It’s called jamming mate, and it sorta works.
Fun fact: during WWII, the British figured out a way to jam German radar by dropping bales of metal-coated plastic strips (called “chaff” or “Window”), but they held off on using it for more than a year because they didn’t want the Germans to figure out the secret and start using the same trick on their radar. Meanwhile, the Germans had also figured out this technique, but they also held out on using it because they didn’t want the British to get it.
The Battle of the Beams is a highly interesting and often overlooked detail of WW2.
My favorite part of this was Klein-Heidelberg, a German passive radar system that used the broadcasts from Britain’s Chain Home radar stations to precisely locate Allied bomber formations. The Allies knew about it but kept Chain Home operational because they wanted German fighters to come up after the bombers - and get shot down.
Give em the raspberry!
The large dot could conceivably be unscrambled with code to provide the accurate location of the object.
Not really we do this be already and have since like 1946.
Drone swarm with flat fronts all around the jet, randomly repositioning so that actual target is never in the same place on the signature?
Ex electronic warfare commander here, this is possible with jamming, but to be able to achieve this you’d need a massive power source. It’s also possible to create many small ghost blobs, it requires less power but still a lot. But modern radar systems have jamming protection, so it might not always work.
How about instead of one really big dot, you just send lots and lots of tiny dots! How many are there? I don’t know!
The 1980s answer was they also have humans on the ground reporting the plane in the sky. Once they know where you are generally, they can narrow with heat and laser acquisition.
In 2025, I don’t know where the tech is.
Radar works like this; imagine you’re playing hide and seek in the woods after dark. You have a flashlight and you think it’s a good idea to shine it around looking for your buddies, and if you see them with the flashlight that’s the radar dot. Making the dot big is like having all your buddies who are supposed to be hiding also having REALLY BIG flashlights, so bright that you can’t see what you’re looking at very well.
In warfare the hide and seek game also includes a gun, and even a really bright light still more or less tells you exactly where it’s coming from allowing you to shoot at the light until it goes out. Not great for the survivability of the hiders!
The smart hider might set up their jamming light somewhere else so the seeker shoots at nothing, however the lights are still very expensive and they make cheap rockets designed to home in directly on radar and blow it up. The least expensive way overall for the hider to avoid the seeker is for the hider to wear all black clothing and be small.
If anyone suddenly found themselves wondering if it’s home in or hone in, from the grammerist.com
“Home in and hone in are different since home in is to direct attention, while hone in is to perfect a skill. The two phrases seem the same because of how they are used in sentences.”
It also says hone in is used informally for home in and generally accepted even though it’s not really correct usage. “Home in” exists because of the homing pigeons.
hider to wear all black clothing and be small.
Now I’m imagining a chibi style anthropomorphic plane wearing all black clothes trying to be sneaky.
You did this to me.
Ghibli Dust-sprite Plane.
Bounce bounce bounce.
The shy goth plane is making me feel things
