that can pull this off? How did the PAF Eyrieye detect the Indian Rafales, were they not employing spectra at all? If it is so simple, why not develop some pods that do this and claim any 4th Gen can become low observable? Am I really the only one doubting this?

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Jackmino66@reddit

You could reduce your RCS with active systems You could reduce your RCS with internal weapons bays You can reduce your RCS *even more* by doing both

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KS_Gaming@reddit

>Radar waves aren’t “patterned” in a way that makes them difficult to counter (unless you’re using very fancy AESA stuff found on modern warships, which this system isn’t designed to counter anyway) Is there anywhere you'd know I could read more about this? Sounds very interesting.

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Jackmino66@reddit

Because of how AESA phased array radars work they can project small random beams of radar that are hard to counter. It’s called “low probability of intercept” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-probability-of-intercept_radar

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Topgun58ge@reddit

I mean..noise canceling headsets work and are basically the same thing.......

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Ok_Steak_4341@reddit

What was your last job, certainly not in microwaves.

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Pratt_@reddit

[Dunning–Kruger effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

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turtle_excluder@reddit

LOL you literally didn't know what active stealth was five minutes ago and now you're trying to pretend you know enough about ECM to prove it can't work. Peak reddit brain.

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Lawsoffire@reddit

Not to mention that this is the same principle that active noise cancelling works on, just sound waves instead of radio waves

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UnluckyObject5777@reddit

I'm not trying to prove anything, I just said I was skeptical. But since everyone here is much more expert than me, I'll take the L and learn, I guess?

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KS_Gaming@reddit

Yeah, chronically online people are just REALLY bad at not forming opinions about stuff they lack knowledge about.

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Evilbred@reddit

It might not for the first pulse or two, but once it detects patterns, frequencies, waveforms etc it can fill in with jibberish.

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KS_Gaming@reddit

It's an actual illneee to have such strong negative opinions about highly classified technically plausible stuff.

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MajorDakka@reddit

Destructive interference

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ConnieTheTomcat@reddit

it was already explained in the comment you replied to; destructive interference. I have ni way of telling how effective it is at delaying acquisition but there are many forms of ECM both passive and active.

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JunkbaII@reddit

It’s a EW capability not just a marketing term. There’s a couple different things you can do by manipulating radio waves and their return to an adversary

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Flubby_G@reddit

DRFM jamming is the advanced technique you’re describing

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131TV1RUS@reddit

ECMs can spoof radar signals, typically it makes the aircraft appear closer to a missile causing it to make sharper turns and bleed off energy and hit an invisible airplane(will not detonate however). This causes the missile to miss. It can also trick the enemy to believe there are more aircraft’s in the air then there actually are. Even so far as to generate multiple Pseudo aircraft’s with different altitudes, bearings, speeds and even aircraft types.

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Battlemanager@reddit

"Causes the missile to miss"... I never understood the name if these weapons. Why call them [miss]ile, when they're designed to hit. Shouldn't they be [hitt)iles??

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zombie-yellow11@reddit

It comes from the latin word "missilis" which designated an object that could be thrown and the verb "mittere" which means to throw. It entered English through middle French "missile" which meant projectile.

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need2sleep-later@reddit

Time to read the referenced wikipedia article for starters.

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Phil-X-603@reddit

Excuse my lack of knowledge but the Wikipedia article above is a bit esoteric.

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EverGivin@reddit

Jamming is spitting out loads of radio signals to confuse a radar system, like shining a torch in someone’s face when they’re looking for something. You can also send false radar returns to make yourself look bigger or a different shape, potentially confusing a targeting system.

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redoctoberz@reddit

> yourself look bigger or a different shape, So you are saying someone can really identify as an attack helicopter IRL?

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EverGivin@reddit

You can identify as a slightly different blob…

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Jon_Has_Landed@reddit

Yes

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AuroraHalsey@reddit

I'll give it a go. Using radar is like yelling BEEP and waiting to hear if you hear a BEEP coming back. Since we know how fast the BEEP travels, we can work out how far away the target is based on how long it takes for the BEEP to come back. Stealth is trying to absorb the BEEP rather than bounce it, so the person yelling doesn't hear anything back and thus doesn't know we're here. ECM is a bit different. ECM noise jamming would be when they yell BEEP, we don't stay quiet, we yell BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP back at them. Sure, they definitely know we're here, but because we constantly BEEP back at them, we're drowning out their BEEP and they can't use the timing to work out how far away we are. It's not perfect, but it denies them a bit of information and makes it harder for them to throw missiles at us, though there are missiles that can home in our BEEPing called Home-On-Jam. A more advanced form of ECM is deceptive jamming. Instead of constantly screeching BEEP BEEP BEEP back at them, we work out when they would receive their BEEP back, then send our own back louder and slightly off timing, so we're telling them where we are, but it's a lie, a small distance off from the truth. We keep sending back, and we keep making the lie bigger, until we go quiet, they try to look for where they think we are, but we tricked them and they're looking at empty space. This doesn't stop them from searching all over the place to find us again, but they have to do it from scratch buying us time, and any missiles they threw at us before are flying off into empty space.

