Chaff is to put clutter on a radar, flares are to distract heat-seeking missiles. Coupling it doesn't do anything unless there's somehow a missile that has both an IR and radar guidance(don't think this exists).

[–] TraumaDumpling@hexbear.net 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

AFAIK plenty of modern 'fire and forget' missiles use both

[–] Outdoor_Catgirl@hexbear.net 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I mean there's some missiles that can be equipped with either type, such as the French mica and the Russian r27 but it's a swap not a both simultaneously, so unless there's some surface to air missile that does it than idk. Modern radar missiles can use the internal radar and the airplane radar for tracking, but I don't think that's what you meant.

[–] TraumaDumpling@hexbear.net 2 points 10 months ago

so my source for the both types of missile tracking thing turned out to be a Quora ChatGPT answer lol, but i think they still train people to use both flares and chaff because you might be targeted by multiple hostiles (like several SAM batteries or multiple jets or a single jet launching multiple missiles) and most planes carry enough of both anyway

[–] nohaybanda@hexbear.net 4 points 10 months ago

You still need to use both, cause you don’t wanna find out you deployed the wrong one