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A more artful way to avoid an incoming missile is to deceive it with false or misleading radar signals. Air Force One is equipped with a variety of sophisticated jamming equipment designed to do just that. One widely used technique: delaying the echoes of incoming radar pulses, thus fooling the attacker into calculating that its target is farther away than it really is. Alternatively, the target plane may generate dozens of false radar echoes, each aimed slightly differently, creating the impression of a whole squadron of planes arrayed at various intervals across the sky.
Clever as these tricks may be, the equipment in Air Force One is primitive compared with what is being installed in the jumbo jet scheduled to start transporting the President in October. That $325 million "flying Taj Mahal," a specially modified Boeing 747, bristles with so much computerized hardware that it needs 57 antennas and 238 miles of wire to support its electronics. Says an official involved in its construction: "We put every last piece of modern gimmickry in that plane."
Determined to protect its Commander in Chief from all threats, the Air Force included features that would enable his plane to survive an atomic attack, as long as a bomb did not explode too close by. Rather than use silicon computer chips and copper wire, which can melt down in the electromagnetic pulse that follows a nuclear blast, the designers are loading up the new 747 with pulse-resistant fiber-optic cable and gallium arsenide chips. Barring a direct hit from an H-bomb, the new plane should enable the President to fly anywhere in unprecedented safety and comfort.
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CREDIT: TIME Diagram by Joe Lertola
CAPTION: MISGUIDING THE MISSILES