military dork missing the joke mode: to use chaff effectively, combine it with flares and fire in large bursts, and then maneuver such that the flare/chaff cloud is between you and the missile. if you don't couple the chaff with flares and with the appropriate maneuvers (placing the cloud between you and the missile), the missile will ignore them and focus on the biggest heat source - your engine (jet exhausts specifically i think)
sometimes i think you can also use the sun to confuse missile lockon but that seems like something they would have fixed by now. the thing about missiles is that they have less fuel and less wing surface than a jet, so the jet can raise altitude easier and for less fuel, and can maneuver more easily. the missile is faster for a short time, but if you increase altitude (it costs more fuel for the missile to go up) and keep it to your 3 or 9 clock position (it costs more fuel and reduces speed to turn) you can outmaneuver it and waste its fuel. if the hostile missile is moving straight and not turning you are doing it wrong.
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).
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.
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
military dork missing the joke mode: to use chaff effectively, combine it with flares and fire in large bursts, and then maneuver such that the flare/chaff cloud is between you and the missile. if you don't couple the chaff with flares and with the appropriate maneuvers (placing the cloud between you and the missile), the missile will ignore them and focus on the biggest heat source - your engine (jet exhausts specifically i think)
sometimes i think you can also use the sun to confuse missile lockon but that seems like something they would have fixed by now. the thing about missiles is that they have less fuel and less wing surface than a jet, so the jet can raise altitude easier and for less fuel, and can maneuver more easily. the missile is faster for a short time, but if you increase altitude (it costs more fuel for the missile to go up) and keep it to your 3 or 9 clock position (it costs more fuel and reduces speed to turn) you can outmaneuver it and waste its fuel. if the hostile missile is moving straight and not turning you are doing it wrong.
source: VTOL VR lol
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).
AFAIK plenty of modern 'fire and forget' missiles use both
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.
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
You still need to use both, cause you don’t wanna find out you deployed the wrong one