Which item is used to saturate radar with false targets?

• A. Chaff
• B. IRDS
• C. MAD
• D. ECM

Answer: (A)

Radar deception works by flooding the radar with believable echoes so real targets can be hidden or confused. Chaff is the material used for this purpose: thin metallic-coated fibers or foil are dispersed from aircraft or missiles, creating a cloud of radar reflections. That cloud generates many false returns at similar ranges and directions, effectively saturating the radar display and making it hard to pick out the actual target or to maintain accurate tracks. The other items operate in different domains or modes—MAD targets submarines by detecting magnetic anomalies, IRDS aims to deceive infrared seekers, and ECM is the broad category of electronic countermeasures that includes chaff as one technique. Chaff is the specific tool that saturates radar with false targets.