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Originally posted by pteridine
Flyovers of carriers were common during the cold war but in the open ocean NO carrier group was unaware of approaching aircraft. There are many photos of Bear's flying over a carrier with USN escort aircraft. F4 Phantom's would sit down on the air flow coming over a Bear wing for the photo-op and the Bear pilots would get really nervous about that move. Gotta love them Navy zoomies.
The U.S. Air Force's over-the-horizon-backscatter (OTH-B) air defense radar system is by several criteria the largest radar system in the world. Six one-million-watt OTH radars see far beyond the range of conventional microwave radars by bouncing their 5-28-MHz waves off the ionosphere, an ionized layer about 200 km above the earth. It was developed over 25 years at a cost of $1.5 billion to warn against Soviet bomber attacks when the planes were still thousands of miles from US air space.
In 1970, Air Force Rome Air Development Center [RADC] engineers developed and constructed components for a frequency modulation/continuous wave (FM/CW) radar capable of detecting and tracking objects at over-the-horizon ranges. The radar installation and evaluation was accomplished on 15 September, while flight tests of a Beverage array antenna were completed on 30 September. On 30 October 1970 the radar and the Beverage array were integrated and operated as a single system for the first time.
The prototype was built in Maine, with the transmitter at Moscow Air Force Station [45°08'14"N 69°48'07W] and the receiver at Columbia Air Force Station [44°47'42"N 67°48'41"W]. Experimental transmissions from the Maine site covered an arc from 16.5° to 76.5° and from 900 to 3,300 km in range. Initial testing was conducted from June 1980 to June 1981. GE Aerospace (now Lockheed Martin Ocean, Radar and Sensor Systems) in received a contract in mid-1982 for full-scale development of the program.
Over the Horizon Backscatter radar was developed to detect approaching Soviet bombers while they were still thousands of miles out over the Pacific Ocean. However, the west coast facility was never put into operation because the Cold War ended just as it was being brought on line. A simliar facility on the east coast was built prior to this one and had been operational for several years.
In 1946 Soviet scientist and designer N.I. Kabanov proposed a concept of Over-the-Horizon radar that could detect airplanes on a range of 3000 kilometers from radar facility. In 1949 an experimental Soviet OTH Radar, called "Veyer" was created. During various tests, the facility successfully detected launches of early Soviet ballistic missiles on a range of 2500 kilometers from OTH Radar. Several OTH radar systems were deployed starting in the 1950s and 60s as part of early warning radar systems, but these have generally been replaced by airborne early warning systems instead. OTH radars have recently been making something of a "comeback", as the need for accurate long-range tracking becomes less important with the ending of the cold war, and less-expensive ground based radars are once again being looked at for roles such as maritime reconnaissance and drug enforcement.
Much of the early research into OTH systems was carried out under the direction of Dr. William J. Thaler at the Naval Research Laboratory; The work was dubbed "Project Teepee" (Thaler's project). Their first experimental system, MUSIC (Multiple Storage, Integration, and Correlation), became operational in 1955 and was able to detect rocket launches 600 miles away at Cape Canaveral, and nuclear explosions in Nevada at 1,700 miles. A greatly improved system, a testbed for an operational radar, was later built in 1961 as MADRE (Magnetic-Drum Radar Equipment) at Chesapeake Bay. As the names imply, both systems relied on the comparison of returned signals stored on magnetic drums, then the only high-speed storage systems available.
The first truly operational development was an Anglo-American system known as Cobra Mist. Built starting in the late 1960s, Cobra Mist used an enormous 10 MW transmitter and could detect aircraft over the western USSR from its location in Suffolk. When the system started testing in 1972, however, an unexpected source of noise proved to render it unusable. They eventually abandoned the site in 1973, the source of the noise never having been identified.
The Soviets were also working on similar systems during this time, and started operation of their own experimental system in 1971. This was followed shortly thereafter by the first operational system, known in the west as Steel Yard, which started operation in 1976.
Originally posted by Zaphod58
Yes, they had problems with unexpected noise in the 1960s and 1970s when they were DEVELOPING them. If you bothered to read any but the wiki link you would have read about how in the 1980s when they developed better noise filters, they worked MUCH better than earlier versions. But no, of course not, you could be IN the radar watching the screen and still not believe it.
Btw I love how you IGNORE the other two pages, one of which is one of the better military pages out there, to pick at wiki. Typical.
[edit on 11/2/2008 by Zaphod58]
Originally posted by safteynet
I think alot of the comments were on the mark. Russian stuff is always overrated and what we expect turns out to be junk. I agree let them think how great their attempt was, also the Brits are not as full of James Bond hardware as holywood would have us beleive someone was probily sleeping at their terminal or revitted to a fantastic game of cricket.