Bob Noel wrote in news:ihatessppaamm-
:
In article x86me.6153$Fb.4615@trndny07,
George Patterson wrote:
No, this is a state-of-the-art military radar system.
which military radar is can determine altitude with such
precision?
Edwards AFB is used as a testing and proving ground. As such,
they have radars and optical tracking abilities for following
flight tests in extreme detail. A lot of the footage you see
on The Military Channel (formerly Discovery Wings) of older
aircraft being tested, for example the X planes, was taken
here.
It would not surprise me that they could take a picture of any
aircraft within range and tell you it's position, orientation
and velocity to three decimal places using their radars. It's
their job.
BTW, Edwards was used to help track SpaceShipOne and to confirm
it's record and prize winning altitude.
This article covers the test of a new radar system on SS1...
http://www.edwards.af.mil/archive/20...ive-spads.html
An interesting quote about the radars capabilities...
"Then (the aircraft) will fly by and drop a whole load of
bombs, and this radar can actually see all the individual
bombs, see them spin, see the fins come out, the whole works."
I just did quite a bit of Googling and not surprisingly, didn't
find any exact specifications. But I did see a reference to one
radar having .1 milliradian angle resolution and 20ft distance
resolution. It was described as being a basic radar of lesser
capability.
Then I found mention of imaging radars. I forgot all about
those things. If you think about it, it has to be pretty high
resolution in order to actually make an image using radar returns.
Now that I've been reminded of this, I recall seeing a program
on one of those Discovery like channels that showed the imaging
radar image from a cruise missile, and in it you could even make
out the wires between high voltage towers.
Hope this has been of some help.
Brian
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