APAR by Thales

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17 years 11 months

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Does anyone know more about the supposed Jane's article (cited by wikipedia) where they allegedly wrote that APAR can simultaneously attack - terminally guide 16 targets and provide midcourse corrections to 32 missiles.

I have found on thales netherlands website newsbit about a test where 4 missiles were guided with just one face but that wasn't even close to putting the face to its limit. What could 'wasnt even close' in marketing speak mean? that it can do 8? or 16?

Was Janes article, when it said it could guide 16 missiles, refering to all the faces combined, to two faces combined or to the single face? If it's the latter, then that'd mean the bottleneck is midcourse guidance channels, no?

Original post

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19 years 6 months

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The tests constituted an absolute first in any test firing: APAR engaged two drones by guiding four missiles simultaneously to the targets, using only one of its four faces. And thanks to the system's short reaction time and high accuracy, this face did not nearly reach its maximum capacity, leaving plenty of room for even more engagements.

http://www.thales-nederland.nl/nl/news/archive/2005/april26-2005.shtml

Your original

The performance of ICWI-based missile defence systems was convincingly demonstrated during the live firing trials of the Royal Netherlands Navy's "De Zeven Provinciën" late 2003 and the live firing trials of the German Navy's "Sachsen" mid 2004. Both ships are equipped with APAR, Thales Nederland's highly advanced multifunction radar, especially designed to guide ESSM and SM2 missiles to incoming threats, using ICWI technology.

http://weapons.technology.youngester.com/2009/04/australian-department-of-defense-and.html
There should be at least two instances of some professional press info on it.

Each of the four arrays is devided into four independant quadrants, each of which has its own waveform generator and two missile guidance waveform generators (for both the missile uplink and terminal illumination). The array can, therefor, control the simultaneous engagement of up to four targets, managing up to eight missiles

Norman Friedman, The Naval Institute Guide to world naval weapon systems, p. 265-266
Now, I think that means for a typical installation with 4 arrays that you have the ability to track 16 targets while guiding 32 missiles, of which half in terminal stage and half midcourse. But it may be as you said "terminally guide 16 targets and provide midcourse corrections to 32 missiles".

It can track up to 250 targets at one time, and at the same time can function as a illumination radar for up to 16 targets (with 32 missiles in the air), removing the need for separate illumination radars

http://www.seaforces.org/marint/Netherlands-Navy/Frigate/De-Zeven-Provincien-class.htm

missile guidance using the Interrupted Continuous Wave Illumination (ICWI) technique, thus allowing guidance of 32 semi-active radar homing missiles in flight simultaneously, including 16 in the terminal guidance phase

http://dictionary.sensagent.com/active+phased+array+radar/en-en/
THis quotes as source: Jane's Navy International, October 2005, "Live firing tests rewrite the guiding principles"

Article details
Article title Live firing tests rewrite the guiding principles
Author Lok, J. J.
Journal title JANES NAVY INTERNATIONAL
Bibliographic details 2005, VOL 110; NUMB 8, pages 38-44
Publisher JANE'S INFORMATION GROUP INC Country of publication Great Britain
ISBN ISSN 1358-3719
Language English
http://direct.bl.uk/bld/PlaceOrder.do?UIN=175335103&ETOC=RN&from=searchengine

Member for

17 years 11 months

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thank you!! that was exactly the kind of article i was looking for. Now off i'll go scan that book for similar data on spy radar abilities to guide missiles near targets.

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Then saturation is obsolete, too, and the only way is to fling so many Harpoon in so many waves that it depletes the ESSM stock, but Harpoon cost more than ESSM.

Perhaps ultra high speed ARM will become the principal anti surface weapon

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17 years 11 months

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Polmar and Friedman in their respective books, say SPY radars provide guidance for perhaps 20 missiles at any time. They also mention each arrach has 8 transmitters (how? SPY is PESA, shouldnt it have one transmitter?) and total of 32 CFAa (what is CFA?). Should i read that as ability that each face can guide 32 missiles? 128 for complete system in ideal circumstances? But why do they themselves settle on 'perhaps 20' missiles?

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17 years 4 months

Posts: 135

Polmar and Friedman in their respective books, say SPY radars provide guidance for perhaps 20 missiles at any time. They also mention each arrach has 8 transmitters (how? SPY is PESA, shouldnt it have one transmitter?) and total of 32 CFAa (what is CFA?). Should i read that as ability that each face can guide 32 missiles? 128 for complete system in ideal circumstances? But why do they themselves settle on 'perhaps 20' missiles?

Cross Field Amplifier.

Each array is not its own radar the whole system is the radar. SPY-1 and the Command and Decision computer system can handle X number of missiles at any time, not X per array. Now SM-6 will potentially increase that number.

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17 years 11 months

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yes, the whole system is composed of 4 arrays. but there must be two possible bottlenecks - one being how much missiles the overall computer system can handle and the other being how many separate channels can one array face provide when sending the data embedded in its waveform towards the missiles already in air. Why do Polmar and Friedman in their books settle on 20? I don't understand their reasoning.

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17 years 4 months

Posts: 135

Why do Polmar and Friedman in their books settle on 20? I don't understand their reasoning.

Because that is close to the real amount SPY and CND can provide mid-course guidance to.
There is also a difference between mid-course guidance and terminal phase guidance. It wouldn't matter if SPY could guide 1000 missiles if you only have one illuminator and the missile requires 2-3 seconds of terminal guidance.

You are going to have a tough time finding detailed answers off open source information.

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13 years 6 months

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Hello,
although this method is not that acurate, ESSM and SM-2 are able to be guided with S-band uplinks only and without X-band terminal illumination. I think its called quiet-mode.

For F124 and LCF not APAR is the limiting factor. Its the processing power of the missile interface cabinet (MIC) between combat direction system (CDS) and Mk41 VLS.

Cheers
JaL

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17 years 11 months

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It wouldn't matter if SPY could guide 1000 missiles if you only have one illuminator and the missile requires 2-3 seconds of terminal guidance.

It would matter if three illuminators are working on three different targets, and even if it takes them 3 seconds to terminally guide an interceptor, then say three more seconds to move and acquire another set of three different targets and repeat that two times, all the while each interception is done by two missiles, to ensure greater kill probability. that is 21 seconds all in all, for 12 different targets and 24 interceptor missiles.

Even if they use only one interceptor missile that is 12 missiles in 21 seconds or 24 missiles in 42 seconds. A harpoon class attacking missile would take more than 42 seconds to travel 25 km from the horizon to the ship. at 900 kmh it would take the said missile 100 seconds to travel over 25 km.

There seems to be ample reasoning for being able to provide midcourse updates to more than 20 missiles at any one given time.

All that being said, how come a passive array like spy-1d has multiple emitters? They wrote each array has 8 of them. What do those emitters do? What is their purpose? Are they involved with providing midcourse updates?

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13 years 6 months

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All that being said, how come a passive array like spy-1d has multiple emitters? They wrote each array has 8 of them. What do those emitters do? What is their purpose? Are they involved with providing midcourse updates?

I have to confess I'm not to deep into SPY-1, but every phased array radar (also PESA) has multiple emitters. In case of PESA they are only driven by on single central wave generator and don't generate the wave itself like AESA.
So I could imagine that SPY has propably more than one wave generator to group different emitters of the array for different tasks.