ADM-141 TALD and ADM-141C ITALD decoy missiles on display

The ADM-141A/B TALD was an American

decoy missile A decoy missile is a type of guided missile with the highly specialized task of producing a radar signature similar to that of a bomber aircraft. They would be launched during the bomber's approach to enemy airspace, producing additional targets tha ...

originally built by

Brunswick Corporation Brunswick Corporation, formerly known as the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, is an American corporation that has been developing, manufacturing and marketing a wide variety of products since 1845. Brunswick has more than 13,000 employees in ...

for the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

and the

Israeli Air Force The Israeli Air Force (IAF; , commonly known as , ''Kheil HaAvir'', "Air Corps") operates as the aerial and space warfare branch of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It was founded on May 28, 1948, shortly after the Israeli Declaration of Indep ...

. Later it transitioned to joint US/Israeli manufacture with Israeli Military Industries Advanced Systems Division (IMI-ASD). The Tactical Air Launched Decoy (TALD) was intended to confuse and saturate enemy

air defense Anti-aircraft warfare (AAW) is the counter to aerial warfare and includes "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It encompasses surface-based, subsurface (Submarine#Armament, submarine-lau ...

s, as part of an overall SEAD (

Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD ), also known in the United States as " Wild Weasel" and (initially) "Iron Hand" operations, are military actions to suppress enemy surface-based air defenses, including surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), an ...

) strategy, thus allowing attacking aircraft and weapons a higher probability of penetrating to the target. The Improved TALD (Abbreviated: ITALD) is a

turbojet The turbojet is an airbreathing jet engine which is typically used in aircraft. It consists of a gas turbine with a propelling nozzle. The gas turbine has an air inlet which includes inlet guide vanes, a compressor, a combustion chamber, and ...

-powered version, granting extended range.

History

In the 1970s, the

Brunswick Corp Brunswick Corporation, formerly known as the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, is an American corporation that has been developing, manufacturing and marketing a wide variety of products since 1845. Brunswick has more than 13,000 employees in ...

. developed several unpowered radar decoys, including the Samson, which was produced for the Israeli Air Force by

Israel Military Industries IMI Systems, previously Israel Military Industries, also referred to as Ta'as (), was an Israeli weapons manufacturer. The company manufactured weapons, munitions and military technology mainly for the Israeli security forces (especially Israel' ...

(IMI) in the early 1980s. The Samson proved highly successful, prompting the

US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

to purchase about 2000 of them during the mid to late 1980s. The first units entered US service in 1987; in 1985, Brunswick was asked to develop an improved Samson named TALD.

Design

The TALD resembles the modern ground-attack cluster munition dispensing AGM-154 JSOW, with a square fuselage that tapers into a horizontal line near the nose and flip out wings. The tail control surfaces and stabilizers differ, as the TALD resembles conventional aircraft with two horizontal stabilizers and one vertical stabilizer. This configuration causes the stabilizers, which are at 90 degree angles, to reflect any incoming radar back at the source. Internal flight control systems are able to be programmed to hold the TALD at certain speeds, or to perform certain maneuvers. This allows it to mimic certain aircraft, degrading the quality of the enemy's situational awareness. They could be, for example, programmed to mimic the speed and movements of the General Dynamics F-16 with the goal of making adversary SAM sites perceive a high-priority threat which is not there. The addition of a

Luneburg lens A Luneburg lens (original German ''Lüneburg-Linse'') is a spherically symmetric gradient-index lens. A typical Luneburg lens's refractive index ''n'' decreases radially from the center to the outer surface. They can be made for use with electrom ...

allows for incoming radar waves to be reflected back directly at the target, amplifying the radar returns. This leads to its perception as a much larger aircraft, such as bombers. The missile could be launched from , at which height it had a range of up to ; a low-altitude range reduced this to .

Variants

The TALD was built in different versions.

ADM-141A

The ADM-141A has passive and active radar enhancers. An IR addon was fielded for a while, but was later withdrawn from service.

ADM-141B

The ADM-141B carries a 36 kg (80 lb) payload of

chaff Chaff (; ) is dry, scale-like plant material such as the protective seed casings of cereal grains, the scale-like parts of flowers, or finely chopped straw. Chaff cannot be digested by humans, but it may be fed to livestock, ploughed into soil ...

, to better mimic the behavior of aircraft.

ADM-141C ITALD

The ADM-141C (ITALD) has the same passive and active radar enhancers as the ADM-141A TALD.

Operations

The TALD was used with great success in the opening stages of

Operation Desert Storm Operation or Operations may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * ''Operation'' (game), a battery-operated board game that challenges dexterity * Operation (music), a term used in musical set theory * ''Operations'' (magazine), Multi-Man ...

in 1991. More than 100 were launched on the opening night of the war. This prompted the Iraqi air defense to activate many of its

radar Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track ...

s, most of which were then destroyed by

anti-radiation missiles An anti-radiation missile (ARM) is a missile designed to detect and home in on an enemy radio emission source. Typically, these are designed for use against an enemy radar, although jammers and even radios used for communications can also be ta ...

. The Improved TALD is powered by a

Teledyne CAE Model 312 The Teledyne CAE J700 is a small turbojet engine designed to power unmanned air vehicles such as missiles. It was developed for and powers the ADM-141C ITALD air-launched decoy missile. Design and development In the early 1990s, Brunswick devel ...

(J700-CA-400)

. This boosted the range to more than at high altitude and at low altitude. This model was also capable of performing a flight profile resembling that of a real aircraft much more convincingly. Initially 20 TALDs were upgraded to ADM-141C ITALD configuration, with the first flight conducted in 1996. Since then the U.S. Navy has ordered over 200 ADM-141Cs. The major user of the ADM-141 is the

F/A-18 Hornet The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet is an all-weather supersonic, twinjet, twin-engine, carrier-based aircraft, carrier-capable, Multirole combat aircraft, multirole combat aircraft, designed as both a Fighter aircraft, fighter and attack airc ...

. Up to 6 decoys can be carried on a single stores pylon, using a pair of triple ejector racks.

Specifications

* Length: 2.34 m (7 ft 8 in) * Wingspan: 1.55 m (5 ft 1 in) * Weight: 180 kg (400 lb) * Speed: up to

Mach The Mach number (M or Ma), often only Mach, (; ) is a dimensionless quantity in fluid dynamics representing the ratio of flow velocity past a Boundary (thermodynamic), boundary to the local speed of sound. It is named after the Austrian physi ...

0.8 (460 km/h, 250 kn) * Range: 126 km (78 mi), over 300 km (185 mi) for the ADM-141C * Propulsion: Teledyne CAE J700-CA-400 turbojet, 790 N (177

lbf The pound of force or pound-force (symbol: lbf, sometimes lbf,) is a unit of force used in some systems of measurement, including English Engineering units and the foot–pound–second system. Pound-force should not be confused with pound ...

) on ADM-141C only

References

Article source: by Greg Goebel. {{US missiles Decoy missiles of the United States Military equipment of Israel Military equipment introduced in the 1980s