- Yes
- No
It’s time to make top tier gameplay a little more interesting. I’m proposing the introduction of electronic countermeasures to War Thunder!
For those that don’t know, I’ll go through a quick TL;DR of what ECM is: Electronic Countermeasures (ECM) are basically a plane’s way of saying, “nope, you can’t see me” to enemy radars and missiles. It works by sending out powerful radio signals that mess with how enemy radar works — making it harder to lock on, track, or guide missiles. Think of it like turning on a blinding flashlight during hide-and-seek so the other player’s flashlight doesn’t work properly.
In real life, modern jets like the F-16/15/18, Su-27/30SM, Rafale, Eurofighter, Gripen and others all use ECM to survive in high-threat environments, especially when missiles are flying in from 50+ km away or the airspace is being defended by anti-air systems. But right now in War Thunder, none of that exists — and it leaves a big gap in how top tier air combat plays out.
How would it work in War Thunder?
In very simple terms:
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It would be toggleable, similar to flares/chaff. There would be a control called ‘Toggle electronic countermeasures’ or ‘Toggle ECM’.
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There would be a timer, similar to the fuel timer, titled ‘ECM: xx:xx’ — where xx:xx is the time in minutes and seconds. It would only go down while you’re using it. I would recommend there being a 5 minute timer for ECM pods and 10 mins for internal such as in Rafale or Eurofighter and any other jets with internal ECM.
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When active, it will jam non-ESA enemy radars by showing noise on the radar and for ESA radars at long distances it would show ghost signals or the lock wouldn’t be as strong/stable, especially in Track While Scan mode.
(Note: ESA here refers to both AESA and PESA radar systems) -
On the jamming aircraft, you won’t be able to guide SARH missiles and/or do BVR with ARH missiles while it is active and would basically be the same as firing off an AIM-120 from 40 km and immediately going cold. This is because while active it would disrupt the datalink between your radar and the ARH missile before it gets to within pitbull range (~16 km).
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Naturally, on aircraft without internal ECM systems, there would be ECM pods such as the American-made AN/ALQ-135/165/184s or the Russian SAP-518 pods. These would take up spaces where there would usually either be missiles or a targeting pod or external fuel tank. This is a tradeoff players would have to think of when equipping them–do you want 2 less missiles or the absence of an external fuel tank?
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Active jamming is detectable via RWR. For example, if player A (you) is in let’s say a Rafale and you’re looking directly at a jet ~40 km away–let’s say a Su-27 with 2 SAP-518 ECM pods mounted. If player B turns on their radar to the TWS mode, you will see them on your RWR as M29.
However, if during the time they have radar active they turn on the radar jamming at the same time, it would appear on RWR as intermittently changing between ‘M29’ and ‘?’ on RWR. Likewise, if your radar is off but jamming is on, you will appear as ‘?’ on RWR–you’re not identifiable per se, but the enemy player(s) would know the general direction and distance you are from them.
The Nitty Gritty Details
Okay so we’ve run down the TL;DR of how it’ll work. Now let’s get into the small details to reflect its in-game performance mirrors or comes close to real-life performance.
I’m proposing a very simple tidbit: while jamming is active, if a player is notching a radar missile it doesn’t work as well as ECM pods (specifically, the ones mounted) operate similarly to radars–their “beam” is forward facing. They can gimbal to the sides, but it’s not as far as most radars can. In addition, only the Eurofighter, Gripen C (and later, E) and Rafale for now would have full 360 degree jamming coverage but it would not be “full strength” all-around. It would only be so from the front and rear of these aircraft and from the sides let’s say it would be 10-20% of the strength of front/rear jamming.
Lastly… yes. Jamming will work on SPAA systems that depend on their radar for missile tracking. Don’t get me wrong–they might see you on the search radar but when it comes time to engage you? It won’t be easy, but it’s also not impossible. From the POV of a player-controlled SPAA, your jet would appear to be surrounded by jamming noise–similar to the visual clutter chaff creates–making lock on and missile guidance much harder.
“This Sounds Like a Cheat Code?”
Jamming won’t make you untouchable–it just makes the fight a lot more interesting.
There will be ways to get around jamming. One of those is to simply get closer to the contact so that your radar quite literally burns through the jamming. Aircraft with PD radars would need to get pretty close to their target–just under 20 km or so, while jets with ESA radars wouldn’t need to be as close from about 30 km.
As mentioned earlier, the way this could be implemented with a timer of sorts would mean that it’s not infinite and as such would encourage tactical use of jamming. Smart players will probably wait for you to burn through your jamming capability until the timer runs out and then push you aggressively leaving you to rely on old-fashioned methods like chaff, notching, and maneuvering.
In addition, actively jamming doesn’t make you invisible and so you would be visible to enemies on RWR.
Lastly, equipping external ECM pods means you’re giving up 1-2 missiles or a fuel tank in order to have that capability. This will likely change the way you approach air combat and likewise limits your options.
And that’s the post. Let me know your thoughts on any tweaks or opinions on the matter.
