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Comparative analysis of radar tech of Pakistan and India

@shuntmaster

Oh nanhi jaan, ground based sensors, the AEW&C plug in some of the gaps depending upon deployment and duration of operations. Will there be gaps, sure but that does not merit your sweeping statement. Now at the moment, yes a multi pronged areal attack from multiple axes can overwhelm their ADGE to quite some extent if one is willing to absorb certain losses, part of the reason why the Sukhois are so banked upon (their legs and not the avionics/radar- not at the moment at least). The point is to furnish your statement with data, he's ( @Oscar ) not expressly stating that you're wrong, just questioning the value of the concerned post- furnish the data (not his previous post) and all will be kosher.

The most help I can do is to provide information at the foundational level of these things, either to clear up misconceptions or to debunk fantastic claims, particularly from the Chinese quarter here.

Reading the article, I hesitate to be generous and call it an 'analysis'. All the author seemed to have done is cite hardware capabilities and some specs, not much in terms of the tactical utility of each piece. Perhaps that is his goal, but if so, then do not call it an 'analysis'. Anyone could do what he did and come to a conclusion, perhaps not the same as his or perhaps the same, but that ease should be enough to discourage the label of 'analysis'. At the very least, he should have give some examples of the tactical usage of each piece and how one side can use one tactical advantage to nullify or even defeat the other side's.

Remember: In a fight, you win not by fighting under your opponent's rules but by forcing him to fight under yours. And cheating is allowed.

An advantage is a rule and one should always strive to simultaneously force one's opponent to fight under one's advantages while avoiding his. Probably he would have come to the same conclusion, that of no clear advantage, but it would have been caveat-ed as no clear tactical advantage due to no clear technical advantage.

That said, even though I hesitate to make any tactical analyses since I do not live over there, do not know the financials of both countries, and do not know the array of each military, I am curious about one tactical aspect...


As highlighted, why is that significant for Pakistan?

For the interested lay readers, there is something called the RADAM algorithm (radar detection of agitated metals)...

Analysis of radar detection of agitated metals (RADAM)

Simply put...The RADAM algorithm searches for opposite but complementary signals that exhibits predictable behaviors inside a virtual boundary. A helo's rotor is an example.

If you are looking at a two-blade rotor while it is in motion (virtual boundary) you will have one blade moving away from you and one blade moving towards you at 180 deg difference/opposite. The dominant component inside the total return will be the Doppler component. If you are looking at a three-blade rotor, you will have blades Doppler components of equal degrees of separation while in motion. A four-blade rotor assembly will have 90 degrees of separation.

Same concept when looking at a wheel. If there are upper spokes, there must be lower spokes and all have equal degrees of Doppler separation.

If you have enough of these signatures, you can compile a library of known rotor assemblies of helos in the world, or truck wheels, or tank tracks, or even jet engines. Which leads back to the question of why did Pakistan bought the GIRAFFE system?

When you go shopping for a radar system, air defense or air traffic control, you enter the market with a highest priority technical capability in mind. For example...If the system is intended for short range air traffic control with short range meaning your airliners are close enough that they are readied for line up instructions for landing, you want a system with higher freq, with shorter pulse repetition, and complex pulse characteristics to help you discriminate various sizes of incoming aircrafts. All of these calculations will be done for you transparently.

But just because you entered the market with a highest technical priority, that does not mean you ignore other capabilities any system can do besides the one capability you want. Flight path projections based upon history is nice to have. So does wind shear alert if such a condition arises unexpectedly. If the system is 'smart' enough, it can even recommend which target should land first based upon certain factors that you decided earlier. You would ask the seller what else can his product do.

Did Pakistan asked the Swede seller specifically about helo detection?

What make helo detection difficult is not the RADAM algorithm. We had to write one in training, even with pseudo-code. But the difficulty here is that helo is usually a low altitude aircraft that often blends in with the background, visually and electromagnetically, making data extraction from the RADAM algorithm problematic. Everything is about the sophistication of data gathering and data extraction methods.

