"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