Here’s the idea: A plane that carries a radar emitter so strong that it blows out the receivers on enemy radar towers/SAM sites/ARAD missiles. It’s tethered to another plane that carries a nuclear reactor to power it. And another one carrying a cooling system.
(Note: I’m not talking about a radar jammer. Jamming is a chickenshit solution that stops being useful when the jammer stops working. I’m talking about physically destroying the receivers by overloading them.)
What you’re talking about is essentially an EMP. They don’t generally emit continuously. Instead you just set off a single strong pulse which induces such high currents in receiving antennas that they melt or otherwise damage connected circuitry.
At these levels of power, any amount of conductive material tends to start acting as an antenna. If you set up a continuous transmitter you’re going to have trouble not damaging your own delivery and power mechanisms.
The most common way to generate one is to set off a nuclear bomb that has been finetuned to release most of its energy as electromagnetic radiation.
The power decreases by the radius squared. A 100mhz pulse transmitted with 1 peta watt of power over 320 km with 30 dbi of antenna gain will have 5.5 mega watts of received power. I’m pretty sure plasma generation will happen at those power levels which will stop transmission all together. Physics gets weird at high power levels.
The receivers just aren’t that delicate, and by the time you’re in range to try something fancy and expensive you’re also in range to just throw something that explodes at the radar. Believe it or not explosives are insanely inexpensive for governments, especially compared to a death laser like you’re envisioning.
Not to mention your death laser is also throwing out huge amounts of the same radio waves that could lead a radiation tracking missile right up your nose.
Because in this scenario, you would also either fry all of your own equipment, or you use a directed version of your system, which means your Intel is good enough to know where all the radar sites are at, and it that case a single plane with a few missiles can take the sites out.
Here’s the idea: A plane that carries a radar emitter so strong that it blows out the receivers on enemy radar towers/SAM sites/ARAD missiles. It’s tethered to another plane that carries a nuclear reactor to power it. And another one carrying a cooling system.
(Note: I’m not talking about a radar jammer. Jamming is a chickenshit solution that stops being useful when the jammer stops working. I’m talking about physically destroying the receivers by overloading them.)
What you’re talking about is essentially an EMP. They don’t generally emit continuously. Instead you just set off a single strong pulse which induces such high currents in receiving antennas that they melt or otherwise damage connected circuitry.
At these levels of power, any amount of conductive material tends to start acting as an antenna. If you set up a continuous transmitter you’re going to have trouble not damaging your own delivery and power mechanisms.
The most common way to generate one is to set off a nuclear bomb that has been finetuned to release most of its energy as electromagnetic radiation.
The power decreases by the radius squared. A 100mhz pulse transmitted with 1 peta watt of power over 320 km with 30 dbi of antenna gain will have 5.5 mega watts of received power. I’m pretty sure plasma generation will happen at those power levels which will stop transmission all together. Physics gets weird at high power levels.
The receivers just aren’t that delicate, and by the time you’re in range to try something fancy and expensive you’re also in range to just throw something that explodes at the radar. Believe it or not explosives are insanely inexpensive for governments, especially compared to a death laser like you’re envisioning.
Not to mention your death laser is also throwing out huge amounts of the same radio waves that could lead a radiation tracking missile right up your nose.
If there only was a way of throwing something fancy and expensive that explodes and defeats the radar via electronic effects at it from very far away.
Oh wait, there is. Just nuke the ionosphere somewhere above the vicinity of the radar and have the resulting EMP take it out.
Because in this scenario, you would also either fry all of your own equipment, or you use a directed version of your system, which means your Intel is good enough to know where all the radar sites are at, and it that case a single plane with a few missiles can take the sites out.
But is a single plane with precision missiles cooler than a nuclear-powered radar-killing death ray airplane trio? I think not.
Just make sure your other planes stay behind it.