Infrared
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- military technology
Infrared sensors on the ground, or in aircraft or spacecraft, can detect such hot spots as motor-vehicle engines, hot jet engines, missile exhausts, even campfires. They have good location accuracy and high sensitivity to signals, without registering such false targets as sun reflections.
In the very near infrared region, infrared imaging detectors use specially sensitized photographic film to reveal forms hidden by camouflage. More important are the detectors used in the far infrared region; objects at room temperature radiate sufficient energy for detection at ranges of several miles. Infrared imagery can have longer range than image intensifiers and can operate without starlight. When the humidity is high, the effective range is reduced.
The sniperscope, an early device that used infrared illumination and an infrared viewer, has been largely replaced by the image intensifier and by laser illuminators.
Radar
Radar is used by ground forces for many purposes: in portable sizes, for infiltration detection; in intermediate sizes, for mortar and artillery shell tracking; and in large sizes, for early warning, search, and control of air-defense weapons (interceptors and surface-to-air missiles).
Radar is used in fighter aircraft for finding enemy aircraft and controlling air-to-air missiles, rockets, and guns. It is used in bombers to find surface targets, fixed or moving, and to navigate and avoid obstacles. It is used in large aircraft as an airborne warning and control system, searching the skies over great distances for enemy aircraft, tracking them, and controlling interceptors. It also is used to search the seas for surface vessels or surfaced submarines. Radar also can be used in spacecraft to locate patterns of activity.
In all applications of radar, clutter in the form of reflections from surface objects or the terrain, or the disturbed sea, competes with reflection from the targets and must be cancelled by appropriate circuitry. Side-looking radars are used to obtain higher resolution than conventional radar, improving the ability to recognize surface targets.
Conventional radar operates at microwave and ultrahigh frequencies that propagate in straight lines like light rays; consequently, they cannot ordinarily detect objects beyond the Earth’s horizon. Because high-frequency waves reflect from the ionosphere, over-the-horizon radars have been built to operate in this region.
Radio sensors
Radio receivers can be used to detect and locate enemy radio. Enemy radars can be located in much the same way. Messages can be intercepted. This form of warning has been combated by radio silence and by spoofing, the transmission of signals intended to deceive. In 1967 the Israelis transmitted voluminous radio messages from empty airfields to hide the fact that aircraft had been moved to other locations.
Radio direction finders can be used to locate nuclear bursts, because the explosion generates a large amount of energy in the radio frequency region.
Acoustic techniques
While electromagnetic waves do not propagate well under water, acoustic waves do and can be used to detect submerged submarines. These detection systems, called sonar, may intercept propeller or other noise generated by the submarine or may send out sounds and receive echoes from the submarine hull. Sonar devices can be operated aboard surface ships, aboard submarines, on floating sonobuoys, or suspended by cables from helicopters and dunked in the ocean.
Sonar systems are limited in range by attenuation (weakening) of the sound energy in water, bending caused by temperature differences in water layers, and extraneous noises, including reflections from the sea bottom.
Acoustic receivers are also used on land in sensors deployed near trails to detect the presence of personnel or vehicles along roads. The sounds are sent by radio to listening posts. Acoustic sensors are also used in monitoring nuclear explosions.
Seismic detectors
Seismic detectors—as well as underground acoustic detectors called geophones—are used in sensors for infiltration and vehicle detection. Both types must be used, since either alone can yield false signals caused by the movement of animals.
Magnetic detectors
Sensitive magnetic detectors (magnetometers), flown in aircraft over the sea, are used to detect submarines because the large metallic mass of the submarine hull disturbs the earth’s magnetic field. Buried on land, magnetometers are used to detect the passage of vehicles.
Nuclear detectors
Underground nuclear explosions are detected by sensitive seismometers. To increase the sensitivity and reject natural earth tremors, seismometers are often used in large arrays extending for hundreds of miles.
For atmospheric or space explosions, radio-pulse receivers and light flash and acoustic detectors are used, as well as devices to measure fallout. Aircraft and rockets can be used to collect radioactive debris, while high-altitude satellites carry detectors for gamma rays and other emissions.
Chemical sensors
Concealed chemical sensors, sensitive to minute amounts of body products, are capable of detecting personnel from short distances.
Future developments
Certain trends can be seen in sensor development for future warning systems. Infrared detectors of higher sensitivity and resolution are being developed. Higher-powered and smaller lasers will aid night warning systems. These and other lines of research, centred on lighter weight and more efficient optics and on more efficient detectors, should result in much cheaper systems with resolution approaching visual sensors. Perhaps most important are improvements in the resolution and brightness of the display—the chief limitation of most night viewing systems.
Photography has already reached an advanced state of technology, yet improvements in resolution are being actively pursued. Lightweight optics, more sensitive and fine-grained film, film that can be developed quickly by heat, and better compensation for the motion of the aircraft are some of the areas where photography can be improved.
Developments in large ground radars centre around the phased array radar having electronically steered beams. The beams must be computer-controlled. Moving target discrimination and Doppler processing are built out of digital circuitry as used in digital computers. This permits sensitive discrimination and rapid response.
The advent of the transistor and solid-state microcircuits is making small radars for infantrymen and tank operators possible. The miniature components and high reliability of these devices makes extremely complex and sophisticated circuitry possible.
Airborne radar is in its early stages of development. Side-looking Doppler-processing radar has already yielded high resolution, but not quite as good as conventional photography. Developments in progress indicate that soon images comparable to photographic images will be obtained from airborne radar. Imperfections now common in radar imagery should be removed as a result of present research.
A great deal of effort in several countries has reduced the vulnerability of radars to electronic countermeasures; at the same time, however, similar improvements in electronic jamming and deception have taken place.
Nuclear propulsion enables submarines to remain submerged and escape detection by radar. This, plus its increased speed, makes the nuclear submarine a formidable threat. To combat this, sonar sensors for detection of submarines are now being formed into arrays. This increases the sensitivity and rejects extraneous noise, especially important in regions of turbulence.
The search for more sensitive systems of detection will go on. Measurement of the temperature change in the water in which a submarine lies and the magnetic anomaly observable when it is under the water are two directions in which study is being pursued. A range of such measurements may become possible. Testing of laser beams for underwater recognition capability has been proceeding for some time. The problem is extremely difficult, water being a medium quite different from air, and much work will be needed to overcome the obstacles.
The subject is closely linked with the study of undersea conditions generally; that is, oceanography. American efforts dwarf those of any other Western nation, though France, a pioneer in undersea exploration, is active. Underwater acoustic navigation enables ships to be used for missile or satellite tracking. Underwater communication over very long distances is essential for the control of nuclear submarines, to make the most of their almost unlimited radius of operation.
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.
