Tomahawk Cruise Missile Able To Hit A Moving Target (Ship)

But a missile can not lock on that far away from a ship. In general unaided a ship can only fire a missile at a known target for a distance of around 10 miles.

That is because of the effect of horizon. They are unable to fire at something they can not see, therefore they generally rely upon an estimate from another source (say a drone or aircraft) then fire at it's suspected or anticipated location.

This goes right back to the area of striking a target in 3 dimensions instead of 2. If the terget of a ship is over around 10 miles it simply can not be seen.

Bow engine? Stern Engine? Long obsolete terms when it comes to naval technology. In fact, the engines in modern ships do not even "turn" the props as they used to. They are just large power plants, and the props are turned by electric motors.

The modern advent of "hybrid cars" is something the Navy has been doing for half a century.

Sorry, Once a century?

Well, let's see. We had hundreds of them between 1900 and 1945.

And since then, just some of the bigger ones:

In 1948 you had the Battle of Kinmen, when the PRC tried to invade one of the islands of the ROC. After landing the invaders were discovered, and a land battle followed. The ROC Navy brought in gunships which then destroyed the landing craft, and kept any further landing craft from approaching.

There were about a dozen naval engagements between the North Korean and US-South Korean-UN ships during the Korean War.

In 1948 there was the battle of Arafura Sea, where several Indonesian torpedo boats tried to land an incursion force on Dutch New Guinea and were discovered. 1 Dutch Destroyer and 3 Indonesian PT boats had an hours long running gun battle, where all 3 Indonesian ships were incapacitated or destroyed.

Between 1964 and 1972 there were many engagements between the US and North Vietnamese navies.

The 1968 USS Pueblo Incident, involving 2 NK sub chasers, 4 PT boats, and MIG fighters to capture a US spy ship.

1971 saw several naval engagements during the Indio-Pakistan War.

1974 Battle of the Paracel Islands. 6 (possibly Chinese ships tangled with 4 South Vietnamese ships when they seized the Paracel islands.

In 1980, Operation Morvarid was a force of 8 Iranian ships were involved in taking out Iraqi installations was engaged by a force of 12 Iraqi ships.

I should not even have to bring up the 1982 Falklands War.

The 1986 Gulf of Sidra battle. After Libya fired at US aircraft in the Gulf of Sidra, the Navy advanced. After that a non-engagement dogfight ensued before the Libyan air forces withdrew. Then a flotilla of Libyan ships advanced on the US forces and targeted them with their fire control RADAR. The US responded and a series of air and surface missile strokes destroyed 2 Libyan ships and damaged at least 2 others before they withdrew.

1988, Operation Praying Mantis was between US and Iranian Naval forces. As part of the "Tanker War", after Iranian mines damaged a US frigate that was escorting US flagged Kuwaiti tankers. By the end of that engagement half of the Iranian navy was sunk or damaged.

1991, the Battle of Bubiyan, where 22 ships of the Iraqi Navy attacked a combined force of US, UK, and Canadian warships. By the end of that rather lopsided battle, 21 Iraqi ships were sunk.

1999, the First Battle of Yeonpyeong was one of many Naval engagements between North and South Korea. It was so popular that there was a sequel in 2002.

There were a great many smaller engagements since WWII though.

And Exocet is a rather obsolete missile today, against any opponent that has even 30 year old anti-missile technology. It was only as successful as it was in the 1980's against ships that either did not have missile defense systems, or who had them turned off.

In 1991 Iraq fired a ground launched Chinese Silkworm missile at the USS Missouri. It was intercepted enroute by a 1970's era Sea Dart fired from the HMS Gloucester.

As for those photographs, it has to be understood that the ship you are showing hit by an Exocet was not a warship at all. That is the Atlantic Conveyor, a RO-RO container ship that was requisitioned by the Royal Navy and turned into an improvised aircraft carrier. It had none of the defense systems, let alone armor and damage prevention systems of an actual warship. And it was struck with 2 such missiles.

 

The other picture however was a warship and it suffered identical damage.
The hull superheats.

 

OK, you provided 4 photos, 3 were Exocet hits. The Atlantic Conveyor, HMS Sheffield, and the HMS Glamorgan.

Now remember what I said about having air defenses. I already discussed the AC, which had none.

