Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!cbnews!military
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: E-3A question & info
Message-ID: <10375@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 19 Oct 89 03:33:26 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
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Approved: military@att.att.com



From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>From: rdd@vondrake.cc.utexas.edu (Robert Dorsett)
>At an airshow ... an E-3A was featured.  On each engine
>was an object which does not appear on either the 707 or the KC-135...
> a cylinder at the rear...  The entire 
>assembly is right above the engine nacelle itself.
>
>My question: what IS it? :-)

It's a pulsed infrared emitter for confusing heat-seeking missiles.  Partly
as protection in combat, partly against the possibility that some sneaky
terrorist with a shoulder-launched missile will hide near an airbase and
take pot-shots at those enormously expensive aircraft.  (You'll see similar
IR jammers on Air Force One and NASA's shuttle-carrier 747 if you look hard.)

The USAF has finally started to take seriously the notion that people might
shoot at its radar aircraft.  Radar countermeasures are also probably
present, but they're a bit less obvious.

(Some nasty British writers are fond of observing that the average RAF
Bomber Command aircraft of 1945 had more countermeasures gear than most
NATO combat aircraft today.)

                                     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                 uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu