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Radar (active) guidance technology
prevailed in anti-ship and surface attack weapons during the
1980s. This guidance technique was recently adapted to land attack
missiles. After the missile flies to a pre-designated location
where line of sight to the target is expected, it activates its
radar in a scan mode, and will home in on the signal expected to
be the target. Such signal can be the strongest in the area, or
one that emits a characteristic signature. Radar guided missiles
are highly vulnerable to countermeasures and deception, which
sometime necessitate human intervention for target verification
and intervention at terminal phase. When used over land, radar
seekers can be augmented by other elements (such as EO, GPS,
LADAR etc).
Other applications of much smaller
radar guidance use millimeter wave radars, to locate, classify,
identify and engage armored vehicles and other priority targets.
The use of millimeter wave seekers provides very high resolution,
all weather capability and high immunity to current conventional
countermeasure techniques employed by armored vehicles. |
