High Power Microwave Bistatic Radar Concept for Ballistic Missile Defense

"The project proposes to evaluate the feasibility of enhancing the technology level of the Multiple Miniature Kill Vehicles (MMKV's) that uses High Power Microwave (HPM) devices with a receiver system to collect bistatic radar data for objectdiscrimination. The primary criticism of most missile defense systems has been their vulnerability to potential countermeasures. Many articles have been written highlighting this concern, some postulating that the National Missile Defense system could bedefeated by several unclassified countermeasures. The proposed concept expands the potential functions of MMKV deployed HPM devices to include the innovative use of bistatic radar signature collection for object discrimination.The basic MMKV concept is to use multiple, small interceptors which might be packaged on a booster. The primary function of these interceptors would be to actively destroy countermeasures and re-entry vehicles (RV's). One of these concepts uses MMKV's todeploy HPM emitters to damage the electronics of jammers. The proposed concept uses the energy emitted by the HPM devices as transmitters and a receiver to form a bistatic radar. Preliminary review demonstrates that bistatic angles greater than 120¿provide substantially larger radar cross-section for RV's than backscattering and yields features that distinguish an RV from a decoy. Although there is a potential to apply a similar approach to geophysical exploration, it i