SOON US WARPLANES COULD SEE THROUGH CLOUDS
DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT LINE OF AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY
DESPITE BIG ADVANCEMENTS in sensor technology in recent years, clouds can still block a warplane crew’s view — and make it impossible to support troops on the ground. Synthetic aperture radars can peer through weather, but these sensors are generally too big and unwieldy to help in a fast-evolving close air support scenario.
That could change soon. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has tested a compact video synthetic aperture radar, or ViSAR, that can peer through clouds and pump radar-based full-motion video to a cockpit or crew station.
The need is clear. ‘In many important parts of the world (such as the Korean Peninsula, Central America, Colombia and the Balkans) clouds are present between 25 and 50 per cent of the time’, Bruce Wallace, a DARPA researcher, wrote in 2015. ‘The amount of time in which US close air support aircraft can engage targets is therefore severely limited.’
DARPA launched the ViSAR development effort in 2013. ‘Our radar system can be used to image the ground, even through clouds and dust, at a sufficiently high resolution and frame rate to support the engage…
