{"id":23663549,"date":"2026-09-20T14:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T12:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/radar-warning-receiver-rwr-explained\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T14:09:38","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T12:09:38","slug":"radar-warning-receiver-rwr-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/radar-warning-receiver-rwr-explained\/","title":{"rendered":"Radar Warning Receivers: How a Fighter Knows It Is Being Hunted"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\r\n\r\n<p>Every radar that is looking for you has to shout to do it. That is the whole weakness of the thing. A fire-control radar cannot find a target without flooding the sky with energy, and any aircraft carrying the right antennas can hear that energy long before the radar operator has worked out what he is looking at.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The radar warning receiver is the box that listens. It sits behind a handful of wideband antennas spread around the airframe, sorts the wash of incoming pulses into individual emitters, works out roughly where each one is and how dangerous it is, and then tells the pilot in two ways at once: a symbol on a small circular display, and a tone in the headset.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>It is one of the least glamorous systems on a combat aircraft and one of the very few that regularly decides whether the crew comes home. It exists because in 1965 American aircraft started falling out of the sky over North Vietnam and nobody in the cockpit knew why until it was too late.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f7fa;border:1px solid #dfe5ee;padding:18px 22px;margin:28px 0\">\r\n<p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;color:#222;font-size:17px\">Quick Facts<\/p>\r\n<ul style=\"margin:0;padding-left:20px;color:#333;line-height:1.7\">\r\n<li><strong>What it is:<\/strong> a passive receiver system that detects the radio emissions of radars and warns when one of them is a threat<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>How it works:<\/strong> multiple wideband antennas around the airframe, a receiver that scans the band and measures frequency, signal shape, direction of arrival and pulse repetition frequency<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>The clever part:<\/strong> deinterleaving, which untangles a mixture of overlapping pulse trains back into individual emitters, then sorts them by threat priority<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Display:<\/strong> usually a circle, threats drawn at their bearing relative to the nose, with distance from the centre showing either range or severity<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Audio:<\/strong> tones fed into the pilot\u2019s headset, becoming more insistent when a radar changes to a guidance mode<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Origin:<\/strong> Project Wild Weasel, 1965, after Soviet-supplied SAMs began downing American aircraft during Operation Rolling Thunder<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>First Wild Weasel mission:<\/strong> 20 December 1965, flown in the two-seat F-100F Super Sabre<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Typical Western systems:<\/strong> AN\/ALR-46, AN\/ALR-56, AN\/ALR-67, AN\/ALR-69, AN\/APR-39; the F-35 folds the function into the AN\/ASQ-239<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Typical Eastern systems:<\/strong> the Sirena series, SPO-15 Beryoza, SPO-150 Pastel<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Rolling Thunder and the problem of the invisible shooter<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>When Soviet-supplied surface-to-air missiles began downing American strike aircraft over North Vietnam during Operation Rolling Thunder, the USAF had no systematic way of telling a crew that an SA-2 Guideline battery had them. The response, in 1965, was a development programme headed by General Kenneth Dempster and given the code name Wild Weasel: a dedicated aircraft for detecting and suppressing SAM sites. It had originally been called Project Ferret, after the animal that goes into its prey\u2019s den, until somebody pointed out that Ferret had already been used in the Second World War for radar-countermeasures bombers.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The suppression missions themselves were authorised on 12 August 1965 under the operational code Iron Hand. The aircraft was the two-seat F model of the F-100 Super Sabre, and the first squadron was the 354th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Takhli Royal Thai Air Base.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The first mission flew on 20 December 1965.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;The first Wild Weasel success came soon after the first Wild Weasel mission 20 December 1965 when Captains Al Lamb and Jack Donovan took out a site during a Rolling Thunder strike on the railyard at Y\u00ean B\u00e1i, some 75 mi (120 km) northwest of Hanoi.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Walter J. Boyne<\/strong> &mdash; Historian, Beyond the Wild Blue: A History of the U.S. Air Force 1947\u20131997<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>What they were hunting looked, from directly above, like nothing else on earth: six launchers arranged around a central guidance radar, connected by access roads, unmistakable once you knew the shape.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/sa-2-guideline-site-star-shaped-layout-1962.jpg\" alt=\"SA-2 Guideline site showing its distinctive star-shaped layout, Cuba, November 1962\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The star-shaped layout of an SA-2 Guideline site, photographed over Cuba in November 1962. Six launchers around a central guidance radar. Photo: US Air Force \/ public domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Forty-five days, one aeroplane left<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The F-100F did not have the performance to survive where it was being asked to work. After 45 days of operations against North Vietnamese targets the 354th had one aircraft left. Of the 16 aircrew, four had been killed, two were prisoners of war, three had been wounded and two had quit.