4 ms·

Radar is not exactly “new” technology, to your point I wonder why airports are not equipped with one. Shouldn’t break the bank. Plus don’t militaries have rada

by fosk 4y ago

Radar is not exactly “new” technology, to your point I wonder why airports are not equipped with one. Shouldn’t break the bank. Plus don’t militaries have radar anyways for air defense? How is it possible that no radar from multiple countries picked up a silent Boeing 777 flying to nowhere?

lukewrites 4y ago
I think it's most likely that governments with radar in the area don't want to admit they have it.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  I doubt that. Radar is extremely easy to detect. Anyone who wants to know about it will know it's there.
error503 4y ago
Most large airports will definitely have primary radar covering the terminal control area, but the range of these is typically only some 60nm. Primary radar requires relatively a lot of power, and has other issues (e.g. target correlation) that make it of limited use for ATC purposes during enroute flight. If such radars exist, for military purposes for example, ATC may not have access to them as it's not really essential for their work. There are also large coverage gaps over oceans and in remote areas where nobody cares to monitor. These radars would only have a range of a couple hundred nm maximum, so they would not see deep into the Indian Ocean either. So called 'over the horizon' radars also exist, but require truly massive amounts of power, not to mention capital to build, and also have very low spatial resolution. Apparently Australia's $1.8bn system was aimed in the wrong direction at the time of MH370's disappearance, or it might have had some low precision data to contribute.
histriosum 4y ago
There are many answers to your question, but the one that relates most strongly to why there is no radar coverage in the middle of the ocean is that the earth is curved and radar is line of sight.
outworlder 4y ago
> Radar is not exactly “new” technology, to your point I wonder why airports are not equipped with one. Shouldn’t break the bank. But it does break the bank. Radar may not be new tech, but it is still expensive to operate. Even the US is removing radars. To be fair, the US has thousands of airports (and even more small airfields), but it has a huge area to cover. Also, the military angle is covered in the article.
ufmace 4y ago
They did write about the military angle in the article. It seems they saw it and either weren't paying attention or didn't bother to do anything. I guess it would be kind of a pain in the ass for a military primary radar to attempt to correlate every contact with known flights operating normally and to send up interceptors for anything that didn't seem to match. It's not clear if they would even have interceptors at a sufficient readiness level to actually catch a jetliner at cruising speed and altitude near the edge of their coverage.

by fosk 4y ago

lukewrites 4y ago

I think it's most likely that governments with radar in the area don't want to admit they have it.

wkat4242 4y ago
I doubt that. Radar is extremely easy to detect. Anyone who wants to know about it will know it's there.

error503 4y ago

Most large airports will definitely have primary radar covering the terminal control area, but the range of these is typically only some 60nm. Primary radar requires relatively a lot of power, and has other issues (e.g. target correlation) that make it of limited use for ATC purposes during enroute flight. If such radars exist, for military purposes for example, ATC may not have access to them as it's not really essential for their work. There are also large coverage gaps over oceans and in remote areas where nobody cares to monitor. These radars would only have a range of a couple hundred nm maximum, so they would not see deep into the Indian Ocean either. So called 'over the horizon' radars also exist, but require truly massive amounts of power, not to mention capital to build, and also have very low spatial resolution. Apparently Australia's $1.8bn system was aimed in the wrong direction at the time of MH370's disappearance, or it might have had some low precision data to contribute.

histriosum 4y ago

There are many answers to your question, but the one that relates most strongly to why there is no radar coverage in the middle of the ocean is that the earth is curved and radar is line of sight.

outworlder 4y ago

> Radar is not exactly “new” technology, to your point I wonder why airports are not equipped with one. Shouldn’t break the bank. But it does break the bank. Radar may not be new tech, but it is still expensive to operate. Even the US is removing radars. To be fair, the US has thousands of airports (and even more small airfields), but it has a huge area to cover. Also, the military angle is covered in the article.

ufmace 4y ago

They did write about the military angle in the article. It seems they saw it and either weren't paying attention or didn't bother to do anything. I guess it would be kind of a pain in the ass for a military primary radar to attempt to correlate every contact with known flights operating normally and to send up interceptors for anything that didn't seem to match. It's not clear if they would even have interceptors at a sufficient readiness level to actually catch a jetliner at cruising speed and altitude near the edge of their coverage.