The HMS Sheffield, a Type 42 Destroyer. Commissioned in 1975. Her air defenses were not active at the time, and due to electronic issues the aircraft and missile were not even detected until it impacted. And if not for the fact that they were still heading into a war zone, it could have been saved. It was hit on 4 May, and did not sink until 10 May. But resources could not be spared to bring her back to port.

The HMS Glamorgan was a 1960's era County class Destroyer. That ship had not been designed with anti-missile systems, and only had a poorly implemented GWS-22 for anti-missile use. With the profile of the ship at the time of launch the decision was made to turn away from the missile instead of coming broadside to it in an attempt to engage it. After the war she was refitted, participated in the 1984 operations in Lebanon, then sold to Chile where she served until 1998.

So once again, nothing contradicts what I already stated. None of those ships had a fully functional missile defense system. 1 had none, 1 had one that was inactive, 1 had one that could barely be called as such (it's missiles were intended for anti-air and anti-ship uses).

Oh, and the bottom image? A 1980's era Pohang class corvette. That is a remarkably tiny ship, you would have to go all the way back to the 1950's era Claud Jones class Destroyer Escorts to find a US warship of similar size and displacement. Roughly on par with a 1970's to 1980's era large Coast Guard Cutter.

Do not think that a more modern US warship of much larger size and displacement would be so heavily damaged.

 

Yes, both the other two ships had anti missile defences and were still destroyed by missiles.
Not really a great advert for them.
I agree that systems vaunted as "anti-missile" are in fact anti-aircraft missiles.
In these specific examples, they failed to shoot down any planes either.
Chaff proved to be the most effective anti missile defence in that war.


My point here is that the nature of a missile strike is that it super heats the entire hull and that no "critical hit" is required. Hiding the engine room to misdirect attack would be rather pointless vs missile or torpedo strike.

 

No, they did not have any missile defenses. The SAM of that era was not able to track and hit missiles with any degree of reliability. Roughly on par with the first generation PATRIOT.

And chaff was the most effective because that is all they had. No CIWS systems, nothing for missiles other than evade.

There were several issues with how the British conducted that operation. They had a very primitive link system to combine all of their RADAR systems. But it was buggy, and frequently did not actually share the information. There was no CIWS. And finally, the worst damage was at San Carlos ("Bomb Alley"). That was where they all grouped together in a narrow channel, with mountains on 3 sides. The Argentines would fly low over the mountains and appear right on top of the ships at anchor before they could bring their anti-air weapons into play. That was an even worse situation than what the US faced at Pearl harbor.

Trust me on this, I have more than a little bit of an idea of what I am talking about here. In case you did not realize by the fact I could identify the ships you were talking about without your listing them.

And no, a missile does not "super heat the entire hull".

As my evidence, I present another ship hit by an Exocet missile. It also had it's air-defenses powered down, but was of a later design (1981 OHP class Frigate). The USS Stark.

 

I can't trust you.
One minute you say ships have anti missile systems, the next you say they do not.
This flip flopping does not fill me with trust for your appraisals.

Then you said they weren't warships but all of them were. 2 of them clearly custom built to be so.

And yes in the three examples I gave, missiles super heated the hulls and the damage is clearly demonstrated in the photo's provided.

Thanks for your contrary example of the USS Stark. I'll file it away under the exception that proves the rule.

With regards to Sea Dart/Sea Wolf and Patriot yes, they are the very same technology. It got sold on.

In true Patriot style, the only thing it ever shot down was a friendly aircraft.

 

OK, now you really are outclassed. Let me school you in a bit.

PATRIOT of that era was no different than Sea Dart. Neither of them were any kind of "missile defense", they were "air defense", with the exception of larger size cruise missiles. They did not have the capability to reliably hit any kind of missile other than say a Tomahawk.

And while today air defense and missile defense is largely the same thing, 35+ years ago they were not. At that time the only real anti-missile system was CIWS. That would not be developed into other missiles for years.

Now since you mentioned it, at the time of the Gulf War, the prototype anti-missile software for PATRIOT was developed to a point where it could be deployed in the field. And actually there were quite a few hits even during that campaign. However, the missiles used were almost completely incapable of shooting down a missile. They could intercept, but rarely destroyed. That once again is because they were made for taking out aircraft, not missiles.

The real use of PATRIOT as missile defense had to wait until the mid-1990's when the PAC-2 system was fielded. Now all the hardware and software was in place to reliably hit missiles. In addition the GEM missiles were now in place that were actually designed to shoot down missiles. By the time of the 2003 war, this had been supplemented with the PAC-3 system.

