You seem to be suggesting that a traditional mechanical array will be more poweful than a phased array, or at least more capable of “breaking through clutter”. Do you have a third-party source to support this claim?
I’m not anything close to being a radar expert, but as an embedded systems engineer myself, I like to pretend I understand some of the related issues. My perhaps flawed understanding is that phased arrays have every bit the signal properties that a traditional mechanical array has. The only distinction is the speed with which this signal can change in rotation/orientation.
Mechanical arrays mean you have to deal with all of the rules of Newtonian mechanics… momentum, acceleration, etc. It takes far longer to scan a region of space than a phased array radar would.
You seem to be suggesting that a traditional mechanical array will be more poweful than a phased array, or at least more capable of “breaking through clutter”. Do you have a third-party source to support this claim?
I’m not anything close to being a radar expert, but as an embedded systems engineer myself, I like to pretend I understand some of the related issues. My perhaps flawed understanding is that phased arrays have every bit the signal properties that a traditional mechanical array has. The only distinction is the speed with which this signal can change in rotation/orientation.
Mechanical arrays mean you have to deal with all of the rules of Newtonian mechanics… momentum, acceleration, etc. It takes far longer to scan a region of space than a phased array radar would.[/quote]
I think you’ve described things pretty well, there. Take what I say with a grain of salt, but my understanding is that when phased array systems were first being developed, there was some issue with long range tracking; the more powerful traditional radars were able to pin down a target and burn through any sort of jamming when the experimental phased array systems could not. My understanding is that this shortcoming was overcome before phased array systems were even mounted on ships. I imagine that the only real advantages of traditional radars is cost. The aegis system and other phased array naval radars are extremely expensive to build and maintain. All the systems that go along with them require a much higher level of training for operators.
Did I say that the traditional radar scans an airspace faster? Of course electonic beam stearing works much faster.
But think of radar in terms of radio - in terms of wattage over number of channels. The Aegis is basically lots of small transmitters. Traditional radar also separates the search (low frequncy) and targeting functions (High frequecies) where the Aeis combines both these functions into one. It is designed for sitting in the North Atlantic waiting for supersonic missles fired by Russian bombers. The Kidd on the other handd has an SPS-48 radar which is a widely used and effective air search radar.
Here is a quote from globalsecurity.org - a good source for lots of tid-bits
This is exactly the situation that we face in Taiwan