I was asked for further explanations on the ECM/ECCM techniques regarding a hypothetical conflict. The required response, even if just merely touched on the subject, was too long to post privately. So for the benefit of the general readers, I will explain
SOME of more basic ECM/ECCM tactics and techniques that could happen in this hypothetical conflict. I hope this will somewhat satisfy the questioner's curiosity because whole books have been written and a lot of classified conferences held about the subject.
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But before we continue, we should get some concepts straight. Electronic CounterMeasures (ECM) is not 'stealth' or low radar observability.
The analogy for low radar observability or 'stealth' is like a well camouflaged soldier. It is our nature to mentally ignore those things that we consider to be 'normal' in any environment, so when you look at the woods in front of you, already you have discriminated or 'filtered out' things like the grass field, the trees, and the large boulders in your view. If you look at your room you will ignore items that are familiar to you, such as your desk, your chair, or the bookcase against the wall, but if there is a human guest in the room, you will not ignore that anomaly. A well camouflaged soldier is one who tries to avoid being that visual anomaly.
The analogy for ECM is like seeing a moving shield. You can see the shield, you just cannot see the man behind the shield and it is the man that you want. You can force your way through the (electronic) shield to get to the man and for ECCM that is called 'burn through', essentially, you put forth against the electronic shield so much power that your signals overwhelmed the opposition's. Another ECCM tactic is to sort of 'go around' the shield. In this, you analyze the ECM signals and try to find what you perceive to be 'weaknesses' and exploit them.
For the original questioner...
The first thing you must understand about electronic warfare (EW) is that if an ECM assault is strong enough to force you to commit to an ECCM defense then the ECM assault is a success. Given the approach speed of modern aerial weapons, a few seconds required to switch to an ECCM posture and whatever the time being inside that posture can mean defeat. The longer the time spent in that ECCM posture, the greater the success of the ECM assault.
Second...The goal should be that if there is a need to switch to an ECCM posture, the time between recognizing that there is a legitimate ECM assault and being in full ECCM mode should be as short as possible, in other words, know what a legitimate ECM assault look like, have procedures readied, and lots of training of those procedures so you can jump into them quickly when under attack. The delay between trying to assure oneself if there is an ECM assault and finally changing one's stance into ECCM mode is a deadly time.
Finally...Once you are in full ECCM defensive posture, you should be in that posture as brief as possible and this heavily depends on technology and training. The training part is actually more important than technology but the gap between training and technology should not be like Castroneves driving a Model-T but he should be at least in a high performance Audi sedan.
But...Assuming that you, or your victim, are now in full ECCM defensive posture.
Almost all radars, particularly ground based air defense systems, have a full manual operating mode. Keep in mind that an ECM assault is no good if the assault frequency is not the same as the air defense freq, or to put it another way, the ECM assault freq must the same as the air defense freq. The ECM assault can be wide bandwidth but the air defense freq must be within that bandwidth. The defense operator, despite his radar being inundated with electronic noise, can still use that noise to guide the defense in passive operation, meaning the air defense radar will not transmit but simply 'listen' or receive all that noise because he knows behind that noise is a source, like the man behind the shield. Further, that source will be at the center of that electronic noise field. This entire operation is called 'optical tracking' of a noise generating target. The word 'optical' is somewhat misleading. It mean it is the human operator looking at a radar scope whereas in normal operation, it would be the radar computer processing voltage spikes. The radar scope is just a display for human purposes. The radar computer does not need it.
Optical tracking of a target is time consuming for the human defender and therefore advantageous for the attacker. The defender should not focus on any physical assault such as bombs or air-ground missiles that may be coming his way, that is, assuming he can even detect them through the ECM assault. The goal of the ECM assault is to confuse the defender of the true quantity and identity of physical attackers. The Desert Storm lessons are clear enough. There were several types of physical attackers. Some were tasked to air supremacy, meaning to deal with any potential airborne threats to the whole assault force. Some were tasked to commit physical assaults on different types of ground targets. Ammunition depots require heavier bombs than troop stations. Contrary to popular beliefs, there is no need to have complete destruction of a radar station. We in the ECM business call that 'the Hollywood effect' where every explosion must have a fireball and completey destroy the object. Ground defense radars can be damaged by high speed shrapnels alone so light explosive yields like those in beamrider missiles are sufficient to degrade the radars' technical efficiency, even if just to knock the antenna off center. The defender really have no choice but remove/negate the ECM assault so that he can discriminate individual attackers before assigning them appropriate priority. The Iraqis' wild firings into the air was a clear sign that not only was the ECM assault overwhelming but that the Iraqis never had the training to deal with such an assault in the first place. Spray and pray was all they could do.