So how capable is this for the GIRAFFE system? Did Pakistan knew about it before asking for more details and purchased it? Or did the Swede seller mentioned it, showed how capable it was, and Pakistan bought it? Either way, it begs the question of what does Pakistan guessed, or heavens forbid know, of the Indian Army's tactical usage of its helo fleet to weigh in on purchasing the system.

When you have to rely on purchasing your defense, intelligence about potential adversaries is even more important than when you are capable of creating your own to tailor to your tactical needs. You are essentially at the mercy of whoever selling a product that allegedly have the capabilities you need/want. You enter the market armed with that intelligence and assess the products offered to you.

Pakistan did not purchased the GIRAFFE with that feature just because it is a nice thing to have but 'I really do not need it.' Not even Saddam Hussein was that stupid and he had a professional to shop for the Iraqi military.

Ergo the reason that I expressed my reservations on terming it as an analysis. Its a bare-bones Wikipedia level comparison with sparse details. The author has missed the woods for the trees. There is, as you pointed out, no information whatsoever about actually employing the various attributes of the system within a scenario or the most likely scenario and no consideration given to the geography of the region (something which you can be excused from knowing but not the author in question).
 
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From your own post:

Again, that post mentioned only the ground systems. You mentioned AEW which are easily capable of monitoring the entire Indo Pak border. Lets do the math for you.. each AEW system that pakistan has averages lets say 350km.. Lets say there are two Erieye systems airborne along with 3 ZDK systems.. that makes 5 systems with a maximum radius of coverage(using circumference length in the most basic of math) say that only 100 degrees of the radar coverage is useful.. then 350*2*pi*100/360 gives you around 600km of circumference that is useful for detection.. the Indo pak border is 2900 km...even with a more modest "straight line" estimate of 400km.. there is still 2000km covered easily by AEW assets alone.. and the gap in ground detection is NOT 2000km.. it is at maximum 800-900 or so in a wartime deployment. Hence.. your argument is invalid.
 
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Mr.Buttmeister Faran Butt's "epistle" is relatively a "meaningless piece of drivel" compared to what has already appeared on this forum on the said subject. Just as @Oscar has already quoted re-infoces my statement. Mr.Butt's purported qualifications do not make an iota of difference to the content (or the lack thereof) in his writing.

About Terminal X; it is a blog-site that is not exactly known for its probity; and its been quoted here on PDF enough times which (if re-read) will illustrate that aspect.
Now, is Ahmad Quraishi working as the editor of Terminal X? ;)
Last I heard; he had found employment with the ISPR, did he change jobs again?
Sorry dude this is not Arnab Goswami's country.
 
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I was about to write a reply to this particular piece in the morning before London beckoned. I would like to immediately declare that I am no Radar expert and hence will abstain from writing too much on the comparison of the two systems. I would state however that India has MUCH better coverage across the front in both low level and high level sensors as compared to us. Pakistan's sensor coverage is focused on key areas such as Bases and strategic centers and hence has gaps left open in the desert and a few other areas. To offset this there are fairly good C4I systems which really have been given a lot of attention in terms of both integration and ease of use. An example is this which is optimized for threat tracking from multiple sensors that range from the YLC radar down to the Mark 1 eyeball of the MoU; it can cue targeting data to weapon operators on the click of a button and coordinates with ALL assets.
Network Centric System

Two Questions:

1-If the low level gaps have been filled with C4I then why is it still a 'gap'?

2-How many YLC radars were delivered?
 
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Two Questions:

1-If the low level gaps have been filled with C4I then why is it still a 'gap'?

2-How many YLC radars were delivered?

1.Mon Ami, There is no claim in my post regarding the "filling" of the gaps via C4I. What I have stated is that the Net Centric systems offer high sensor fusion and data capability to reduce reaction times in the coverage areas that are present. Again, when I refer to gaps I mean ground based sensor systems. If you include the AEW systems into the mix then the percentage of airspace coverage rises to 90%. There is little low level penetration to be achieved along the plains of Punjab and the Deserts around the border. As such the coverage is adequate for it and in case of the Indian side-> Near perfect. That being said each side will look to electronic attack capability and rely on SEAD/DEAD to reduce coverage early on in a full out conflict.

