Word: radar
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...cannot keep their secrets for very long. Soon after a Soviet space craft has gone into orbit, U.S. Air Force scientists not only record its speed and plot its orbit but determine its size and shape and often deduce its mission. Their spatial detective work is made possible by radar signature analysis (RSA), a little-known technique that may some day be used to save the U.S. from a sneak attack...
With RSA, scientists can reconstruct the characteristics of a foreign satellite from the pattern of radar pulses it reflects back to a tracking station. Largely by measuring the amplitude, or strength, of the reflected pulses, they can calculate the satellite's size; by analyzing the variations in pulse amplitude caused by the satellite's rotation or merely by its passage across the sky, they can determine its shape with remarkable precision. By determining the time it takes the pulse pattern to repeat itself, they can learn how fast the distant space craft is tumbling, rolling or spinning around...
Space Graphology. For such satellites as the U.S. Geminis or Agenas -or, indeed, for intercontinental missiles - their shapes are a dead giveaway. When, for example, the conical nose of a tumbling projectile-like satellite is pointed directly at a ground radar station (see diagram), the radar "sees" only a small cross section; the reflected pulse is scattered in all directions, and the radar reading is relatively weak. As the projectile begins to swing broadside to the radar, however, its radar cross section increases; reflections become stronger. When the satellite's flat rear surface turns to face the radar antenna...
...bastards are uncanny in the things they seem to know," says one Navy officer. Often the Conserver's radar will show a blank horizon, when suddenly the Gidrofon jumps into action, heading out to intercept American ships far in the distance. Some U.S. experts think the Soviets are equipped with a below-the-horizon radar that Moscow has bragged about but never shown. "I don't know how Ivan does it," says Hilder, "but I'm impressed...
...PLANE CONTROL. U.S. forces in Viet Nam will get Litton Industries' computers to direct combat missions. With the aid of radar and display screens, airborne computers will show pilots precisely where to go, signal corrections if they stray off course. A command control plane will carry a computer no bigger than a big dictionary that will keep track of all planes in a strike; a similar computer could control the air traffic at a big-city airport...