Warning systems

Air defense systems

Radar and identification friend or foe (IFF) equipment constitute the forward elements of complex systems that have appeared throughout the world. Examples include the semiautomatic ground environment (SAGE), augmented by a mobile backup intercept control system called BUIC in the United States, NATO air defense ground environment (NADGE) in Europe, a similar system in Japan, and various land-mobile, airborne, and ship command and control systems. Little information concerning the Soviet systems is available, but they are known to be extensive, automated, and capable.

Air-defense systems require computers and communication nets to process the radar data. Position reports from the radars are formed into tracks of each detected aircraft. Height-finding radars add the third dimension. The IFF information, together with known flight plans, is correlated; clutter, false returns from clouds, and any electronic countermeasures are rejected. Decisions are made on whether to counter the attack with interceptors or surface-to-air missiles. The counterattack is controlled by guiding a missile or directing an intercept.

To avoid excessive centralization of equipment that would make the system vulnerable to nuclear attack, the computers and communication facilities are widely dispersed and supplemented by mobile facilities.

In addition to large conventional radars, small distributed radars (called gap fillers) are used to detect low-flying aircraft penetrating gaps in large radar coverage. Over-the-horizon radars and AWACS (airborne warning and control systems) are even more promising. The latter consist of large radar and computation, display, and control systems, housed in large aircraft. First introduced for naval defense, they have become potentially effective over land with new developments in clutter-rejection circuitry.

Large aircraft with powerful radars connected to sophisticated computer and display equipment can survive a nuclear attack and have a low-altitude surveillance capability. Their use, delayed because of problems caused by interference from land clutter, is growing.

A unique air-defense system is the U.S.-Canadian Distant Early Warning system stretching across the northern portion of North America. The radars are used strictly for early warning; no control of missiles or interceptors is provided. Elaborate communications to control centres to the south are part of the system.

Air-defense systems spread the warning to the civil population by sirens and radio alerts. Extensive communication nets are built for this purpose. Air-defense systems also select and assign the defensive weapons to particular threats. If interceptors are used, a control centre is assigned to send control information by digitally encoded radio messages.

If surface-to-air missiles are used, the target is designated to the missile control system, which has its own target-tracking and missile-control radar. Practically all surface-to-air missile systems have some autonomous capability of warning and target acquisition. Examples of these systems are the American Nike Hercules and Hawk, the British Thunderbird, Bloodhound, and Rapier, the French-German Roland, and the Italian Indigo. In sea warfare, such missiles as the U.S. Terrier and Talos, the British Sea Dart, and the French Masurca have autonomous radar capability.

At sea, air defense also uses large radars on ships, but more use is made of airborne radar and control systems. The weight and size of long-range radars restricts their installation to the larger ships; airborne radar over the ocean does not have severe land clutter to contend with, making it simpler than overland systems; the horizon limits are at a greater range; and the aircraft can patrol a large area. As in land defenses, extensive computer and display complexes, and communications between the ships, are used. In the U.S. Navy the Airborne Tactical Data System, consisting of airborne radar, computers, and memory and data links, is connected with the Naval Tactical Data System, located in fleet headquarters, which processes, organizes, and displays information of the overall picture of the tactical situation.

Ballistic missile warning

In the second half of the 20th century, warning against ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads has taken precedence over all other warning systems. Large ground radars, operating in the very high frequency (VHF) or ultrahigh frequency (UHF) range, are used. The radars search the skies and track detected objects. Computers calculate trajectory to determine if the target is a missile or an Earth-orbiting object. Depending on the trajectory, the number of objects, and other criteria, alerts, tentative warnings, or all-out warning signals are transmitted to command centres.

Surface-based radars have one serious flaw: they can detect an object only after it appears above the Earth’s horizon. For earlier warning, over-the-horizon radars or satellite-borne infrared detectors can be used.

There are two types of over-the-horizon radars, operating in the high frequency range, which can reflect from the ionosphere. One system, called forward scatter, transmits from one location and receives the signal several thousand miles away on the other side of the launch point. The back-scatter system receives the signal from the same location as the transmitter, as is done in conventional radar. Both systems detect variations in the received signal due to fluctuations in the ionosphere caused by the missile’s exhaust plume as it traverses the ionosphere.

Ballistic missile defense

Ballistic missile defense systems have their own warning and acquisition radar systems. These large radars are more sophisticated than the warning radars because they must form accurate tracks for the engagement radars. Decoy objects and lightweight metallic reflectors called chaff must be identified and rejected. To do this, the radars must be able to measure the velocity of all the objects, because lightweight objects decelerate more rapidly than heavy objects due to atmospheric drag and friction.

Space surveillance

Closely allied to warning systems are space-object detection and tracking systems. It is likely that only the United States and the Soviets have developed and operate these systems. A variety of very large radars are used, although the newer installations are phased-array radars that have stationary antennas with electronically steerable multiple beams. The scanning is more rapid than that by a mechanically rotated antenna, and several objects can be tracked simultaneously. The radars used for ballistic missile early warning are connected into spacetrack nets.

To supplement radars, telescopes have been designed for accurate tracking of comparatively low earth satellites. Telescopes, which can have cameras, have been adapted with varying degrees of success to pick up high-altitude satellites and extremely faint objects. The range depends on the size of the target, its reflectivity, and the solar aspect angle (angular position of the sun in the sky). Telescopes are not detection devices, but they can track objects if they are pointed in the correct direction by the ground radar net.