This was a true missile defense system. A smaller more agile missile, that was kinetic kill and not a proximity charge. In 2003 there were 9 ballistic missiles launched by Iraq into areas that were defended by PATRIOT. And all 9 missiles were intercepted and destroyed.

As far as the friendly fire incidents, there were 2 of them. And in both cases the PATRIOT crews were found to have done nothing wrong. In both cases (1 an RAF Tornado, the other a Navy F-1 the pilots were not on an approved flight path, and their IFF was either not working, inoperable, or turned off (at that time a lot of pilots did not trust the IFF unit).

Care to keep going in circles about this? Or are you going to just keep spinning this kind of nonsense? I am sure MMC and Apache by now are rather tired of me trying to school individuals over and over again on how air defense, missile defense, and things like the PATRIOT missile work.

 

Depends on many things. Imagine a missile with a centimeter radar, it can lock on the tip of enemy mast. This means that you calculate radio horizon not from the alt of the missile, but from combined altitude of the target + alt of the missile, this means the horizon will double or triple. One centimeter radar is expensive and complicated, true, so normal missile should lock on the upper massive structure or so.

But why are we discussing unaided? Hydrophone should give you precise angle on enemy cruiser from like 50km? (I am guessing, from a towed array of a sub)
Normally you have your own helicopter to expand your radio horizon.
Do not forget about those guys in the radio room, they can direct you to enemy long band radio chatter even when the target is beyond visual, they can try to detect enemy radar emissions.

That is why you should never think 2d
If you are uncertain of enemy position simply increase altitude of missile approach and search trajectory.
No one prohibits you from pop-up strategy, jump up, observe, jump down.
Granit can deploy a missile from the pack to do high alt observation and target distribution for the entire pack via datalink. Do not know, but why not to adopt this technology to modern sea skimmers.

I do not think this is useful for all ships, you do loose energy and effectiveness this way, if you have no need for extra maneuverability why bother? As far as I understand Burkes main turbine turns the shafts, not the generator.

Not so sure… Porsche installed all electric chassis on his Tiger/Ferdinand in 1942-43, navy really had an all electric ship by then?

 

No, it could not. Because then it would literally be locking onto any sea bird or anything else around. It would be so damned "far sighted" that the system would literally overload itself.

And it would still only have a range of about 10 miles, because of the horizon. No matter how small the aperture is of the RADAR, it still can not get around that.

Because that is not RADAR, that is SONAR. And it has it's own little peculiarities. Like thermoclines and salt water variances. Plus, a missile can not use SONAR. A missile that uses SONAR is called a "torpedo".

Actually, in most situations the military uses burst communications to help avoid that. That is what we call "EMCON", or "Emissions Control". So the enemy does NOT pick you up because of radio traffic. Many ships now use directed antennas where instead of transmitting into the ether to reach each other transmit to a satellite and it rutes the signal back.

And that still only gives you general bearing and distance, nothing more. Think of it like this. Go out into the middle of a football field in the middle of the night and close your eyes.

Then have 10 people stand about 50 yards from you. You have to throw a baseball and hit one of them based only on their talking voices. They can not give names, and 10 people that sound exactly like each other. Good luck hitting the one person you want to hit.

And remember, the enemy has AWAC and other systems out at a distance to detect such threats. The more and higher that the missile pops up, the greater and greater chance that it is going to be detected long before it gets within range.

You keep shooting in the dark here, and missing. Even with conventional RADAR there is a lot of clutter and backscatter. Whenever we st up our RADAR in a new location, we had to spend about an hour or so before it was fully operational tuning in things that would "confuse" it. Such as buildings, trees, mountains, even freeways because we had to tell it to ignore certain returns.

Otherwise if there was a freeway 3 miles away, it would be trying to warn us that every time a truck passed there was a low flying helicopter out there.

For the ground objects we called this VSLB, or Visual Search Lower Boundaries. Then for any obstructions it was called "masking". This way the hits we were getting would be "squelched out" and not make us constantly think something was flying around out there.

We also squelched out other things that were too small of a return, or moving at too slow of a speed. That way every bird, thick cloud of dust, or other random object would not set off the alarms.

