Gyrosync Radar

Airborne maritime surveillance radars including the current APY-10 aboard the P-8 have generally utilized X-band in HH polarization. This is primarily due to historical reasons from early research, SWAP considerations for aircraft, and physical limitations of previous generations of electronic equipment.  However, many signatures of Navy interest inherently respond differently to various radar parameters (frequency, bandwidth, azimuth/incidence angles, Synthetic Aperture Radar vs Real Aperture Radar, dwell time/angle, polarization, etc.).A modern radar could utilize different parameters that are better suited to match target and environmental conditions. However, the phenomenologies of many ocean surface effects generated by targets of interest and their radar signatures across the radar variables above are poorly understood. We propose to investigate these phenomenologies through oceanographic and radar scattering models. Based on these findings we will investigate and report on the utilization of modern radar capabilities (e.g. software defined, polarimetric radar and AESA antenna systems) and detection/analysis modes to aid in the solution of the Navy’s most pressing problems in maritime search and surveillance. In the option period we propose to add hard target phenomenologies to the ocean surface effects. The second objective is to investigate the implementation of the new radar capabilities on current and future Navy airborne platforms. As a third objective we propose to investigate and report on advanced training concepts that would be useful for the operational concepts and methods enabled by the new radar systems.