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>It is worth pausing on the job description. The Weasel\u2019s method was to make itself the most attractive target in the sky, wait for the site to light up, and then follow the radar beam back to its source. The F-105F that took over the role in the summer of 1966 deliberately did not carry radar jamming, because its purpose was to be a decoy: get the SAMs launched, watch for the bright smoke of the boosters, and dive-bomb the site that produced it. Miss the missiles coming at three times fighter cruise speed and the mission ends with you.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The man who put this most memorably was Jack Donovan, a former B-52 electronic warfare officer, on being told what he had volunteered for.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;You want me to fly in the back of a tiny little jet with a crazy fighter pilot who thinks he\u2019s invincible, home in on a SAM site in North Vietnam, and shoot it before it shoots me? You\u2019ve gotta be shittin\u2019 me!&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Jack Donovan<\/strong> &mdash; Former B-52 electronic warfare officer, on being told what the Wild Weasel job involved<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Donovan flew on the first mission anyway, in the back of an F-100F with Captain Al Lamb in front, and the pair took out a site during a Rolling Thunder strike on the railyard at Y\u00ean B\u00e1i.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/f-105g-thunderchief-17th-wild-weasel-squadron.jpg\" alt=\"Republic F-105G Thunderchief of the 17th Wild Weasel Squadron\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">A two-seat F-105G Thunderchief of the 17th Wild Weasel Squadron. Sixty-one F-105Fs were upgraded to F-105G standard. Photo: US Air Force \/ public domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">What the box actually does<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>A typical airborne RWR is several wideband antennas positioned around the aircraft so that between them they cover every bearing, feeding a receiver that periodically scans across the frequency band. For every signal it catches, it measures a set of parameters: frequency, the shape of the signal, the direction it arrived from, and the pulse repetition frequency.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>That produces a mess. In a busy electromagnetic environment the receiver is not hearing one radar, it is hearing a dozen overlapping pulse trains chopped into each other. The first real piece of work is deinterleaving: untangling that mixture back into separate emitters, so that the system can say these pulses belong to one radar and those belong to another.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Only then does the interesting part happen. The sorted emitters are matched against what the system knows about radar types and ranked by how much of a threat each one poses, using signal strength, phase and waveform detail. A simple RWR might do no more than announce that there is energy in a band associated with known SAM systems. A modern one classifies the source and tells you what kind of vehicle is probably carrying it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Reading the scope<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The display is usually a circle, and the geometry is refreshingly literal. A radar straight ahead appears at the top. One directly behind appears at the bottom. Everything else is drawn at its bearing relative to the current heading of the aircraft, which means the picture rotates around you as you turn.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>What the distance from the centre means depends on the unit. On some systems it represents the estimated distance to the emitter. On others it is a measure of how badly the emitter wants to kill you, with tracking radars drawn closer to the centre than search radars. That second scheme is less intuitive and more useful: a search radar 10 miles away is a smaller problem than a tracking radar 30 miles away.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The symbol itself encodes what the emitter is, usually with a clear distinction between ground-based and airborne radars. Modern aircraft often show the same information in more than one place in the cockpit rather than on a single dedicated scope.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4rdMwWEibsI\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The sound of being locked up<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The audio channel is the half of the system that most people underestimate. The RWR feeds tones directly into the headsets of the pilot and, in a two-seat aircraft, the back-seater. This matters because a fighter pilot in a high-workload moment is not staring at a small circular display. The ears are the only sense not already fully committed.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The critical event is a change of mode. A semi-active radar homing missile needs its launching radar to keep illuminating the target, and that guidance mode looks different on the air from a search sweep. A capable RWR can detect that change and escalate: much more insistent warning tones, and bracketed symbols flashing on the display. The pilot may then be able to visually acquire the missile, having been told where to look.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>From there the RWR stops being a warning device and becomes a tactical instrument. Bearing and closure let the crew work out whether diving away will out-run the missile or whether it is time to jettison external stores and turn into it. The system can also signal a countermeasures dispenser to put chaff into the air without waiting to be asked.