2. No idea, it should be in the MoD registry but the oldest is from 2008.
 
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1.Mon Ami, There is no claim in my post regarding the "filling" of the gaps via C4I. What I have stated is that the Net Centric systems offer high sensor fusion and data capability to reduce reaction times in the coverage areas that are present. Again, when I refer to gaps I mean ground based sensor systems. If you include the AEW systems into the mix then the percentage of airspace coverage rises to 90%. There is little low level penetration to be achieved along the plains of Punjab and the Deserts around the border. As such the coverage is adequate for it and in case of the Indian side-> Near perfect. That being said each side will look to electronic attack capability and rely on SEAD/DEAD to reduce coverage early on in a full out conflict.

2. No idea, it should be in the MoD registry but the oldest is from 2008.

Okay, so the sensors in this case would be radars themselves? I believe Pakistan purchased quite a few long range Chinese radars along with the AN/TPS ESA 77 radar from USA. Most of them were concentrated in Sindh and Punjab.

sigh, hate to say this but i miss the Pervez Mushy days. At least we were getting defense equipment.
 
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At the end it is not an "analysis" as Gambit put it but rather an overview of radar systems and without any particular coherency. So hopefully we can expect a more detailed analysis later one based on the Authors commendable qualifications and work. It is also commendable that he has filed a patent and hopefully it should be approved.

Btw @gambit
What do you think of this idea of the author? Since I am not subscribed to IEEE anymore I cannot access the whole article but perhaps you can hypothesize as to what the author is pointing to in the patent he filed?

Bi-static radars have started to regain some recent attention over the past decade because of its abilities to counter deception jamming. This paper aims at utilizing the merits of bi-static radars that is used in combination with a mono-static radar. The proposed scheme counters the effects of range gate pull off (RGPO) and velocity gate pull off (VGPO) which are the two prime deception methods against modern radar systems. These methods are becoming ever increasing threats to ground based radars in modern era due to the advancements in digital radio frequency memory (DRFM). By using a combination of mono-static and bi-static radars in a simple yet effective configuration, it is shown that range deception and velocity deception jamming can be identified and the target can be localized.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6511482&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D6511482
 
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From your own post:


Again, that post mentioned only the ground systems. You mentioned AEW which are easily capable of monitoring the entire Indo Pak border. Lets do the math for you.. each AEW system that pakistan has averages lets say 350km.. Lets say there are two Erieye systems airborne along with 3 ZDK systems.. that makes 5 systems with a maximum radius of coverage(using circumference length in the most basic of math) say that only 100 degrees of the radar coverage is useful.. then 350*2*pi*100/360 gives you around 600km of circumference that is useful for detection.. the Indo pak border is 2900 km...even with a more modest "straight line" estimate of 400km.. there is still 2000km covered easily by AEW assets alone.. and the gap in ground detection is NOT 2000km.. it is at maximum 800-900 or so in a wartime deployment. Hence.. your argument is invalid.

During hostilities, won't the PAF AEW's be easy targets? Indian AWACS can stay deep in Indian airspace and still monitor a large chunk of Pakistani airspace.
 
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AN/TPS 77 on their own pretty much cover the whole of Pakistan.I think 6 of them were bought and each have a range of 450KM...You can do the maths.
Then take into equation the older smaller range giraffe radars and many other cold war era radars,and its mumbo jumbo of old plus new radars..
Networking was initially started in 1977 with giraffe radars . A member here called Blain2 wrote about it.If you are interested you can dig out his post..
Then second phase started in about 2001 and private companies were brought in to write software which links all the different types of radars and SAM + AA guns.

Pakistani software is very advanced.Every target is analyzed with more than one aspect.If a blip appears on one radar and at the same time on another radar covering same area elsewhere,it is taken as target and filtered from the clutter. Thats why even small micro drones can be tracked. (Yeah Fcuk R.malik,he lied).
GIDS has manufactured electronic fire control systems for AA guns and that is included in the C4I including the missiles.

The radars are arranged in a way that The gaps are not on border areas..But in the central Pakistan...Whatever enters Pakistan will be tracked.

Yet it is these very older Cold war relics that leave certain border gaps as well. Not that they cannot paint the sky with beams but that the layering is "thinner" at certain areas that leaves certain gaps to be exploited specifically at low level.

