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WJWlast Monday at 7:47 AM3 repliesview on HN

(context: I used to be involved in the design of military radar systems for the Dutch navy)

The radar absorbing compounds of stealth aircraft are highly optimized for specific wavelengths (usually X-band) and fall off heavily outside that frequency band. Similarly, the radar cross section of stealthy aircraft is highly optimized for specific purposes (usually evading GBAD in the forward direction) and rapidly falls off in other scenarios. Most "stealth" aircraft are actually fairly visible from other directions.

That said, multistatic radar with transmitters-of-opportunity like cell towers and civil radio stations has always been in strong competition with fusion power as "the tech that is forever 10 years in the future". The transmitters are often not very powerful compared to dedicated radar systems and worse, they transmit energy in the horizontal plane rather than upwards where the planes are. The frequencies involved are much lower, which inherently leads to less radial accuracy unless you use VERY large antennas. Unlike a dedicated radar system the signals they send out are typically not shaped optimally for radar purposes, so signal processing like pulse compression becomes much harder. Because the signals are inherently not as predictable as normal radar signals you need MUCH more computing power. Finally, atmospheric conditions become fiendishly tricky for long range, because signal delays between each transmitter-target-receiver triple will be different. This means resolution goes way down if there's too many clouds or ionospheric interference, often to the point of uselessness.

Many of those problems are mostly terrible when trying to detect aircraft at long range though, and largely go away for short range surface use like in port. I'm still not entirely sure why for a port, which is stationary and requires tons of infrastructure investment anyway, this system would be preferable to a normal civilian type radar system. You can get a conventional one for at most a few tens of thousands, while this system apparently requires a trailer full of RF signal processing equipment. That is likely to cost at least in the order of magnitude more, while probably being less accurate.


Replies

sorenjanlast Monday at 11:46 AM

I've seen SDRs being used to track civilian airplanes using TV transmitters. Using two antennas/receivers, one pointed at the transmitter as reference and one towards a big air traffic plane, they might get a couple km range. While the concept is really interesting, it doesn't seem very practical to try to see smaller fighter jets or even stealth planes beyond visual range. And TV transmitters are probably among the most powerful transmitters in common use.

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smathlast Monday at 3:43 PM

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. I'm curious about the following:

(1) Seems like these very challenges also make the space more interesting because not everyone can make a good passive radar system and the passive aspect obviously provides stealth (not to the plane, but to the party doing the surveillance). Is this fair to say? (2) What if there are multiple receivers in clock sync? Does that make it easier? (3) I'm a bit confused about your comment about very large antennas -- I thought antenna size should be proportional to the wavelength. So if the system is using digital TV broadcast, then the antenna size would be roughly the size of DTV antennas, and bigger would not necessarily help? Or is this not the case? (4) Re the ionopheric issues -- do the clouds or ionophere reflect the TV/fm waves? I thought each tx-target-rx triplet having a different delay would be a good thing because it would dismbiguate multiple targets.

throw0101blast Monday at 11:12 AM

> (context: I used to be involved in the design of military radar systems for the Dutch navy) […] Most "stealth" aircraft are actually fairly visible from other directions.

Is that different than ships, which in recent years/decades have tended to look a certain way (a 'finite' number of fixed angles):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knud_Rasmussen-class_patrol_ve...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absalon-class_frigate

Do ships have to have a low return (?) at more angles?

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