LAU-138

The LAU-138 chaff dispenser was developed to meet the need for additional chaff cartridge payload capacity. The launcher itself was developed in Sweden by CelsiusTech as a chaff dispenser integrated into a rail designed to replace the LAU-7 Sidewinder rail. Each rail holds up to 160 chaff packages, each smaller than a normal chaff cartridge while still enabling the mounting of a single AIM-9 Sidewinder.

On the F-14, the LAU-138 was used mounted on the 1A and 8A stations. While technically able to be mounted on the respective B stations as well, it was not possible to refill the launcher while mounted there, so it was not used there operationally.

With the LAU-138s mounted, the ALE-47 automatically recognizes the amount of chaff available in the rails.

Each launcher holds 160 chaff packages, and each ejection impulse ejects four packages from each launcher, each package being about 1/4 the size of a normal chaff cartridge. This results in each ejection impulse ejecting the equivalent of two chaff cartridges in total, and a total of 40 ejections being available from the launchers.

The F-14 also has native countermeasure buckets mounted on the main airframe. They can be filled with chaff or flares in sets of 10, so for example 30 chaff and 30 flare can be mounted in the buckets.

The F-14B(U) Tomcat is also equipped with LAU-138 rails; these rails in reality held BOL chaff and BOL flares. Due to the limitations of the DCS simulation, only chaff is available for dispensing from the LAU-138.

Each rail is filled with 40 chaff packets, and the rails always dispense together, providing 40 chaff releases.