Decoy Swarm Could Overload Enemy Defenses
Like nuclear
submarines and heavy artillery, it’s one of those weapon systems you don’t
read much about during peacetime — but which, during a major war, could prove
decisive. It doesn’t help that this particular gadget, unlike Seawolf-class subs and Paladin artillery pieces, has an
utterly forgettable name.
The Miniature Air-Launched Decoy, or “MALD,” is a cross
between a cruise missile and an aerial drone, able to distract or confuse enemy
air defenses to protect attacking U.S. jets. It was already on its way to
becoming one of America’s most important unsung weapons when this happened:
MALD-maker Raytheon figured out a way to “deliver hundreds of MALDs during a
single combat sortie,” company vice president Harry Schulte announced in a
recent statement.
Raytheon recently tested the MALD Cargo Air-Launched System, a complex of racks attached
to the cargo ramp of an airlifter, on a borrowed C-130. The racks could allow
the Air Force to deploy cloud-like swarms of the smart, man-size missiles. In
doing so, the MALD (pictured above) would become America’s first true swarming drone, and a potentially powerful
countermeasure against ever-more-sophisticated enemy air defenses.
The original MALD began as a Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency experiment, aimed at producing a relatively cheap flying robot,
able to mimic the flight characteristics of American warplanes. The idea was for
MALD decoys, launched by F-16s, F/A-18s or B-52s, to fly ahead of the bombers
during an air campaign. The enemy would turn on all its radars and waste its
Surface-to-Air Missiles on the decoys. Meanwhile, the Navy’s Prowler and Growler
jets would jam or destroy the radars busily tracking the MALDs.
MALD had its share of development problems. The first
edition lacked the range to be truly useful, so the Pentagon scrapped it and
started over. But a new version with a 500-mile range that debuted in 2009 was a
huge hit. The Navy said it would buy some. And the Air Force, after announcing plans
to buy potentially thousands of the decoys, ordered up a version of MALD with its own tiny radar jammer fitted inside the
missile-shaped body. That way, a mixed formation of MALDs could do more than
just soak up enemy missiles; it could electronically fight back.
Now, with the airlifter mass-deployment system, the Air
Force could put so many MALDs into the air, so fast, that any real warplanes
would be safely hidden against any surviving air defenses able to see through
the MALD-generated jamming. It’s a high-tech version of the swarm tactics that
pirates and poor countries have devised to overpower U.S. forces’ own
defenses.
And as if that weren’t enough, Raytheon is also offering to
put sensors or warheads inside future MALD versions, adding “eyes” and explosive
potential to the swarm.
The Air Force hasn’t decided yet whether to buy the
mass-launching racks or the warhead- or sensor-equipped MALDs.
All the same, with every new development, MALD and similar
weapons gradually erode the privileged position that radar-evading stealth
occupies in the American military-industrial mindset. Stealth exists to thwart
enemy defenses. But there’s more than one way to defeat radars: as MALD proves,
you can distract, confuse and overwhelm them, too — and potentially at much
lower cost than trying to appear invisible.