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jaimi_wanders@reddit

Nice analogy! There’s a train station on my route where it can be hard to tell from the sounds alone which direction a train is coming from, because there are warehouses and tall walls lining the tracks in both directions and the noise reflects strangely creating an ambient mix.

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gexor@reddit

They are sensors to detect when bad guys are pointing bad things at the plane.

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TraceyRobn@reddit

These didn't work against Chinese radar guided missiles over Pakistan recently, and a few Rafaels were shot down. It is possible that the ECM doesn't work so well on the "export version" the French sold India.

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Ellyan_fr@reddit

It's possible. It's also possible that indian air force pilots were not that smart about it. Spectra is not a magic wand that makes the plane disappear it's a tool to help the pilot evade dangerous situations. Also as far as we know only one Rafale (not Rafael) was shot down.

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CaptainMegaNads@reddit

Your last statement is why state actors are on reddit asking questions they know the answers to, so that they can make contact with loose lipped military contractors. Engineers are the worst at having fragile egos and needing to prove to others what they know. …second only to pilots. In this context I dont mind the reddit-brained experts - their misinformation is just like ECM jamming.

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Ellyan_fr@reddit

My last statement is purely OSINT and I'm very much not affiliated to the defense industry.

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Rand_str@reddit

Radars emit pulses of radio waves and based on the time difference to the received wave, they estimate the range of the target. One way ECMs work is they return a radar pulse at a slightly different time thus confusing the ranging algorithm of the radar.

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swoopwalker@reddit

They beam energy back at the enemy radar to confuse it and throw off targeting

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atomicsnarl@reddit

Generally, the attacker is using a narrow set of frequencies (IR, Radar, Optical) to seek the target. Given these known methods by frequency/type, the defending emitter matches the type and then flickers. This either drowns out the attacking receiver (game stadium roar vs whisper next to you) or distracts the receiver (camera flash in the eye) to protect the targeted aircraft. It also warns the pilot about what type of attack it's detecting, and the pilot can maneuver accordingly, use flares, etc.

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JONESYofUC@reddit

Specifically, they're the left and right Radio Frequency (RF) Antenna Arrays

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Toon1982@reddit

Nipples

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Texas_Kimchi@reddit

Pakistani Missile Attractors. I keeeed.

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fotonaut@reddit

Nice try, Russian spy 😄

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yetiflask@reddit

LOL. Cheap Chinese missiles can shoot these things out of the sky. Nobody's really lining up to find out its "secrets".

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yetiflask@reddit

Target practice for Chinese missiles.

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InternetExploder87@reddit

Post the original pic, plz 😁

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BlueApple666@reddit

The circled parts are antennas for the RWR. They use interferometry to achieve better than 1 degree resolution (depending on the band, the higher the frequency, the better the resolution). The jammers that everyone is talking about are the black parts at the root of the canards. (Of course the jammers need the input from the RWR: using DRFM technique the incoming signal is sampled and the AESA jammers then send a directional jamming beam to do nasty things like produce thousands of fake returns and make the opponent radar filter everything as gibberish, including the real radar return)

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Matvejus@reddit

Turn signals

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falkkiwiben@reddit

Didn't think french people used those

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Quantum-_-_-@reddit

Si si je te garantis qu'on les utilise ! Bisous

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FirefighterLevel8450@reddit

It´s for an export model

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SiriusBlack99999@reddit

The Rafale is a fantastic looking aircraft.

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happymemersunite@reddit

My favourite looking fighter OAT.

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zombie-yellow11@reddit

Mine is the F-18 but the Rafale is a close second.

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Ok_Steak_4341@reddit

Just ask the Romulans how their cloaking device works, then you will understand.

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mralexpratt@reddit

Turn signals

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letigre87@reddit

They're called canards but some people get pissy if you make fun of them

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BurnsyWurnsy@reddit

Parking sensors.

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Roy4Pris@reddit

Man there are some deadly serious people on this sub. People post a funny joke and get downvoted. Come on guys, lighten up a little. Of course they're not parking sensors or headlight washer nozzles.

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