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EWnhSCFCYto\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Avoid, evade, or kill<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Used offensively, the RWR is a sensor in its own right. A fighter on combat air patrol may see enemy fighters appear on the RWR, then use its own radar to find and engage them. Because different fighter types carry different radars, the moment an opponent switches on and sweeps in your direction, the RWR can tell you which of the contacts on your own scope is which.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Used defensively, it is a map of where not to go. An aircraft trying to avoid a fight can turn its own radar off entirely and steer around everything the RWR shows. Above 30,000 feet there are very few threats that do not emit, so as long as somebody is watching for an aircraft creeping up under AWACS or ground control without using its radar, an RWR picture plus a cool head will keep you clear of SAMs, fighters and radar-directed anti-aircraft artillery.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>At the top end sit the SEAD and ELINT aircraft, which carry far more sensitive equipment than a standard warning receiver. The US HARM targeting system pod finds and classifies emitters much further out than a typical RWR, overlays threat circles on a map on a cockpit display, and can store what it hears for later analysis or transmit it to the ground to help plan the next mission. That is the direct descendant of the F-105F sitting there being shot at, only now it does the finding without being the bait.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/F8dB7KfBApQ\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The family tree<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The American AN\/ALR series maps neatly onto the aircraft that carried it. The AN\/ALR-46 went into the F-4 and RF-4 Phantom, the F-5 and the B-52. The AN\/ALR-56 serves the F-15 and F-16 Block 50 and 52. The AN\/ALR-67 is the naval line: AV-8B Harrier II, F-14 Tomcat, F\/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet, EA-6B Prowler, and the Canadian CF-18. The AN\/ALR-69 covers a wide spread including the A-10, AC-130, F-16 and B-52H, with a major revision as the ALR-69A(V) in 2005. Rotary-wing and transport aircraft largely use the AN\/APR-39, whose latest revision, the APR-39E(V)2, entered production in 2024.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Britain had the Marconi ARI 18223 on aircraft such as the Jaguar and the ARI 18228 on British Phantoms, the latter developing into the Sky Guardian series. Sweden and Germany use the BOW-21 on the Gripen and the Tornado. France built the RWR function into Thales Spectra on the Rafale. India fields Tarang on the MiG-27, Tejas, Jaguar and Su-30MKI. Israel\u2019s Elbit sells the SPS family, in Portuguese service on the F-16 and the KC-390.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>On the Soviet and Russian side the Sirena series gave way to the SPO-15 Beryoza, which turns up on the MiG-29, the Su-27SK and the Chinese J-11, and then to the SPO-150 Pastel. And on the F-35 the separate warning receiver has disappeared as a discrete box altogether: the AN\/ASQ-239 is a full electronic warfare and countermeasures system that happens to include the RWR function.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">What it cannot tell you<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The limitation is built into the principle. An RWR only knows about things that transmit. A fighter closing in under ground-controlled interception with its radar off, guided by somebody else\u2019s picture, is invisible to it. So is an infrared-guided missile, which needs no illumination at all. The warning receiver is a superb instrument for a world of radar-guided threats and completely blind to the ones that stay quiet.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>That is why the RWR has never been a system on its own. It sits inside a defensive suite with jammers, chaff and flare dispensers, missile approach warners and, increasingly, the aircraft\u2019s own sensors feeding the same threat picture. But it remains the first voice in the chain. Everything else in the suite is waiting to be told that somebody out there has started shouting.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>Sources: Wikipedia (Radar warning receiver; Wild Weasel), Walter J. Boyne, Beyond the Wild Blue: A History of the U.S. Air Force 1947\u20131997, and Dan Hampton, Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>What is a radar warning receiver?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">A passive system that detects the radio emissions of radars and warns the crew when one of them is a threat, such as a fighter\u2019s fire-control radar or a surface-to-air missile battery. It does not transmit anything itself, which is why an aircraft can use it with its own radar switched off and stay quiet.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How does an RWR know which radar is which?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Several wideband antennas around the airframe feed a receiver that scans the frequency band and measures the parameters of every signal it catches: frequency, signal shape, direction of arrival and pulse repetition frequency. It then deinterleaves the mixture, separating overlapping pulse trains back into individual emitters, and sorts those by threat priority using signal strength, phase and waveform detail.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What does the RWR display actually show?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Usually a circle with the aircraft at the centre. A radar straight ahead is drawn at the top, one directly behind at the bottom, and everything else at its bearing relative to the current heading. How far the symbol sits from the centre depends on the unit: it can mean estimated range, or it can mean severity, with tracking radars drawn closer in than search radars. The symbol shape indicates the type of radar or the vehicle carrying it.