Radar Tracking Systems

What is it, and why is it so important?

There you are screaming through the air at twice the speed of sound, 35,000 feet above hostile territory in your shiny new jet fighter, all your senses tensed as you scan the horizon for hostile aircraft when your instruments start screaming at you; there is another aircraft in the vicinity and it is closing fast! Sick with fear you launch an air guided missile but unfortunately the radar systems it carries is pretty stupid and a few seconds later an innocent albatross which had been flying along happily contemplating a tasty dinner of live herring is blown into a million tiny pieces. It could have been worse; a couple of thousand feet above you there is a Russian civilian airliner with more than 200 passengers on board, with the pilot wondering who on earth let off the huge firework under his tail. Have you shot down the airliner instead of the albatross the Outbreak of World War Three would have been a mere formality!

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Happily, it is highly unlikely (although certainly not impossible!) that this scenario would take place in real life; modern radar systems are not completely stupid after all, and they are capable of some quite a surprising recognition abilities. They are not only able to recognize that a flying object is in fact a bird, by the flapping of its wings, but some systems are so sensitive that they can even tell what type of bird it is! Different types of aircraft can be differentiated as well; they all have their particular characteristics such as maximum speed, sound profile, and even their shape can be calculated by a modern radar guidance system, at a fast enough speed to give a positive recognition within the split seconds that are necessary in aerial combat. These systems are just as accurate at long range as they are at a short one, and they can see through clouds, smoke and other atmospheric pollution quite clearly and they work by producing a 'snapshot' of' the target and comparing it against others held in its database. In real life therefore a few more herring would have been eaten by a hungry albatross and the Russian airline pilot would not have been treated to a pyrotechnic display after all.

All we have to do now is hope and pray that the Russians never bring out a nuclear bomber the size of an albatross, with flapping wings. Now that really would set the cat amongst the pigeons!