4 ms·
Not really. The opsec was poor; the aircraft had been using the same ingress/egress routes, so the SAM batteries knew where to look. That helps tremendously. Al
by greedo 9y ago
Not really. The opsec was poor; the aircraft had been using the same ingress/egress routes, so the SAM batteries knew where to look. That helps tremendously. Also, the F-117 has to open it's bomb bay to release its weapon. When it does so, it increases it's radar return dramatically, if only for a very short period of time. This helped the Serbians a lot.
And passive radar isn't a thing. There's passive radio sensors, that can theoretically detect a transmitter, but frequency hopping etc make that tough.
- KaiserPro 9y agoPassive radar is a thing, because I use it. it works by using known radio sources (ie tv transmitters) which has the advantage of being powerful , continuous and reasonably unique signal pattern (for timing) radio sniffing is where you listen for the aircraft directly, and there are a number of offerings on that front too. Phased array antenna with SDR front ends, are smashing bits of kit. now frequency hopping spread spectrum means you need more DSP to find the signal, but its still there. In fact it provides nice timing signals because they hop frequency so much. There is more, but thats for another time In theory the frequency hopping can be random, but that requires a shared random source, which is hard to sync.
- greedo 9y agoThat's not really radar though. Radar systems have a dedicated transmitter that broadcasts. Phased array radars have transmitters as well. What you're describing is more akin to ESM. Conflating the two definitions diminishes both. It's like when submarine movies depict sonar using a hydrophone without a transmitter; that's passive compared to real sonar that creates a ping. Passive and active are both valuable in their own regimes, but they're not the same.