And the 77 thing was called project Crystal... and as such the Giraffe Radar's were not without their critics either who were not entirely convinced that the system was the best purchase possible.

During hostilities, won't the PAF AEW's be easy targets? Indian AWACS can stay deep in Indian airspace and still monitor a large chunk of Pakistani airspace.

I suggest you read the above post to see the discussion for your Gap queries. And no, the AEW wont be "easy" targets.. they will be fairly well protected.
 
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Pakistan has a more robust and mobile air defense system compared to India. The less said about this the better.
 
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unless the rumors about Pakistan having HQ-9 are true...You may be right.
SPADA 2000+ which are in large numbers with Air defence command,may be 1000+,then french crotel which were upgraded with Turkish rocket motors and have extended range now.
Both systems can shoot down Low and medium altitude targets..But IAF can always fly high and strike inside Pakistan.
In Kargil they first tok it lighly and sent in older Migs.But when Anza struck.They stopped the older planes and Brought in Advanced Planes which could fly out of range of Anza and strike with Guided munition...

The scenario will be the other way round in the next conflict.
A wave of high flyers with guided munition as Pakistan has no capacity of shooting down high flyers.....
Later when targets neutralized...Older migs with Dumb bombs.

The Spada transfers are easily recorded.
There were 10 ordered of which 8 have been delivered so far. Each "system" has the RAC-3D radar, a tracking and illumination radar and a battery of 4 or 6 missile launchers along with the usual command centre. So there are not 1000+ systems or missiles but rather 10 systems with 30-40 missiles per system available for use.

As such the Crotale's even with their new motors(in case people are curious involved such motor upgrades for other missiles as well) are still at best equal to Sa-11 systems.

The problem is with Stand off weapons and not high flyers as such.. Stand off weaponry such as the Crystal maze allows the IAF to target such ADGE systems along with Critical targets from "safe zones" away from engagement envelopes of pakistani interceptors. As such when these are neutralized then the scenario you potray may ensue with the older aircraft coming in.
@Donatello

10 YLC-6 systems and 2 YLC-2.
 
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As AN/TPS 77 and YLC-2 are ESA systes, shouldn't it be harder for them to be attacked by, say an anti-radiation missile?
 
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Pakistan has a more robust and mobile air defense system compared to India. The less said about this the better.

In the interest of calling out claims made sans furnished data, @Oscar do do the needful as was necessary on my part with Shuntmaster ji.:tup:
 
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At the end it is not an "analysis" as Gambit put it but rather an overview of radar systems and without any particular coherency. So hopefully we can expect a more detailed analysis later one based on the Authors commendable qualifications and work. It is also commendable that he has filed a patent and hopefully it should be approved.

Btw @gambit
What do you think of this idea of the author? Since I am not subscribed to IEEE anymore I cannot access the whole article but perhaps you can hypothesize as to what the author is pointing to in the patent he filed?



IEEE Xplore - Radar ECCM against deception jamming: A novel approach using bi-static and mono-static radars
Easy...

First off...To set some basic understanding for those who do not know...

radar_pulse_example.jpg


The above is a simplified illustration of a 'pulse train'. It does not matter if the illustration is a transmit train or an echo train. An echo train may be out of phase or have increased Doppler, but its essential train characteristics are still the same as the transmit train.

So inside each pulse, we have these target resolutions:

- Altitude
- Speed
- Range
- Heading
- Aspect angle

Today's radars can create a train of hundreds of thousands of pulses/sec. Each pulse is a block of finite energy because it has a leading edge (start) and a trailing edge (end). These points are also used as time markers to calculate the listed target resolutions. The longer the pulse repetition freq (PRF) or the pulse repetition interval (PRI), the coarser those resolutions. The analogy here is a ruler that have cm increments versus one that have mm increments. Long wavelengths (freqs) inevitably have long PRF and are no good for high closing speed targets. If I am a proximity fused air-air missile and supposed to detonate at 5 meters from target, I want to know if I am approaching the target at 1 meter intervals, not 10. Better yet, .5 or .1 meter interval.

