A case study on modeling jamming acceptability regions for escort mission planning

This work focuses on modeling jamming acceptability regions for mission planning scenarios that require support jamming. In such scenarios, electronic attack aircraft are used to obfuscate radar detection of an escorted vehicle, which we call the protected entity (PE), through hostile territory by the use of radar jamming. The calculation of proper jamming acceptability regions (JARs) are needed to determine the electronic attack aircraft path for the defense of the escorted vehicle. Such regions are defined by the jamming techniques available, radar parameters, and the escorted entity´s proximity to a radar. Differences in jamming acceptability models can significantly affect the resulting planned path for the electronic attack aircraft. An overly conservative estimate may prevent a possible scenario where success could be realized whereas a relaxed estimate may result in a failure to prevent the detection of the PE. For our work, JAR models, based on various simplifying geometrical shapes, are derived from the radar range equation. Jamming is achieved by treating the signals emanating from electronic attack aircraft as additional noise sources to account for the jamming effectiveness. For this work, the EA jamming techniques are limited to preemptive main lobe, side lobe, and out of alignment and are individually constrained to the effectiveness of each technique. Electronic attack aircraft are also constrained to a constant altitude and thus the jamming acceptability regions are determined by the geometric intersection of the detection radar pattern with the altitude plane. The paper concludes by comparing the resulting JARs for increasingly complex geometric models.