Eli5 How does detection of an incoming missile on aircraft work?
In: Technology
There’s Primary Surveillance Radar (PSR) where the plane pings radar off of other aircraft in front of them. Missiles are too small and too fast moving to be reliably detected by this primary radar though and it’s used in a very narrow focus to avoid revealing the planes position to secondary radar systems.
Then there’s secondary radar using the Radar Warning Receiver (RWR) where you are detecting the active radar from the enemy plane or air defence system. This also detects missiles which have onboard radar lock. However if the enemy is deploying heat seeking missiles then RWR won’t pick those up. RWR typical has 360° coverage. So RWR picks up if there’s an aircraft or SAM battery using active radar in a general sweep, or an aircraft or SAM battery that has painted you with active radar or if a missile with active radar has locked onto you.
Then many but not all military planes have Missile Approach Warning System (MAWS) which use various systems to lookout specifically for missiles using either Pulse-Doppler radar, Infrared cameras or UV cameras.
^(edit: spelling)
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