The top thing is a TALD, a UAV that is launched from fighter jets and used as a decoy for air defenses as it has a radar jammer.

How radar guided SAMs work is that they must paint a target for the missile to home in on and hit, or the missile is painting its own target using radar.

Imagine a night raid in WWII with bombers being lit up with searchlights to be hit by flak. It’s the same basically just with radar waves instead of visible light, and the flak rounds can steer themselves.

Now in this analogy, the TALD is like a flare that’s lit up in front of the formation that’s so shiny you can barely tell how far it is, and you cam definitely not see the dark bomber formation coming in after it.