Aircraft like fighter jets, bombers, and even helicopters employ a variety of systems to avoid enemy ordnance, but chaff and flares are the most common methods.
If you’ve watched „Top Gun“, you might’ve noticed that the F/A-18’s countermeasures use chaff/flare. While both chaff and flares are used by military aircraft to defend against incoming missiles, they are both different types of decoys used to confuse the enemy. At the moment, there are two primary types of missiles employed by military forces: radar-guided and heat-seeking.
Fighter pilots, especially from the NATO alliance, actually say what type of missile they’re launching to warn their wingmen what type they just launched; warning their allies that there’s an active munition in the air and to avoid friendly fire. However, the aircraft on the receiving end of the missile would not know what type of is heading their way. That’s why the countermeasures installed on military planes must work for both types of missiles. This is where chaff and flares come in.
