AOC 2019: USAF in a jam

23rd October 2019 - 13:00 GMT | by Thomas Withington in Toulouse

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It is 30 years since the US Air Force (USAF) retired its General Dynamics EF-111A Raven electronic warfare aircraft. Is it time that the air force looked at such a capability afresh?

Save for the Lockheed Martin EC-130H Compass Call communications jamming aircraft, and the self-protection systems used by individual platforms, the retirement of the EF-111A left the USAF largely out of the operational and tactical level radar jamming business.

This decision arguably made sense at the time. The US and its NATO allies were not facing state-of-the-art ground-based air defence threats in the skies above Afghanistan, the Balkans, Libya

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Thomas Withington

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Thomas Withington

Thomas Withington is an award-winning analyst and writer specialising in electronic warfare, radar and military …

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