Ground mapping radar (SAR)

[Njinsa]

On 12/25/2021 at 2:22 AM, Hulkbust44 said:

This is true, however the F-15Es in desert storm claimed that they could identify an any aircraft on the ground and determine if it had fuel tanks... at a range of 30 nm.

It was a very powerful tool in the desert supposedly.

Desert arena was indeed very forgiving for APG-70 as it provided high contrast environment.

On the other hand, at 30nm WSO could get a map of an area sized as 1.3 nm x 1.3 nm (displayed on MPD) with resolution of 17 ft.

Maybe enough to identify a aircraft as an object but not enough to discriminate fuel tanks hanged on wings.

That could be more probable when map is taken at 20nm or less when resolution increase to 8.5 ft in a box like 0.68nm x 0.68nm.

[F-2]

It was 2.6m resolution originally (same as apg-63 demonstrator from the early 80s) then it was 1.2m after 1995 upgrades due to the gulf war. By comparison 

Captor-D .3 meters

N011m 10 meters

Irbis-E 3 meters

N036 .5 meters

APG-83 1 Foot

APG-81 inches judging by pictures

[Kev2go]

On 12/26/2021 at 8:06 PM, Njinsa said:

Desert arena was indeed very forgiving for APG-70 as it provided high contrast environment.

On the other hand, at 30nm WSO could get a map of an area sized as 1.3 nm x 1.3 nm (displayed on MPD) with resolution of 17 ft.

Maybe enough to identify a aircraft as an object but not enough to discriminate fuel tanks hanged on wings.

That could be more probable when map is taken at 20nm or less when resolution increase to 8.5 ft in a box like 0.68nm x 0.68nm.

either way that is still a big upgrade over what we have EXP3 of the F/A18, where in DCS even at under 10NM an aircraft parked on the runway is just going to look like a blob 

 

again not sure what distance this SARmap is made  it is but this clip from gulf war era you can indeed make out aircraft shapes on this APG70 sar map recording.

 

 

Edited January 29, 2022 by Kev2go

[Njinsa]

This does not look like SAR map (or patch map to be correct), hard to be 100% if radar is sweeping or it's in freeze mode (video lost a lot of detail due compression).

There are only few videos around, tells something about the capability of platform.

I'd give a chance it's a HRM (high resolution mapping) mode, a raw radar returns from ground, real beam mapping. Due size of DW cursor (rectangular shape) in upper half part of MFD, I'd guess this is max.range or 80nm. APG-70, if developers have docs for Suite 4+ SE (hard to tell which revision of -34 manual they got) will be the beast for air-to-ground combat.

[Bananabrai]

On 12/25/2021 at 2:22 AM, Hulkbust44 said:

This is true, however the F-15Es in desert storm claimed that they could identify an any aircraft on the ground and determine if it had fuel tanks... at a range of 30 nm.

It was a very powerful tool in the desert supposedly.

Different aircraft have different capabilites with their A-G radar, not only (but also) dependant on dish size, but also processing power and algorithm and so on.
I heard that the Mudhen's A-G radar is pretty good and I am pretty exited for it.