Adversaries’ radars are getting so much better so fast that the US Air Force (USAF) is struggling to keep up. However, a new system called Angry Kitten could help the service get ahead of the game.
The USAF, like all major air arms, uses an array of electronic warfare (EW) systems – some built into airframes, while others are packed into pods – to jam and spoof enemy radars. Jamming involves disrupting a radar signal, while spoofing essentially hijacks a signal and beams back a false location to an emitter. Air forces tend to program EW systems for known threats. In essence, hardwiring the systems to interfere with (or mimic) the radars that planners anticipate will pose the biggest threats during a given operation.
But what happens when the enemy unexpectedly switches up its air defense architecture by deploying new systems or re-tunes existing platforms? A fast-moving adversary could render old-style EW suites impotent, but not if those systems can themselves adapt in-flight. That’s the premise behind Angry Kitten. These under-wing pods includes a clutch of radar frequency receivers and emitters as well as a ‘cognitive’ algorithm that can characterize enemy radars and determine the best way for the pod to jam or spoof them.
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