IAF, Navy tie up with DRDO to acquire CHAFF to shield warships, fighter aircraft

CHAFF is a critical defence technology used to protect fighter aircrafts or naval ships from enemy radar-guided missile during war. The significance of this technology lies in the fact that very less quantity of CHAFF material deployed in the air acts as a decoy to deflect enemy's missiles to ensure safety of the fighter aircraft or naval ships.

Published on: Apr 21, 2022, 17:50:06 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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The Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy have tied up with the Defence Research Development Organisation to get the CHAFF technology, which protects the warship from an anti-ship missile during hostilities. India is now the second country after the United States to develop this ability, a major Aatmanirbhar push in the field of defence.

IAF's SU 30 MKI using decoy flares to ward off heat-seeking air-to-air missiles.

The developed assumes significance as the Indian navy is currently studying the sinking of Russian missile cruiser Moskva and focusing on how to protect our warships from anti-ship ballistic missiles like the Chinese DF-21.

What is CHAFF?

In simple words, CHAFF is a critical defence technology used to protect fighter aircrafts or naval ships from enemy radar-guided missile during war. The significance of this technology lies in the fact that very less quantity of CHAFF material deployed in the air acts as a decoy to deflect enemy's missiles to ensure safety of the fighter aircraft or naval ships.

CHAFF creates a metal particle cloud near the warship and deflects the missiles from it.

The DRDO has developed this advanced CHAFF technology to defend naval Ships and fighter aircrafts against modern day broadband (including high frequency) radar threat.

Developed by the DRDO, the technology includes all three variants of CHAFF rockets namely Short Range Chaff Rocket (SRCR), Medium Range Chaff Rocket (MRCR) and Long Range Chaff Rocket (LRCR), and have been inducted in the Indian Navy after successful user trials.

The DRDO has also developed advanced CHAFF cartridge-118/I for the Indian Air Force having major advantages over the chaff available worldwide in terms of its better efficacy against higher frequency radar threat in modern warfare scenario.

After a successfully extensive user trials, the IAF assessed the performance of indigenous chaff cartridge-118/I satisfactory and started the process of induction into Indian Air Force.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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