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Article: EO/IR, Part 7 -- IR Countermeasures.(infrared guided missile countermeasures)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Journal of Electronic Defense
- Article date:
- September 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Horizon House Publications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Countermeasures to infrared (IR)-guided missiles include flares, jammers, decoys, and IR chaff.
Flares
The principle countermeasure against an IR-guided missile has been a flare which is ejected from an aircraft to lure the missile away. The flare breaks the lock of the missile onto the aircraft and causes the missile to home on the flare. Although the flare is much smaller than the aircraft it is protecting, it is significantly hotter. Therefore, it radiates significantly more IR energy. As shown in Figure 1, the missile seeker tracks the centroid of all of the IR energy within its field of view. Since the flare has more energy, the energy centroid is ...