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why does an RWR make noise?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Because in a high-workload moment the crew is not looking at a small display. Tones are fed straight into the headset. The important event is a change of radar mode: a radar guiding a semi-active missile behaves differently from one searching, and a capable RWR detects that change and escalates to much more insistent tones and flashing bracketed symbols, which also tells the pilot roughly where to look for the missile.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Where did the radar warning receiver come from?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">From Vietnam. After Soviet-supplied SAMs began downing American aircraft during Operation Rolling Thunder, the USAF started Project Wild Weasel in 1965 under General Kenneth Dempster to build a dedicated SAM-detection and suppression aircraft. The suppression missions were authorised on 12 August 1965 under the code Iron Hand, and the first Wild Weasel mission flew on 20 December 1965 in a two-seat F-100F.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How dangerous was the early Wild Weasel job?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The first Wild Weasel squadron, the 354th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Takhli, had one aircraft left after 45 days of operations. Of its 16 aircrew, four had been killed, two were prisoners of war, three had been wounded and two had quit. The F-105F that took over the role in 1966 deliberately carried no radar jamming, because its job was to be an attractive enough target to make the site launch.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Which RWR does each aircraft carry?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Broadly: AN\/ALR-46 on the F-4, RF-4, F-5 and B-52; AN\/ALR-56 on the F-15 and F-16 Block 50\/52; AN\/ALR-67 on the F-14, F\/A-18, Super Hornet, AV-8B and EA-6B; AN\/ALR-69 on the A-10, AC-130, F-16 and B-52H; AN\/APR-39 across helicopters and transports. Europe uses Marconi and BAE lines, BOW-21 on Gripen and Tornado, and Thales Spectra on the Rafale. Russia moved from the Sirena series to SPO-15 Beryoza and then SPO-150 Pastel. On the F-35 the function is folded into the AN\/ASQ-239 electronic warfare suite.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What can an RWR not detect?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Anything that does not transmit. A fighter closing under ground-controlled interception with its own radar off is invisible to it, and so is a purely infrared-guided missile, which needs no illumination. That is why the RWR is always part of a wider defensive suite alongside jammers, chaff and flare dispensers and missile approach warners rather than a system on its own.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\r\n\r\n\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What is a radar warning receiver?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"A passive system that detects the radio emissions of radars and warns the crew when one of them is a threat, such as a fighter\u2019s fire-control radar or a surface-to-air missile battery. 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The F-105F that took over the role in 1966 deliberately carried no radar jamming, because its job was to be an attractive enough target to make the site launch.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Which RWR does each aircraft carry?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Broadly: AN\/ALR-46 on the F-4, RF-4, F-5 and B-52; AN\/ALR-56 on the F-15 and F-16 Block 50\/52; AN\/ALR-67 on the F-14, F\/A-18, Super Hornet, AV-8B and EA-6B; AN\/ALR-69 on the A-10, AC-130, F-16 and B-52H; AN\/APR-39 across helicopters and transports. Europe uses Marconi and BAE lines, BOW-21 on Gripen and Tornado, and Thales Spectra on the Rafale. Russia moved from the Sirena series to SPO-15 Beryoza and then SPO-150 Pastel. On the F-35 the function is folded into the AN\/ASQ-239 electronic warfare suite.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What can an RWR not detect?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Anything that does not transmit. A fighter closing under ground-controlled interception with its own radar off is invisible to it, and so is a purely infrared-guided missile, which needs no illumination. That is why the RWR is always part of a wider defensive suite alongside jammers, chaff and flare dispensers and missile approach warners rather than a system on its own.\"}}]}<\/script><div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wild-weasels-first-in-last-out-sead-vietnam-ygbsm\/\">Wild Weasels: First In, Last Out<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/chaff-flares-countermeasures-how-jets-defeat-missiles\/\">How Jets Trick Missiles Into Missing<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/how-heat-seeking-missile-infrared-seeker-works\/\">How a Heat-Seeking Missile Actually Finds Its Target<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every radar looking for you has to shout to do it. How the radar warning receiver listens, sorts the noise into individual threats, and why it was invented over North Vietnam in 1965.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":23662484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23663549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Radar Warning Receivers: How a Fighter Knows It Is Being Hunted<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How a radar warning receiver detects, sorts and ranks hostile radars, what the scope and the tones mean, and why the RWR was born over North Vietnam in 1965.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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