Yes, the RADAR does pick up things like birds. Oh, not a sparrow no, but a large flock of ducks, oh hell yea. Or large birds, like eagles and vultures they pick up. It is the processing system that we have tune out such small and slow objects because those are not threats.

That is one of the very principals that stealth works by in the first place. It is completely impossible to make an object like an airplane "invisible". But what you do is make the RADAR return so small that the system ends up tuning it out as background noise or random backscatter signals.

That is how they were able to hit our F-117 in former Yugoslavia. They had RADAR systems scattered all around, with the squelch turned all the way down, and human observers telling them exactly where to look visually. I am sure it was absolute hell for those operators because they were literally seeing everything going on, and they themselves had to separate out the target from all of the other random clutter that the RADAR saw.

Like a tweaker who had just taken a huge hit of meth, and telling them to go into a snow covered field and find the 3" snowball where there were 4" snowballs lying everywhere. Absolute information overload.

 

I am talking about Ka bandwidth (1.5-0.75cm) radar that is operational for ages (like Apache Longbow). Mapping, dopler filtering, no end of solutions that will give you almost zero problems in target selection. Now, it is overkill, it is not needed to lock on a ship mast from 20miles, what I am saying is that the task is not a technical problem at all.

Do you understand that there is no 10 miles hard pressed limit? The radio horizon depends on combined alt of the target and radar, can be 1 mile, can be 10, can be a 100miles.

Discussion of unaided long range launch is like a discussion of long range sniper competition of blind-deaf-one legged shooters. The ship has a long list of methods to help to aim the missile, I do not understand why we should discuss the unaided launch only.
In this particular case I am not talking about sonar, I am not talking about torpedoes, I am talking about passive target acquisition via hydrophone or towed hydrophone or towed hydrophone array. And how this method allows to aid an over-horizon missile launch.

True, the method will work only if the target is careless, when someone is using radio to land a helicopter, when the target is participating in land oriented operation and has to maintain radio contact with shore forces, basically all cases when the target breaks silence willingly or unwillingly.

No issue, none. I will detect general direction and fire my self guided image recognizing super sonic, baseball-field skimming, baseball balls in a wide ark with overlapping search envelopes. Then, I will listen for SOS signals and search and rescue chatter, and fire second salvo on survivors. Afterwards I will turn to run away and raise my baseball radar equipped helicopter (that is if I have no drones), it should acquire visual on the fires and smoke, and it should have radar returns on surviving ships (I mean those weird people that talk, in the night, in a very dark baseball field, around me). I am likely to loose my helicopter due to AA, but its datalink might be able to reveal some survivors. I will disengage on WEP turbines, as fast as I can, and unload rest of my missiles, I mean base balls, on those. If for some reason, I am still alive, I will claim to hit and sink 15 to 20 enemy ships, hoping for a medal, or at least, that the doctors of the mental facility that I am kept in, will give me some more of those wonderful pills that brought me here

Absolutely. But I am not shooting in the dark, each time my missile drops down below radar visual, the enemy will loose AA lock on my missile, but the antiship missile will not. With every cycle it will correct its course (including homing on a jammer source or AA radar source). Element of surprise will be lost, that’s the price of course that I might choose to accept, it is strictly for me to decide.

Ground based, yes. Sea based – not so much trouble at all.

Well, the story I choose to believe is that it was USAF planners fault. One of the versions tell, that F117 was flying the very same rout in the very same time, day by day. That the missile battery was brought there to do the by-the-book AA ambush that worked perfectly well. The battery was located almost below the flight path and had zero trouble locating and tracking the F117 with zero obstacles. But that’s only one of the versions.

 

And Ka band RADAR is very short sighted. It's range is only about 5 miles.

So yes, now that you have given me a bit more, try looking into the RADAR you just suggested we use. It is even more shortsighted then more traditional S and X band RADARs.

For a fire control RADAR, yes there it. It is a direct line of sight to the target, that is unimpeded by any obstructions.

Be they buildings, thick grove of trees, mountains, or the surface of the planet (water or ground).

The RADAR signal has to travel from the transmitter, travel in a direct line to the target, then be reflected back in a straight line to be seen. That is why you can not see a target on RADAR that is behind a hill.

You are shooting in the dark here, big time! You are almost throwing random bits and pieces out, as if you think they mean something.

In a wartime condition we are not careless, and neither is our enemy.

And RADIO is not needed to land a helicopter. It has never been needed to land a helicopter.

Stop just throwing random things out and thinking they mean something.

