"IFF & Modern Air Wargames" Topic

With aircraft having IFF, how do the wrong aircraft get targetted (particularly by GBAD systems)?

IFF can fail, just like anything else, or be damaged in combat.

No "friendly" IFF signal = "bogey" at a minimum, and possibly "bandit" depending upon the automated system settings, or jumpiness of the human, if there is one in the loop.

Also, wrong IFF settings is just as bad, if not worse – sometimes "allies" don't coordinate well, or the pilots/aircraft techs/users don't get the latest update of the day, or if they do, they don't take note of it, so again, bad things happen.

I imagine settings are changed from time to time – daily/hourly, just like in WWII, to prevent the enemy from catching on.

Civilian planes don't have IFF. No IFF signal means they aren't on your side.

Big military planes like the Il-20 may have their IFF transponder far enough away from their center of reflection that the missile sees it as a separate airplane. Or the missile just goes for the largest radar source, IFF is down on the ground only. So you launch a missile at a small fighter that crosses paths with a big plane, missile doesn't, can't, care that big plane is not an enemy. It just goes to biggest radar signature.

This is a not-so-subtle hint that we need to shift to multi-mode sensors, so that the missile says 'I'm locked onto an F16, so that bigass Il20 is *not* a valid target'. But most SAMs are designed assuming few friendlies in the sky.

I don't know of any missiles with onboard IFF. It's all on the launcher.

During the late Vietnam War, F-4s we're equipped with Combat Tree, which pinged the IFF of NV MiGs, giving positive IDsnon them. That made BVR, or beyond visual identification, shots possible again. Because of this, many forces turn off their IFF within pinging range of any enemy radar. Enemy Early Warning radars can reach a long way into friendly territory.

Stealth aircraft pretty much have to turn off their IFF to avoid any possibility of being picked up by signals intelligence.