MALD, or Miniature Air-Launched Decoy missiles, can be deployed in cloud-like swarms that would help hide and protect real fighter planes from enemy air defences.
MALD missiles are like swarming drones. They’re an alternative to being stealth and invisible because with MALDs the goal is to distract, confuse or overwhelm the enemy. With a mass-deployment system, the Air Force would drop a ton of MALDs into the air and protect fighter planes from being targeted by enemies on the ground. Basically, as Wired’s Danger Room puts it, “It’s a high-tech version of the swarm tactics that pirates and poor countries have devised”. [Danger Room]
Photo credit: Raytheon