This gives pulse-Doppler radars ' look-down/shoot-down' capability. As the ground moves at the same speed but opposite direction of the aircraft, Doppler techniques allow the ground return to be filtered out, revealing aircraft and vehicles. However, this only worked when the radar antenna was not pointed down in that case the reflection off the ground overwhelmed any returns from other objects.
Earlier radars had used pulse-timing in order to determine range and the angle of the antenna (or similar means) to determine the bearing. Pulse-Doppler systems were first widely used on fighter aircraft starting in the 1960s. The first operational Pulse Doppler radar was in the CIM-10 Bomarc, an American long range supersonic missile powered by ramjet engines, and which was armed with a W40 nuclear weapon to destroy entire formations of attacking enemy aircraft. It combines the features of pulse radars and continuous-wave radars, which were formerly separate due to the complexity of the electronics. Type of radar system Airborne pulse-Doppler radar antennaĪ pulse-Doppler radar is a radar system that determines the range to a target using pulse-timing techniques, and uses the Doppler effect of the returned signal to determine the target object's velocity.
