Vietnam-made radar captures stealth targets from 300km

With the rapid development of science and technology leading to the development of conventional radar blinding methods, in the world, 4+ generation and 5th generation fighter aircraft equipped with stealth technology can completely hide from detection by conventional radars.

To suppress this power, the Radar Institute of the Institute of Military Science and Technology has launched a product called the RTH passive radar system. The passive radar product is researched and developed to meet mission requirements such as detecting, locating, tracking the trajectory of flying targets with pulsed radio emissions, and analyzing the characteristics of radio signals.

Vietnam self-produced radar station model.

From there, target identification is analyzed and aviation intelligence is provided to serve national security and defense. This is a new direction in the field of radar development in particular and military scientific research in general.

Lieutenant Phuong Van Quang, Assistant of the Transmission Antenna Department, Radar Institute, Military Science and Technology Institute said: "Through identification, we have built a data bank and from there helped identify targets. The initial technical and tactical features proposed will capture targets at a distance of about 200km. Through the implementation and deployment process, the target capture distance has reached 270km.

In the test, we deployed 3 stations in Hung Yen, Hoa Lac, and Dan Phuong and performed the intersection calculation between the 3 stations and received very good signals from flying targets.

With conventional radars, in order to detect a target, the radar itself must emit a radio signal into space. The radio signal emitted after encountering targets with significant effective reflection areas such as aircraft and missiles will be reflected back in all directions. The reflected signal to the radar receiver will display information about the target such as range, azimuth, and velocity on the screen.

Unlike conventional radar, passive radar does not emit radio signals into space but only receives pulsed radio signals from flying targets such as communication signals between aircraft, between aircraft and the ground or signals from terrain-following radar, weather radar on aircraft using 3 fixed receiving stations at 3 different locations in a triangle.

Based on the time difference of the received signal and using the convergence calculation, the target parameters such as distance, azimuth, and velocity will be given. Through the actual implementation process, the research team has detected the target from a distance of 270m, far exceeding the initial design requirements.

Lieutenant Phuong Van Quang added: "For stealth aircraft, due to the use of special materials to manufacture them, signals that encounter them will not be reflected back. Therefore, conventional radars will not be able to receive signals from stealth aircraft.

However, with passive radar stations RTH uses a new principle that does not emit signals but this system receives signals emitted in the form of pulses of stealth targets. Through receiving these signals, the radar will compare with the data bank to conclude that this is a stealth aircraft with a specific distance and flight speed.

It can be said that in the stealth and anti-stealth war, passive radar is the trump card for countries that want to protect their airspace in modern warfare. However, to solve scientific and technical problems, manufacturing passive radar is not easy and the cost is often very high. Therefore, Vietnam's successful manufacturing of anti-stealth passive radar is a great success of Vietnam's military science.