Word: radars
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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While the frigate dawdled along, its search radar sweeping the skies in a 225-mile radius, other American military eyes were also watching the gulf. Earlier, an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) surveillance plane had taken off from its base in Saudi Arabia, which operated the electronics-laden Boeing 707 jointly with the U.S. On radar, the combined U.S.-Saudi crew detected a single Iraqi Mirage F-1 aircraft as it lifted off from the Shaibah military airport ten miles southwest of Basra at around 8 p.m. Heading southeast along Saudi Arabia's coast as Iraqi planes often...
Aboard the Stark, radar operators picked up the jet when it was about 200 miles to the north and tracked its southward course until it was virtually due west, well off the frigate's port bow. At that point, no one on the American ship had particular reason for alarm. As Brindel said later, Iraqi warplanes "commonly come down the gulf and pass within close distances." None of them had ever attacked a U.S. vessel. Even the Iranians, whom the Americans considered a greater threat, often flew their jets within missile range of U.S. warships but would back off after...
Brindel, who was not on the bridge but in the combat information center one deck below, still expected the plane to pull away. The ship's monitors gave no indication that the pilot had locked his targeting radar on the slow-moving frigate, a necessity before launching a missile...
Twenty thousand feet overhead, the AWACS crew had noted the Iraqi jet's search radar sweeping the Stark. But the airborne observers too failed to detect any evidence that the frigate had been targeted. At 10:10 p.m., however, the AWACS crew was startled to see the fighter suddenly bank sharply to the south, then circle tightly and dart northward toward its home base...
...intercept incoming aircraft up to 90 miles away. Closer in, its Italian-made OTO gun can fire 3-in. antiaircraft shells at a rate of 90 a minute, dealing sequentially with as many as three incoming intruders at a range of up to twelve miles. Rockets that spray radar- attracting aluminum chaff can divert incoming missiles, and the frigate's electronic defenses can deceive attackers by producing fake radar images of the ship...