Here is the beauty of our newest generation of missiles. They have been gaining the ability to track a target from multiple sources.

So the ship firing the missile does not even need to see the target. Not unlike the smart bombs of 30 years ago which could target something on the ground by following the directions of an operator with a MULE, today a ship can fire a missile and hand over tracking to an airplane. Like an AWAC or fighter..

And our carriers always have AWAC (E-2 Hawkeye at sea, E-3 Sentry if close to land bases) on standby if they are not in the air. Especially if they were to be in hostile territory.

And with service ceilings of 34,000+ feet, the visual horizon for these things is many hundreds of miles.

So stop shooting in the dark.

Yea, actually it has the same problems. A horizon that is constantly changing in pitch, even a horizon that can suddenly move up several meters, then be as flat as a pool table. And there are still birds and the other random artifacts that always cause RADAR operators to go crazy.

Nope, although they had been working hard to lure it back to that location by giving them targets to attack.

No, the original tracking of the airplane was straight out of WWI. People on mountain tops with binoculars. They waited around and reported the movement of the aircraft visually. The RADARS were configured around the target area in a stand-by mode.

And when they reported that the bomb bays were opened, they blasted it with high power tracking RADAR, the kind which is rather long-sighted and not for fire control. Then they basically shot it down when the RADAR profile was the highest.

Like I have been telling people in here for almost a decade, stealth does not mean invisible. Our own PATRIOT systems have detected the F-117 and F-22 both. Even on RADAR a stealth aircraft is not invisible. That should be known if you ever watch some of the raw footage from Baghdad when Operation Desert Storm started.

Tracers suddenly firing off into the night and then missiles, all around the city. Before the F-117s even arrived. They knew they were coming, because the RADAR operators told them they were.

No, stealth does not make aircraft invisible, even to RADAR. But what it does do is make it very hard to detect by the human operators, and sort out from the background clutter.

Remember what I said earlier, about the "squelch" capabilities? Where items below a certain size or at certain speeds are ignored? That is how stealth works. It is detectable, but because it is generally so small (the F-117 for example has a RADAR cross-section of a soda can) the software behind the scenes filters it out. And fire control RADAR needs to have an even better lock on a target.

And designers are aware of the capabilities of the actual tracking packages on most missiles.

Take the PATRIOT PAC-3. The initial tracking information is via a massive Phased Array RADAR system, with a generator that puts out over 300 kilowatts of power. It is literally to dangerous to stand within 100 meters of the thing downrange when it is operational.

That is the RADAR that is used to track and acquire a target.

The launching station has a smaller generator of it's own. Normally operating at 15kw, it runs up and screams at over 30kw when it is actually put in a fire mode. That is needed to spin up the Ka band RADAR in the nose of the missile and sync it with fire control and acquire it's target.

Now we can fire PATRIOT missiles all day long, but not hit an object like an F-117. Because once that PAC-3 missile jumps from the tube, it then essentially becomes blind because it's little Ka band RADAR is not strong enough to track a target like the Phased Array one can.

Which is also on the F-117 shoot the batteries literally were firing blind. They had kludged together a system from various other systems and were firing in a manual mode.

 

Tomahawk ASM. Active guidance. RGM/UGM-109B
The Tomahawk is no slower the Harpoon.

 

Ka band Radars are not short sighted. The centimeter wavelength is more susceptible to absorption by moisture in the air, than longer wavelengths, yes. But there is no such thing as a short sight radar.
The big win of a shortwave radar (apart from resolution) is the ratio of antenna width to radio wave length. The better the ratio, the better gain you will have.
When we are talking about confined space of a missile, where you can install only a small radar antenna, this ratio saves the day. A decimeter radar can easily loose in distance to a centimeter radar because the gain of a sentimeter radar is much better.
We need to solve this case-by-case
For instance Ka band is widely used in earth-satellite-earth communication though the signal has to penetrate the atmosphere twice. And the second time it is relayed based on minimal solar power. But the sawing of weight on the antenna dish and better gain makes it worth.
And I do not suggest using Ka Band radar, I am saying there are no technical issues of detecting a ship mast from 20km!!!

Hills In the ocean? Trees, buildings… People speaking to me in a dark baseball field? Kindergarten level lectures on importance of line of sight for shortwave transmissions and geometry lessons for 8 year olds? You brought it all into our discussion not me. Tell me more about throwing random bits and pieces...

