The Royal Air Force has performed trials with a new airborne jammer which shows promise in supporting the suppression/destruction of enemy air defence mission.
The Royal Air Force’s (RAF) Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) has performed flight trails with Leonardo’s BriteStorm stand-in jammer. One of the RCO’s tasks is to test and evaluate emerging technologies which could be relevant to the RAF and its missions. The exact nature of the trials are classified, although it is possible that the RCO used its Tecnam P2006T piston-engine testbed to this end. It was revealed earlier in 2024 that the office had acquired this aircraft for test and evaluation work.
BriteStorm is a stand-in jammer which has been designed with low size, weight and power consumption characteristics. According to Leonardo’s own literature, BriteStorm has been developed to equip attritable Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) which support Offensive Counter-Air (OCA) missions. The company sees a particular role for BriteStorm-equipped UAVs to support Suppression/Destruction of Enemy Air Defence (S/DEAD) missions. During such missions, these UAVs could fly in the spearhead jamming hostile ground-based air surveillance and fire control/ground-controlled interception radars. Once jammed these radars could then be struck with kinetic effects. Likewise, the BriteStorm-equipped UAVs could fly as escort jammers helping protect aircraft strike packages flying through contested airspace.
Targets
Both BriteStorm and Leonardo’s BriteCloud expendable decoy use the same Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) design, says Mark Randall, electronic warfare campaign manager for Leonardo’s United Kingdom subsidiary. BriteCloud is thought to cover X-band (8.5 gigahertz/GHz to 10.68GHz) to K-band (24.05GHz to 24.25GHz) frequencies. This waveband enables the decoy to jam and spoof fire control/ground control interception and air-to-air/surface-to-air missile active radar homing seekers. Both these radar types commonly use such frequencies. Jamming these frequencies is consistent with BriteCloud’s mission which is to protect aircraft during the ‘end game’ when a missile is homing on its target. As BriteStorm is intended to assist OCA and S/DEAD missions, its target frequencies may be expanded. Ground-based air surveillance radars tend to use L-band (1.215GHz to 1.4GHz), S-band (2.3GHz to 2.5GHz/2.7GHz to 3.7GHz) and C-band (5.25GHz to 5.925GHz) frequencies. Given this latter spread of frequencies, BriteStorm and BriteCloud could work in a complementary fashion: “BriteCloud is designed for the final stages of the engagement cycle,” says Mr. Randall, “(for) disrupting incoming missile radar guidance systems.” BriteStorm, on the other hand, “has been designed for the earlier stages of the engagement cycle, confusing and suppressing surveillance radars, thus preventing the enemy from tracking and then engaging friendly forces.”
Platforms
Mr. Randall says that BriteStorm would be ideally suited to any UAV which can accommodate a payload of 2.5 kilograms (5.5 pounds), absorbing 3.5 cubic metres (213 cubic inches) of internal volume. Hostile radar signal parameters can be loaded into the jammer’s DRFM when needed, helping it stay abreast of threats. A UAV carrying the payload could be launched from the ground or from the air, notes Mr. Randall.
Customers
One potential role for BriteStorm is within the UK’s Autonomous Collaborative Platforms Strategy. The strategy, published in March, sets out to “deliver to the warfighter safe, technology enabled, battle winning (autonomous collaborative platforms) capabilities, and the associated eco-system to be able to upgrade them at speed of relevance to beat the threat and scale manufacturing capability in time of conflict.” The document articulates the UK’s UAV industrial strategy while emphasising that this strategy can help win wars.
BriteStorm is already in low-rate production, Mr. Randall added. As noted above, the RAF’s Rapid Capabilities Office has already purchased some BriteStorm payloads for trials. He said that customer deliveries could commence within twelve months of a contract award.
by Dr. Thomas Withington
