Radar was the wondrous device that helped save the British Isles from the fury of the Nazi air force. I am not going to go into the history of radar here, but I thought it might be interesting to see some of the ways it is being used. Radar has become very versatile since its invention.

DoD photo by Sgt. Larry Aaron, U.S. Army.

A U.S. Army specialist with the 319th Military Intelligence Battalion operates a synthetic aperture radar terminal that is receiving information from the airborne Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, known as Joint Stars, during Operation Joint Endeavor on Jan. 31, 1996. The Boeing E-8 Joint Stars aircraft monitors personnel, vehicle and troop movements and relays the information to ground stations such as this one near Kaposvar, Hungary, for use by operational commanders. U.S. troops are deployed to Hungary to support the NATO Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. DoD photo by Sgt. Larry Aaron, U.S. Army. (Text from DOD site)

DoD photo by Staff Sgt. Lisa Zunzanyika-Carpenter, U.S. Air Force.

U.S. Army soldiers perform an operations check on a AN/TPQ-36 Fire Finder Radar erected behind the Sarajevo Aerodrome in Bosnia and Herzegovina on Dec. 27, 1995. The Fire Finder Radar has the capability to determine where a round was fired from, where it will land and will compute coordinates for a counterattack if needed. The radar can track artillery rounds, mortars, and rounds as small as .50-caliber. The soldiers are from Target Acquisition Battery Bravo, 25th Field Artillery Regiment, U.S. Army Europe and are deployed as part of the NATO Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina for Operation Joint Endeavor. (Text from DOD site)

A near earth asteroid was imaged with radar as it approached the earth.
Picture Source: NASA

The radar imaging technique uses transmissions of sophisticated coded waveforms and computer determinations of how echoes are distributed in range and frequency, instead of their angular distribution, as in normal optical pictures. "Our finest resolution is 15 meters (49 feet) per pixel, which is finer than that obtained for any other asteroid, even for spacecraft" said Dr. Jean-Luc Margot, one of the team members from Arecibo Observatory. "To get that kind of resolution with an optical telescope, you'd need a mirror several hundred meters across. Radar certainly is the least expensive way of imaging Earth- approaching objects." (Text from NASA JPL)

Radar has many other uses. Without radar there could be no air traffic control since we wouldn't know the positions of the aircraft in the sky. In some instances it is also used to control vehicular traffic and as we all know, to judge the speed of vehicles for the purpose of issuing speeding tickets.

In 1952, the Director of AF Intelligence admitted to more than 300 cases of radar tracking and visual sightings confirmed by radar. The sightings he was talking about were ufos. That's right, many ufo sightings have been confirmed by radar sightings. Bet you didn't know that the British are working on a system that would combine cell phones with radar, the system is called Celldar. When perfected it would allow users to track moving objects and peer through walls.

Volvo is developing a car that will use radar to apply the brakes to help avoid a collision. Actually a system of this type has been around for many years and was demonstrated on an old American Television Program named "You Asked For It". I think this system will prove to be quite useful. This system will not only apply the brakes if necessary but if it detects that the driver is not applying the brakes hard enough to avoid an accident it will increase the pressure on the brakes to stop the car in a shorter space.

Another unique use of radar is a device being developed for use in aircraft. It puts out a high frequency sound that warns birds of approaching aircraft, thus avoiding a bird and aircraft collision. Birds being sucked into jet engines can cause damage to planes or even crashes. But can this radar be used to produce signals in the human brain, who knows, and for what purpose would this be used?

Your microwave oven is radar at a lower frequency. A ground radar was used to probe around the Sphinx and Pyramids for hidden rooms. It was discovered that there may be a room under the Sphinx, but the Egyptian government is not allowing exploration at this time. So you see there are many uses for radar, far more than I have covered here. But radar is an interesting subject and we may explore it further in the future.