Forum: Air Power

What does under the radar supposed to mean?
What I mean is that how come can one get under the radar, what kind of maximum height could one reach and still be under the radar and if the enemy is behind mountains or anything obstructing the radar signals, how else could you detect him?

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"under the radar" means an aircraft is flying lower than the minimum detection altitude of the radar. This min. alt varies a lot, considering radar type, terrain, jamming.
e.g. the radar of an SA-3 site can't see anything below 100 meters - even on a flat plain.

How can you detect something flying low or using terrain features?
1. Best option is to have an AEW or AWACS up in the air - you can even detect cruise missiles with that
2. Gap Filler radars - modern mobile radars - can fit easily on a truck and can be deployed in such a way to cover the "blind spots" of the fixed, main radar network; they look something like this: http://www.roaf.ro/en/dotare/gapfiller_en.htm

Salute!

In the old days when I first started flying "combat" jets, one could easily fly "below" radar. Most radars, that is. DEW line was different.

Even without pulse doppler radars, some good operators could find a low plane, but it was very hard.

The advent of the doppler radars made things real scary, as SAM's like the SA-6 could track you down in the weeds without much trouble. Ask the IAF about Yom Kippur.

Nevertheless, they still haven't invented a radar that can "see" thru a mountain, or even a fairly small hill. So there still exists the oppo to fly where "known" radar sites cannot see you. Hence the "gap filler" sites.

The AWACS and even the modern fighters can easily see you from above, even itf you are on the gound. The Viper radar could easily track autos back in 1979. So the radar detection criteria was modified to set a higher speed before the tgt appeared on the scope (autobahn in Germany a big contributor to that mod, heh heh).

later,

Gums sends....

Quote:

The advent of the doppler radars made things real scary, as SAM's like the SA-6 could track you down in the weeds without much trouble. Ask the IAF about Yom Kippur.

True. Most of our air losses during the Yom Kippur War were because of SAMs, especially the SA-6. But the SA-6 only gave a surprise in the begining. One of the IAF Phantoms thats was returning to base after being hit by a SA-6, radioed in about the missile and by the time he landed all of HQ knew that the Arabs got a new SAM, after that the SA-6 was no longer a surprise.

In 1982 we used an impressive new way to deal with SAMs. Send in UAVs followed by Vipers loaded with HARMs, the SAM radars lock on the UAVs and the Vipers fire their HARMs- problem solved. SAMs are useless with no radars.

The Ruskiess got some pretty impresive new SAMs, the S-300PMUs and S-400s, that use phased arrays aswell. The Chinks got them too and they're covering all of Taiwan's northern airspace. Taiwan got no HARMs to deal with them, but like Gums said, fly between hills and they won't see you comin, or in Uncle Sam's case, use stealth.

I am the last person in the world to get excited about political correctness, but don't you think you could have used a different word to describe the Chinese?

Best Regards,

JoeSambor wrote:

I am the last person in the world to get excited about political correctness, but don't you think you could have used a different word to describe the Chinese?

Best Regards,

I think he's somehow using it as an affectionate, like 'russkie' earlier in his post.. Confused

affectionate or not my wife (who was born in china) would still whoop your a$$ if you used that term around her. Just a heads up in case you meet my wife someday Smile

Sorry akruse21, as someone who lived in Taiwan for many years and seen the Chinese keep on making all these claims and threats (including firing missiles into the sea around Taiwan), it really annoys me to see the Taiwanese people not being allowed freedom.

And the Chinese are completly against Israel fighting terrorism in Lebanon. I guess that explains why a Chinese C-802 guided anti-ship missile hit an Israeli patrol craft killing all 4 salors aboard.

Sorry if I offended anyone else aswell.

hey buddy no big deal here, just watch out for my wife....

shocktroop wrote:

And the Chinese are completly against Israel fighting terrorism in Lebanon. I guess that explains why a Chinese C-802 guided anti-ship missile hit an Israeli patrol craft killing all 4 salors aboard.

The missile was Made in Iran.. Reverse-engineered version of the Chinese one.

Quote:

The missile was Made in Iran.. Reverse-engineered version of the Chinese one.

But this still doesn't explain how Iran got it in the first place.

shocktroop wrote:

Quote:

The missile was Made in Iran.. Reverse-engineered version of the Chinese one.

But this still doesn't explain how Iran got it in the first place.

The Chinese sold them nearly hundred of theirs.

And Israel sold UAVs to China...

shocktroop wrote:

And Israel sold UAVs to China...

What does that have to do with Hezbollah launching a missile at an Israeli ship? I wasn't pointing fingers at anyone here.

back to your origanal question KarimAbdoun,

Beside the aircraft flying lower to avoid detection. You may also here this term used around base or maybe in civilian work place to mean that you do things that you don't want upper supervsion to know about Wink

Forum: Air Power

Under the Radar and Detection