I understand how you’d detect lasing but not radar lock, especially at the distances and intensities involved (like I’m familiar with how an NMR machine works but I cannot correlate it with RWR).
MAWS also make sense – you’re scanning with radar or laser or IR and use doppler effects to notice something is moving towards you.
In: Engineering
Radars is a bit closer to lasers than you might think, they aren’t just like a beacon, they do aim in a beam. You can think of radars as somewhat narrow beam flashlights. When the radar is in search mode, it’s being swept across the radar’s full FOV.
During this a RWR would notice it might be lit up for only a fraction of a second, and at intervals.
On the other hand, when a radar actually locks onto a target, that flashlight is pointed directly at the target and is kept pointing at it. The RWR would notice that it is being lit up continuously instead of just being for a short period of time at intervals.
Another way is that a radar might use different frequency bands (with certain systems outright just having different radars for search vs tracking) for search and tracking, and would detect the frequency change.
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