|
?:reviewBody
|
-
This report has been circulating around the internet for several years at least. Examples: The story is almost certainly false for a number of highly technical reasons. First off, police radar is relatively weak — it doesn't need to be strong, and you wouldn't want to fry passing motorists or the police officers who use it daily. These units don't have much range; a few miles or so is sufficient since the police officer needs to be in line-of-sight with the vehicle he’d like to track. Next, a number of different radar types (pulse, continuous-scan, doppler, and so on) are used for different purposes. Doppler radar is used for tracking the speed of an object, whether it's a moving automobile or a particularly threatening thunderstorm. Pulse units are used for aerial and naval navigation as well as military applications; in the latter case their ON/OFF nature makes it slightly more difficult for an enemy to identify their source. Additionally, there are different types of scan profiles in use, such as circular, unidirectional, bi-directional, helical, raster, palmer, conical, and track-while-scan. Police radar units are directional ones that send pulses in a relatively narrow cone in the direction the officer points the device. (This type of radar is used to prevent the operators from being exposed to the devices' high-frequency radiation over long periods of time.) Therefore, it's pretty unlikely that an officer pointing a hand-held unit at an incoming car would also manage to illuminate a flying aircraft — an intervening hill, a large building, or even heavy plant growth would block any stray signal. Surface-to-air missile (SAM) radars behave differently than handheld police units. Also, each type or model of radar gives off very specific characteristics, and the onboard systems in military planes can differentiate among these types of threats (e.g., a SAM-2 vs. a ZSU vs. an F-16). To quote from Info-Strategies’ web site, Every radar produces a radio frequency (RF) signal with specific characteristics that differentiate it from all other signals and define its capabilities and limitations. Excepting a case of incredible coincidence, the police radar wouldn't be on the threat list. Also, SAM radar units are also relatively short range systems (30-50km), since the usual practice is to employ longer-range tracking stations to keep watch on incoming aircraft, then alert the SAM unit in the aircraft’s flight path of the impending arrival of the hostile plane. Building on the above, we also need to remember that radar is in common use all over the world, and Europe sports some densely-packed airspace. All aircraft are tracked by large, fixed stations in order to prevent mid-air collisions and other accidents. Thus, the Tornado in question was most likely being painted by multiple radar stations at various airports around the UK, and possibly also from the continent. A puny police traffic-enforcement radar signal wouldn’t even be noticed in all the noise. Next, and very important to our understanding of this legend, the systems on military aircraft will not automatically arm and fire offensive ordnance. This is the case to specifically prevent incidents such as the one described in this story. There's no way that the Tornado's systems would auto-arm a missile, much less try to fire it without a human go signal. At any rate, a human operator in a non-wartime situation would need explicit permission to fire at an enemy position; if the pilot in our story was alerted of a possible threat radar signal by an onboard system, he or she could simply confirm the source by checking the direction from which the signal was emanating. As the police unit was outside any military firing range it would be obvious from the start that the signal was not a threat or was merely a spurious contact. Lastly, there are glaring factual errors in the story itself. The Sidewinder is a heat-seeking air-to-air missile (AAM) designed for short-range strikes against attacking aircraft. In other variants of the story, an ASRAAM (also a heat-seeking AAM) is mentioned. Neither would ever be used against a ground-based target; instead an ALARM (Air-Launched Anti-Radar Missile), AGM-65A Maverick, or AS.30(L) air-to-surface missile (ASM) would be fired. Also, the act of jamming radar does not involve disabling the unit itself, but rather forces it to produce inaccurate or widely fluctuating results (or no results at all) in order to confuse the operator and any incoming missiles are attempting to lock onto the target. This urban legend seems to be a classic warning against technology tale, cautioning us against the development of systems that could somehow escape human control and cause havoc. Compare this tale with Cruise Control, in which a misunderstanding of the operation of an automotive device leads to a serious accident. Also think of the Y2K craze, or even to recent stories of the purported existence of an automated Armageddon system called Dead Hand in Russia (which was supposedly about to fire all Soviet missiles on 1/1/2000 after the computers failed). All are about our fear of modern technology and how a possible lack of human control in a given situation spells disaster.
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}