Radar from the 60s

"TMOliver" wrote in message
...
"Charles Talleyrand" vented spleen or mostly
mumbled...

How good was shipborne radar in the 60s against a 2003 airforce? For
example, could a 1964 ship detect an incoming modern strike before the
explosions began in the face of modern ACM.

I ask both because I'm curious about the past and because there are
navies out there using old-fashioned technology.



60s era air search radars were certainly well able to detect a/c at the
same ranges as current gadgets, although antenna design limited altitude
performance. Operators were certainly trained or experienced to provide a
higher level of "interpretation" than is required today. Certainly,
today's stealthy and semi-stealthy a/c would provide substantial detection
problems, but in some attitudes, A4s were stealthier than you might
imagine.

Obviously, low altitude/high speed missiles wpuld have been a problem then
(and are so now). Having nothing to shoot at them then, it hardly
mattered
until Phalanx/CIWS came aboard.

The fire control radars of the 60s certainly lagged behind current
versions, but I suspect that the biggest gap was not "radar" but the
capacity to process, track and provide FC solutions, a "computer" problem.
We simply could not handle data at rates a 100 times less than today's
equipment.

TMO

I have to agree. Information processing was the really big shortcoming of
the 60 era radar. You can't argue with some of its successes though. One US
cruiser setting off N.Vietnam shot down two MiG from over 65 miles (105+ km)
with RIM-8 Talos SAMS.

Red