In normal radar operation, there is something called Automatic Gain Control (AGC). Every EE know this feature, it is pretty much in every electronic contraptions. To prevent any target from saturating the receiver due to distance, AGC limit the target's radar return to a set threshold, in other words, if the little prop job Cessna 172 is close enough to the antenna, he can prevent the radar from seeing the much larger 747 further out and coming in, so AGC will automatically reduce the Cessna's effect on the system. Under an ECM assault and under optical tracking operation, AGC can assist the defender by raising the threshold to reduce the effects of the ECM assault on his scope, allowing him to see less of the 'white noise' area and more of the normal scope view. The ECM attackers will know of AGC and will vary the power output, forcing the defender's AGC to be in a constant state of unbalanced flux. How quickly can the human operator take control of the AGC and manually set the gain himself to try to counteract this technique depends -- again -- on his training. The ECM attackers cannot assume that the human operator is incompetent so not only will they vary their power output but also vary their directions, in other words, the ECM attackers are already in different positions over the battlefield, each one transmitting at different power levels, either coordinating their assaults or free play. So if fortune smiles upon the ECM attackers and blesses them with an utterly incompetent human radar operator/defender, we have Desert Storm where the Iraqi air defense never had a chance. The sliding scale between an incompetent boob and a true ECCM man is created by -- training.
Technology wise -- If the defender's technology is capable enough, the AGC feature can perform 'inter-pulse' analysis and compensation for ECCM purposes. A typical radar transmission is a 'pulse train' meaning it is composed of certain amount of pulses. An ECM assault is essentially a radar transmission but for a different purpose: to give the victim's receiver <something>. Take a train of one hundred pulses, for example. A sufficiently sophisticated ECCM defense can analyze a fraction of that pulse train, meaning take one pulse's characteristics and compare it against the next pulse and if applicable the one before it, then if it is determined that all one hundred pulses are the same based upon this sampling fraction, the ECCM technique effectively broke the ECM assault on the scope. It is like having X-ray vision to see through the shield and see the shield bearer. The ECM attackers can counter this by changing its pulse train characteristics from pulse to pulse: inter-pulse variations. The ECCM can try to counter this by having a larger sampling, hoping that the ECM attackers' hardware is not capable of generating random pulses and somewhere in this one hundred pulse sequence there is a repeating pattern, or may be the next pulse train will have that repeating pattern. The level of sophistication depends on the money spent, in either R/D or in purchasing complete systems.
What I gave here is only a small sample of what is available for electronics warfare (EW). There are much more sophisticated ECM assault techniques and ECCM data analysis to counteract the ECM assault techniques. The point where these techniques become felonious, meaning serious prison time if disclosed, is a very short distance, so there is not that much publicly available information about EW's more interesting side.
IQPC 10th annual Airborne Electronic Warfare
The 9th annual Airborne Electronic Warfare took place in September 2010. Conference themes and sessions included:
* Examining how aircrews plan to protect their rotary assets now and in the future from IR and unguided hostile fire threats
* Exploring the role of 5th generation fighters in electronic protection and electronic attack (EA)
* The future of electronic attack capability with the US Navy
* Understanding modern EW training requirements and solutions
* How to harness EW battle management and reducing the workload on the war fighter
51st Joint Electronic Warfare Conference
Electronic Warfare (EW) is about gaining information (ES), denying information (EA), and protecting information (EP). In addition to its traditional uses, EW technology is expanding into offensive and defensive control of communications, deception, and protection of intelligence.
Hosted by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force, the Joint Electronic Warfare Conference (CLASSIFIED/U.S. GOVERNMENT AND MILITARY ONLY) provides a forum for the presentation and discussion of technical material (both at the SECRET and TOP SECRET clearance levels) related to all aspects of EW.
Security clearances are usually required at these conferences and just because one has a 'Top Secret' clearance, as I once did even as a civilian, if that clearance is not associated with the subject, one will be turned away at the door. The 'Top Secret' clearance must be accompanied by a 'need to know' requirement.
In EW, including radar detection, an 'electronic hit' is just as lethal as a real bullet. Just as how soldiers must train on how to deal with (simulated) casualties and how that affect the unit's ability to perform a mission, so should a comprehensive ECM/ECCM training program. The advantage that EW has over the simulated human casualties is that we know how to degrade or even 'kill' a system to experience the full effects of such a loss.
My opinion -- for the original questioner -- is that the PLA's EW capability is not on par with US in technology. But technology is one leg of the triad. Any acquisition of US EW technology that is not accompanied by commensurate training programs to take advantage of those superior capabilities would be a waste of money. Experience gained by going up against allies with different techniques and tactics will enhance the training programs. The PLA never had the diversity available like those we experienced in NATO where member countries had their own companies developing different hardwares and softwares which finally enhances techniques and EW combat tactics.