The Mad Scientists at DARPA Have a Crazy Idea: Warplanes That See Through Clouds

[DemolitionMan]

David Axe

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 grounds.

Synthetic aperture radars can peer through weather, but these sensors generally are too big and unwieldy to help in a fast-evolving close-air-support scenario.That could change soon. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or 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 percent of the time,” Bruce Wallace, a DARPA researcher, wrote in 2015. “The amount of time in which U.S. close-air-support aircraft can engage targets is therefore severely limited.”

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-mad-scientists-darpa-have-crazy-idea-warplanes-see-22677

[ABX]

It doesn't sound that crazy. I was looking at a new Land Rover the other week that had an active heads-up display that, for all intents and purposes, was like night vision but also could help project images of what was in front of you through heavy fog.

I would assume DARPA would be about a million times ahead of this technology.

[DemolitionMan]

It doesn't sound that crazy. I was looking at a new Land Rover the other week that had an active heads-up display that, for all intents and purposes, was like night vision but also could help project images of what was in front of you through heavy fog.

I would assume DARPA would be about a million times ahead of this technology.

DARPA is called "The Pentagon's Brain".

[DemolitionMan]

Seeing through Clouds is nothing really new.

Seeing through the clouds and beyond
The entire technology of radar, which is the ability to use radio waves to detect objects at a distance, was barely invented at the start of the war but became highly developed in just a few years at sites like the “Radiation Laboratory” at MIT. By allowing people to “see” remotely, at very long distances, radar made the idea of “surprise attack” virtually obsolete and vastly enlarged the arena of modern warfare (today’s radars can see potential attackers from thousands of miles away). Radar allowed nations to track incoming air attacks, guided bombers to their targets, and directed anti-aircraft guns toward airplanes flying high above. Researchers not only constructed the radars, but also devised countermeasures: during their bombing raids, Allied bombers dropped thousands of tiny strips of tinfoil, code-named “window” and “chaff” to jam enemy radar.
photo of chaff -- radar-jamming equipment used during World War II.
Two different types of chaff and their canisters, with a ruler for scale. Chaff was dropped from planes during World War II to jam enemy radar.

By constructing complex pieces of electronic equipment that had to be small, rugged, and reliable, radar engineering also set the foundations for modern electronics, especially television. Radar signals could also be used for navigation, as a ship or airplane could measure its distance from several radar beacons to “triangulate” its position. A system for radar navigation, called LORAN (long-range navigation) was the precursor to today’s satellite-based GPS technology.
The military found other uses for radar. Meteorologists, for example, could track storms with this new technology—a crucial skill to have when planning major military operations like D-Day. When weapons designers discovered a way to place tiny radar sets onto artillery shells, the proximity fuse was invented. These new fuses would explode when they neared their targets. By the end of the war, proximity fuses had became a critical component in many anti-aircraft shells.

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-worldwar/6002