Electronic Weapons: <b>November 23, 2001</b>

November 23, 2001

We see you....- Since the late 1980's, American soldiers have been complaining about the need for a new battlefield radar system and this war will require better ways of "hunting bugs". The thirty-five year old AN/PPS-5 Ground Surveillance Radar, only capable of detecting and locating moving personnel at ranges of 6km and vehicles at ranges of 10km, is long overdue for replacement.

So whenever there's a threat, there's money to be made. In mid-November 2001, Telephonics Corporation (of Long Island, NY) held a classified briefing for congressional staff to demonstrate their 50-pound radar system, which they claim was useful for homeland defense roles - like ensuring perimeter security of nuclear power plants. Originally developed for the U.S. Army Signal Corps for border surveillance, the system can be set into operation "in less than five minutes".

These new GSRs could be "networked, so that a single operator could simultaneously use a three or four (at $200,000 apiece) units to monitor a power plant. Anyone who saw the movie "ALIENS" is probably trying to imagine them rigged into GE 7.62mm miniguns.

Telephonics first developed ground-based radar system in the early 1960s for the Pentagon, and sold 1,800 of those systems to the U.S. military.

After their experience hunting Mujihadeen in Chechnya, the Russians also realized that they needed an updated GSR to replace their 1RL-133-1 (NATO code name "Tall-Mike"). The "Kredo-M1" can detect stationary personnel to 16 km and vehicles to 40 km or a moving tank up to a distance of 12 to 16 km and moving lone soldier up to 5 to 8 km. The entire set (transceiver, control panel, digital processing unit, antenna training device, tripod, communications equipment and two storage batteries) weighs a little over 60 kg, takes 2-3 persons to carry, but can be employed by just one.

Even better simply "seeing" the enemy, the Kredo-M1 can designate targets for artillery out to 13 km. - Adam Geibel