Radar Satellites
Satellites have been carrying radars for at least four decades. One of the earliest was the Soviet RORSAT, an ocean surveillance radar that was used to track NATO maritime force movements at sea. By 1995 the first meteorological radars were deployed to support knowledge of weather conditions and climate changes. During the last two decades signal and data processing technologies have advanced in leaps and bounds. A little more recently these processes have seen improvements in packaging and protection from unwanted radiation. The result is that radars now exist in remarkably small solution, emitting very low power levels yet achieving high quality with refined positional accuracy, which has enabled their use of microwave systems ion weapons. Coupled with global positioning systems, this has produced weapons with remarkable hitting accuracy.
The active se nsors of these new autonomous weapon systems are to be found in the NATO designated I-Band, that is between 8 and 10 GHz, a wavelength of approximately 10cms, but increasingly newer systems are emerging in J-band, between 15 and 18 GHz. The latest Russian radar that appears to be an ocean surveillance system, for tracking its supposed enemies, is called NEITRON, otherwise known at Cosmos 2553, with the international designation 2022-011A. It is registered as NORAD object 51511 and was launched on 5thFebruary 2022. Indeed, there are now approximately 1400 different radars in space serving a wide range of civil, commercial, environmental, scientific and military purposes and the number is increasing daily.
Jan24
