London: Salamander Books, 1985. — 151 p. — ISBN: 0861012658.Few forms of military activity are more closely guarded than the world of electronic warfare. As far as most companies and users are concerned, the less there appears in print on this subject, the better. Like the worlds of espionage, nuclear weaponry and elite forces, "black-box warfare" rarely escapes from an all-enveloping shroud of secrecy. At most defence exhibitions, company public relations staff are only too glad to talk to journalists and to extol the virtues of their firms' products, but this is not the case with EW. Researching the present book, the author was given by one US company a "technical brochure" whose contents were minimal — several photographs of avionics units and a boldly-printed announcement that the information in the brochure had been cleared by all the relevant military and security authorities.The fact that much more information had been published in a recent edition of a well-known US aviation magazine was dismissed with a shrug. On another stand, the mere display of interest in a photograph of an EW system was enough to provoke a brusque interrogation by company staff. Requests for information alreadly openly published in unclassified literature led on several occasions to statements that "security" would have to be consulted.The result of such attitudes is often a mind-numbing lack of efficiency, with secrecy being equated with operational effectiveness. More than a decade after the Israeli Air Force paid a high price in human lives. Phantoms and Skyhawks for trying to counter Soviet continuous-wave threats with US-supplied countermeasures equipment designed to cope with simpler pulse-radar threats, secrecy still stifles ECM discussion. Days before these words were written, the public relations office of one major NATO air force expressed surprise that jamming pods capable of dealing with infra-red threats even existed.The contents of this small book can serve as little more than a primer to the world of ECM. Gleaned entirely from unclassified sources such as defence exhibitions, defence journals, and the few textbooks and magazines devoted to electronic warfare, it will contain no surprises for the world's intelligence-gathering services, but should give the reader some idea of the role played by the pods, antennas and black boxes used in this most arcane of electronic arts.Introduction
The Electronic Battlefield
The Electromagnetic Spectrum
Radar
Millimetre Waves
Infra-red
Electro-optical Systems
Sonar
Stealth Technology
Electronic Intelligence Gathering
Intelligence-gathering in Space
Countermeasures
Warning Receivers and ESM Systems
ESM Systems
EW Expendables': Chaff, Flares, Smoke and Decoys
Active Jamming
Deception Jamming
IR, EO and Sonar Jamming
Communications Jamming
Anti-radar Weapons and Aircraft
Electromagnetic Pulses
Unconventional Threats
Glossary