That is why we have long wavelengths (high energy) for long distance search, medium wavelengths (medium energy) for tracking and prioritization of threats, and short wavelengths (low energy) for targeting one imminent threat. The energy level is the trade off. Continuous wave systems have the highest energy level of all since the transmission have only one leading edge and one trailing edge: when start and when end transmission. But a CW system can only tell you that <something> is out there, not necessary the above target resolutions. There are some manipulations of a CW transmissions to give us coarse target resolutions but they are not relevant here.

Regarding the patent you posted...

IEEE Xplore - Radar ECCM against deception jamming: A novel approach using bi-static and mono-static radars
Bi-static radars have started to regain some recent attention over the past decade because of its abilities to counter deception jamming. This paper aims at utilizing the merits of bi-static radars that is used in combination with a mono-static radar. The proposed scheme counters the effects of range gate pull off (RGPO) and velocity gate pull off (VGPO) which are the two prime deception methods against modern radar systems. These methods are becoming ever increasing threats to ground based radars in modern era due to the advancements in digital radio frequency memory (DRFM). By using a combination of mono-static and bi-static radars in a simple yet effective configuration, it is shown that range deception and velocity deception jamming can be identified and the target can be localized.

Range/Velocity gate pull offs are deception techniques. Not jamming not because jamming usually implies gross saturation of a radar view. Essentially, the countermeasures (by the target) create highly ambiguous range/speed resolutions, forcing the seeker to recalculate those resolutions over and over and over. Then the countermeasures stop but by now the target would have a new spatial location, forcing the seeker to recalculate a new intercept/collision point. Then the target re-start the countermeasures and the cycle goes on until someone failed to achieve his goal.

The countermeasures does this by taking a sample of the pulse train, say 10%, and inject signals to contaminate the timing of those leading and trailing edges.

The seeker can counter the countermeasures by employing frequency agility but that is no longer effective. The better solution is PRF or PRI jittering and frequency agility...

radar_pulse_rep_interv_1.jpg


The seeker can generate a stable transmission to acquire initial target presence, then switches to stagger to counter any simple countermeasures, then switches to jitter to counter more complex countermeasures. The last of dwell and switch technique is generally for natural interference.

Understand that for the PRI classification illustration, each of the vertical line represent a pulse train, not a pulse. So inside each of those vertical lines could be tens of thousands of pulses/sec. Each pulse train can be longer or shorter than the previous train and include frequency agility.

Not all seekers are this sophisticated. You get what you pay for.

What the patent is talking about is the inclusion of the bi-static configuration to assure target localization or lock.

bi-static_sys.jpg


When a transmission collided with a target, only about 10% of the total energy is the typical echo for a mono-static config. The bi-static config is essentially multiple receivers to capture as much as possible the other 90%. For the above bi-static illustration, Receiver B will pick up more of that 90% than Receiver A. The most difficult issue for the bi-static config is it is resource intensive and not very mobile. The very close next difficult issue is timing between all elements. Given the frequencies, the pulse manipulations, and the nature of the targets which are airborne, the timing cannot be less than picoseconds between all elements and that includes transmit information to the receivers and the receivers sending target information to a central controller.

The patent is saying that when the target engages in deception countermeasures, the bi-static receivers can be used to identify small differences between what they received versus what the mono-static transmitters received and those differences would be a near absolute marker of range/velocity gate pull offs. The mono-static transmitter would change its transmit parameters to counter the deception techniques. This is essentially using third party verification. There would be no need for the mono-static seeker to try to recalculate those target resolutions, just simply change to different operating parameters when alerted that countermeasures are in play.

This is not a viable solution for airborne seekers, at least not at the current technology level. Wireless transmission of target data between bi-static elements are still problematic due to many factors, especially from natural to man-made interferences. Hard wired elements would be obviously labor and resource intensive and any EE would know of the distance versus data integrity issue in electrical wiring. Even power transmission EE know.
 
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@Oscar

That is the whole point of three dimensional warfare, although its not just the stand-off munitions (of which Pakistan has no dearth either, I believe) but rather the problem of being overwhelmed by an opponent (who, if willing to go the way) who can employ multiple threat axes, poke and prod the ADGE, degrade performance through EW in varied places and in a coordinated manner, and then exploit the clutter to punch through.
 
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