Forums: Radar Detector

India and the United States are pressuring France not to allow Pakistan to buy advanced radars and other electronics for the Pakistani built JF-17 jet fighter. This is because China did most of the development on the JF-17, and Chinese personnel would be involved in any effort to install French electronics in these aircraft. China has a brazen reputation for stealing foreign technology, and putting high tech French electronics into Pakistani JF-17s, is seen as just giving the stuff to China. Pakistan also has a reputation for passing on military technology it had promised to hold close. While the Chinese...

Northrop Grumman radar that can track individuals on foot over a wide area is to be deployed operationally by U.S. forces in Afghanistan to aid the fight against improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar (Vader) is a podded active electronically scanned array designed to be carried by unmanned aircraft and smaller manned surveillance platforms (Aerospace DAILY, Feb. 9). The Army recently completed evaluation testing of the radar installed on the centerline of a manned Twin Otter, following initial flights in 2009 on Northrop’s Islander test bed. Vader is designed to help intercept teams planting IEDs by...

The U.S. Army has received its first production models of the AN/ZPY-1 Starlite lightweight radar. This system weighs 65 pounds (29.5 kg), occupies 34 cc (1.2 cubic feet), uses 750 watts of power and costs about $2.3 million each. The Starlite was designed for use in the army's new 1.5 ton MQ-1C Sky Warrior UAV. Starlite can deliver photo quality black and white images of what is down there, in any weather. The army has developed software that enables the Starlite images to be transmitted to existing army video terminals, and automatically appear on electronic versions of standard army maps....

Air Force Research Laboratory-funded researchers at the University of Michigan invented a new type of magnetron that may be used in defeating enemy electronics. A vital component of military radar systems since World War II, a magnetron is a kind of vacuum tube that serves as the frequency source in microwave ovens, radar systems, and other high-power microwave circuits. The newly devised technology--which is more compact, exhibits faster start-up, and demonstrates higher peak and average power than current devices--should enable higher-power, higher-frequency operation and, thus, improved potential for jamming and defeat of adversarial systems. While basic magnetron design has changed...

South Korea said Friday it had deployed advanced weapons-tracking radar systems on islands near its disputed Yellow Sea border with North Korea following last week's artillery barrages by the North. Defence Minister Kim Tae-Young told lawmakers the AN/TPQ-36 Firefinder systems had been set up on Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong islands. "A few days ago, deployment of anti-artillery radar systems was completed," the minister was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency. The system is designed to determine where incoming artillery and rocket fire originated, to allow for a possible counter-attack. After declaring two "no sail" zones, the communist state last week...

A test of the U.S. territorial missile defense system ended in failure because the sea-based cuing radar for the interceptor did not perform as planned, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) announced Jan. 31. The Jan. 31 test was the first of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system in which the Sea-Based X-band radar was the primary source of tracking and targeting information, MDA spokesman Rick Lehner said Feb. 1. “It was the only radar used in the test,” he said. Previous tests of the GMD system have relied primarily on other radar tracking assets, such as the very high...

South Korea's military is considering positioning a weapon-locating radar system on islands near the Yellow Sea border, in a bid to better monitor artillery firing by North Korea, a lawmaker who was briefed on the plan said Friday. In a meeting with lawmakers of the National Assembly defense committee, Defense Minister Kim Tae-young said that the military will push to deploy artillery hunting radars, called TPQ, on Baengnyeong Island and Yeonpyeong Island just south of the western inter-Korean sea border, Rep. Kim Hak-song who chairs the committee said.The radar system is capable of detecting hostile artillery by tracking projectiles in...

If one veteran Virginia legislature gets his way, the last state to ban use of radar detectors will repeal its ban too. Radar detector proponents contend that radar detectors often reduce travel speeds, aid enforcement, and promote safer driving. In fact the 1987 "Yankelovich Clancy Shulman Study" appears to support these claims when it found that the accident rate for radar detector owners was actually 23 percent lower than it was for other motorists. . . . And why might gun owners be interested in May's bid to repeal Virginia radar detector ban? Just peruse news reports and pro-gun web...

PACIFIC MISSILE RANGE BARKING SANDS, Hawaii | On January 19, the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) Barking Sands, Kauai, Hawaii began construction of an Advanced Radar Detection Laboratory (ARDEL) facility. The ARDEL project will test and evaluate a new radar system planned for the next generation of surface combatant vessels strengthening the U.S. Navy's ability to detect, track, and provide information required to engage ballistic missiles at greater distances than current systems in use as well as more elusive long-range air threats. The advanced technologies of the new radar incorporate various aspects of ballistic missile defense (BMD), air defense (AD),...

Afghanistan, American aircraft equipped with radar (that can see what's on the ground), are tailing Taliban suspects driving through remote areas. Operators in these JSTARS aircraft can track movement of ground units, or individual vehicles, over a wide area. Operators can also use the detail mode to pick out specific details of what's going on down there, like tracking the movement of vehicles fleeing the scene of a battle, or meeting with Taliban leaders. JSTARS is real good at picking up trucks moving along highways on flat terrain, but the equipment has now been tweaked to deal with the mountains...