Looking at the development of various endo and exo-atmospheric BMD systems, I am looking for figures of the max altitude detection capability for the relevant radars. Given some of these Interceptor missiles can apparently double as ASAT weapons, the radars would have to have the ability to detect, track and guide missiles towards targets at altitudes of hundreds of kilometers.
Systems used for Ballistic Missile Detection/Early Warning applications that I’m curious about:
JORN(Jindalee OTH)
PAVE PAWS
AN/TPY-2
AN/SPY-2(the Aegis radar variant used with SM-3 interceptors)
Voronezh-DM
92N2E Grave Stone and 96L6(S-400 acquisition radars)
Elta EL/M-2080 Super Green Pine
Does anyone have a rough estimate of the altitudes(not range) at which these can detect targets?
By: djcross - 10th July 2012 at 01:52
The SPY-1b on USS Lake Erie successfully tracked and guided an SM-3 to intercept the malfunctioning satellite NROL-21 at an altitude of 153 miles. To achieve the intercept, the SPY-1b had to track the target from a significantly greater distance, but was aided by cueing from other BMD assets.
By: Distiller - 9th July 2012 at 20:40
All the electronically steered antennas can look up almost vertically, while the old fence antennas looked out just a few degrees above horizontal. Thousands of kilometers in any case. In the early days there were quite a bit of false positives from the moon and planets and the radars were also used for radar-astronomy.
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July 9, 2012 at 7:35 pm