ECM and electronic warfare on the Vulcan
A V-bomber that could be seen by radar was a V-bomber that could be shot at. The Vulcan therefore carried an electronic countermeasures (ECM) fit that grew heavier as Soviet radars improved. The officer in charge was the Air Electronics Officer — AEO — the fifth member of the crew and the one whose work is least visible in airshow photographs.
The AEO’s war
The AEO monitored radar warning receivers, ran jammers, and interpreted the electronic order of battle along the planned route. In training this meant screens, switches and a script. In a real war it would have meant deciding, very quickly, which threat was real and which transmitter to attack with noise. The AEO also owned much of the aircraft’s communications and, in concert with the navigators, the defensive picture from Red Steer.
Red Shrimp and friends
Among the better-known jammers associated with the V-Force is Red Shrimp (ARI 18074 in later documentation), a noise jammer aimed at the radars of the day. The Vulcan’s tail and dorsal areas accumulated aerials as the fit matured. The B.1A is partly defined by an enlarged ECM installation in the tail; the B.2 continued that logic with more power, more coverage and more cooling. Open sources also discuss warning receivers in the Blue Saga family and various ARI-numbered boxes whose exact coverage changed with modification state.
This archive does not attempt a wiring diagram. Modification standards differed by squadron, date and role. What can be said cleanly is that the Vulcan of 1975 was a denser electronic aircraft than the Vulcan of 1957, and that the AEO’s station grew accordingly.
Black Buck’s electronic footnote
In 1982 some Black Buck sorties were not bomb-on-airfield missions at all. They were anti-radar missions, firing AGM-45 Shrike missiles at Argentine air-defence radars. That is a different kind of electronic warfare — lethal, one-way, and borrowed from US Navy practice — but it sits in the same family as the AEO’s peacetime trade: find the emitter, decide what to do about it. See Operation Black Buck.
Historic ECM is described here at the unclassified outline level. Nothing on this page is an instruction for operating or restoring military jammers.