The Effect of Pre-emptive Flare Deployment on First Generation Man-Portable Air-Defence (MANPAD) Systems

Abstract

Early generation Man-Portable Air-Defence (MANPAD) systems pose a significant threat to all types of aircraft. The need to develop successful countermeasures to this threat is ever more important with their worldwide proliferation. In this paper we discuss the use of CounterSim, a missile engagement and countermeasure simulation software tool, to gain a detailed understanding of the factors affecting an engagement outcome. The work starts by analysing simple engagements of a first generation MANPAD against a fast jet with no countermeasures being employed. From this set of base runs individual engagements are chosen to analyse in further detail. At each time interval in the simulation the aircraft and missile velocities are used to calculate a projected point of closest approach. This is then compared with the simulated impact point and the difference is defined as the projected miss distance, Δd. Features of plots of Δd are investigated to gain insights into the potential countermeasure capability. Finally, pre-emptive countermeasures are tested by firing two flares at the start of the simulation and then a timed sequence of flares.