What?

And how do you expect a helicopter carrier to coordinate a beach assault?
And how do you expect a helicopter crew to find their cruiser in any sort of low vis conditions without a radio compass of map positioning?
And how do you expect to do a heli based search and rescue? And how do you see a datalink grid in sub search without a radio? E.t.c.

They are unable now, and It is a question if they will ever be able to swap guidance from an aegis ship to AWACs. Delegating guidance of an AA missile to a fighter is out of question completely. (Well, some day, may be, but not next 10 years and unlikely in next 20, basically you need a new fighter, something like Russian PAKFA with 6 dedicated phased arrays in all directions(if it is true))

We. Are. Discussing. A FAST supersonic missile. Versus. A SLOW, subsonic missile. That is what we are doing in this topic.

Birds are filtered out by the speed, dopler filter. Horizon line is at all times available from accelerometer of gyroscope channel and there is like 0 problems to subtract below horizon reflection. Altitude is all ways there from a radar or laser altimeter channel. And there is no radar operator in a shipkiller missile, so it really has no problems navigating itself. But it seems to me that we are discussing some different things now.

Do not expect to hear much truth on the matter in next decade or so. I saw interviews of three people who claim to make the kill. One of them was MIG21 pilot. A lot is done to obscure the truth.
It is hardly possible to visually identify opening of bomb bays in 8.15pm in March, I say – impossible.
The S125 – has radio command guidance. You cant launch without targeting radar, the targeting antenna controls the missile.
The observation radar does not necessary output more power on the target, it has a wider beam than the targeting radar.
S75-S125 do have visual channels (as far as I remember), used to aim the targeting radar when the observation radar is out. So this part is possible.
But than again, who knows.

 

Actually, it is more about power than space. The missiles have a very short reserve of power available so the RADAR is relatively low powered compared to the larger phased array units.

The hills in an ocean are known as swells. Although they move, they have the same effect on RADAR as hills on the ground.

Also, you can not keep confusing RADAR and radio, they are very different.

RADAR is direct line of sight, radio is not. Radio can take advantage of atmospheric skip, RADAR can not.

And radio is uni-directional, RADAR by definition is bi-directional. That is why RADAR is detectable at over twice the range that it can detect an object. Range of your RADAR unit is 100 miles from an aerial target? That means that the enemy can detect your RADAR at over 200 miles.

But this once again is more of an EMCON topic.

Oh, that is simple. The exact same way that the landing craft coordinate their assault.

OK, here is some "Amphibious Warfare 101 stuff. This is why we assign stages of an operation by a clock, not so much radio signals. Each step for an assault, times are already given to each of the pilots or operators as to when to take certain actions.

It may be for ship gunners to elevate their muzzles and strike farther inland. It will be for the orbiting helicopters to either get into an in line or on line formation and advance to a new location. It will be to have the landing craft do the exact same thing.

Radio signals are rarely given in these instances, it is all by time hash and following the lead units.

Did I ever mention that I attended the Advanced Amphibious Warfare School, in Little Creek, Virginia?

RADAR, not Radio. Helicopters are going to know what ship is in what position. And during peacetime operations the ship is also going to have a transponder. You keep bouncing back and forth between peacetime and wartime operations here.

And aircraft unless they are actually approaching an enemy are not generally worried about EMCON like ships are. They can quickly move away from the threat, ships can not.

Oh nonsense! The AIM-120 AMRAAM has had that capability for over a decade! The launching aircraft can use it's own targeting data, or it can get a downlink of the targeting data from another fighter or an AWAC and then launch it blindly.

Basically, the missile can be launched either fully autonomous ("fire and forget), or it can be launched in a slave mode. In a slave mode, it follows directions given by the launching aircraft. And with the new advanced data-link capabilities it can be targeting data from a third source.

Just like the MULE that our ground forces were using 3 decades ago.

And I also know in the last decade we have been doing a lot of advancement in combining how our various RADAR systems work. 10 years ago I was part of the first operational field exercise where both Army and Marine RADAR systems were combined to make an all-in-one RADAR coverage of a huge area of South-West Arizona.

That was in 2008. And while I no longer work actively in the Air Defense community, I still communicate with many who do. And I know that they have advanced quite a bit beyond that in the last decade. I got a peek into the concept back in 2011 when I spent most of that summer at White Sands on an upgrade project.