4 ms·

Right, primary radars designed for 0.5m² radar cross section aren't going to see these things. Especially if they're 3d-maneuvering like mad. You need very diff

Right, primary radars designed for 0.5m² radar cross section aren't going to see these things. Especially if they're 3d-maneuvering like mad. You need very different radars for drone tracking and I'm not sure the US's radar infra has caught up. Even less on civilian surveillance mission's.

petee 5y ago
Perhaps not civilian, but that floating radar the Air Force has can see a softball across the country, I have trouble believing that there isn't an installation within range that wasn't able to track it - leads me to think if the military can track it, but the police weren't given help, then its likely a military craft.
- jpace121 5y ago
  More likely no one on the Air Force side that was involved actually had access to that.
- jcrawfordor 5y ago
  The SBX is perhaps the most sophisticated long-range radar the United States possesses, and testing has cast doubt on whether it can even reliably detect missiles, the application it was built for. It's pretty much still considered in testing and not an operational piece of equipment despite being 15 years old. Long-range radar is a really hard problem, the working models are so expensive than the USAF and FAA struggle to afford to install them, and the military has a long history of being, uh, optimistic about the capabilities of their radar equipment when talking to the public. Saying they can detect a softball over the horizon and then failing to detect a widebody jet at seven yards is pretty much the history of the Missile Defense Agency in a nutshell. For air space surveillance purposes, the FAA and USAF share their radar network, because neither can really afford to have their own. The radars are bespoke, mostly built by Raytheon, and replaced very infrequently (many are hitting 30 years old) due to the high cost. They struggle with detecting light aircraft and anything below 15k feet or so, which is why we need to use secondary radar for ATC purposes. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on how you look at it), this is basically the only general airspace surveillance measure in the US short of getting a fighter in the air to use its targeting radar.
  - touisteur 5y ago
    Well raytheon isn't the only provider of psr systems, just in the US. The economics of primary surveillance radars is strange. Reliable service (the war on nines), robust filtering of false alarm (even tough multi-sensor ATC trackers have made huge strides...) more and more requirements on the 'high speed + maneuvering' kinematics (replace mil psr radars in some missions) and in the 'slow or static small rcs' (drones mostly but also helps). Processing latency is getting squeezed to 'almost impossible with COTS HW' levels and regulatory requirements only increase like mad. But you're only selling & installing what, at most 100 a year? Good luck recouping any R&D. The entry in such a market is hard too, as ATC operators are conservative as hell, and Chesterton's fence tends to be respected a bit religiously by customers.
- touisteur 5y ago
  Yeah, softball (not reflecting) across the country doesn't seem very real nor useable.
- touisteur 5y ago
  The US have a huge territory, even near sprawling cities and the looong borders, and primary surveillance radars capable of seeing and tracking that kind of targets, even for military applications are not installed everywhere. You can't, too expensive in so many ways. You're not going to see those targets with long range military surveillance radars either, maybe in the first 10-20kms, maybe. That is the actual problem with drones. Easy to build, very hard to detect with actual infrastructure. Whomever finds a way to track them on the 'cheap' is gonna make a buck. Even if you made actual, existing radars, able to track them (which would be a tall-order) it won't be on the whole range and it won't be reliable, because some of those things maneuver like crazy. Say good bye to your clean 2d/3d-with-realistic-aerodynamics Kalman filters and say hi to very high rates of false alarm...

petee 5y ago

Perhaps not civilian, but that floating radar the Air Force has can see a softball across the country, I have trouble believing that there isn't an installation within range that wasn't able to track it - leads me to think if the military can track it, but the police weren't given help, then its likely a military craft.

jpace121 5y ago
More likely no one on the Air Force side that was involved actually had access to that.
jcrawfordor 5y ago
The SBX is perhaps the most sophisticated long-range radar the United States possesses, and testing has cast doubt on whether it can even reliably detect missiles, the application it was built for. It's pretty much still considered in testing and not an operational piece of equipment despite being 15 years old. Long-range radar is a really hard problem, the working models are so expensive than the USAF and FAA struggle to afford to install them, and the military has a long history of being, uh, optimistic about the capabilities of their radar equipment when talking to the public. Saying they can detect a softball over the horizon and then failing to detect a widebody jet at seven yards is pretty much the history of the Missile Defense Agency in a nutshell. For air space surveillance purposes, the FAA and USAF share their radar network, because neither can really afford to have their own. The radars are bespoke, mostly built by Raytheon, and replaced very infrequently (many are hitting 30 years old) due to the high cost. They struggle with detecting light aircraft and anything below 15k feet or so, which is why we need to use secondary radar for ATC purposes. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on how you look at it), this is basically the only general airspace surveillance measure in the US short of getting a fighter in the air to use its targeting radar.
- touisteur 5y ago
  Well raytheon isn't the only provider of psr systems, just in the US. The economics of primary surveillance radars is strange. Reliable service (the war on nines), robust filtering of false alarm (even tough multi-sensor ATC trackers have made huge strides...) more and more requirements on the 'high speed + maneuvering' kinematics (replace mil psr radars in some missions) and in the 'slow or static small rcs' (drones mostly but also helps). Processing latency is getting squeezed to 'almost impossible with COTS HW' levels and regulatory requirements only increase like mad. But you're only selling & installing what, at most 100 a year? Good luck recouping any R&D. The entry in such a market is hard too, as ATC operators are conservative as hell, and Chesterton's fence tends to be respected a bit religiously by customers.
touisteur 5y ago
Yeah, softball (not reflecting) across the country doesn't seem very real nor useable.
touisteur 5y ago
The US have a huge territory, even near sprawling cities and the looong borders, and primary surveillance radars capable of seeing and tracking that kind of targets, even for military applications are not installed everywhere. You can't, too expensive in so many ways. You're not going to see those targets with long range military surveillance radars either, maybe in the first 10-20kms, maybe. That is the actual problem with drones. Easy to build, very hard to detect with actual infrastructure. Whomever finds a way to track them on the 'cheap' is gonna make a buck. Even if you made actual, existing radars, able to track them (which would be a tall-order) it won't be on the whole range and it won't be reliable, because some of those things maneuver like crazy. Say good bye to your clean 2d/3d-with-realistic-aerodynamics Kalman filters and say hi to very high rates of false alarm...