It’s been said that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. The phrase is useful, but reality isn’t quite so simple. It certainly that depends on what the picture depicts…and how complete, accurate, and ultimately useful the picture is.
Timing is another powerfully relevant factor. The picture, or more exactly, the information and influence, the picture delivers needs to be delivered at the right time to the right place for maximal effect or indeed any useful effect at all. In some cases, the “right” picture, even if it ripe with relevant and accurate information as well as powerful influence, at the wrong time and place can be more harmful than helpful.
This applies especially to the situational awareness pictures delivered by CUAS radars. .
The Picture Delivered by Scanning Radars
In order to create a full picture, industry-leading scanning radars gather lots of little pictures, one-hundred and eight of them every 1.8 seconds to be exact. The radar software compiles all of those 108 pictures to create one large, hopefully-complete picture. Every 1.8 seconds.
Unfortunately, as experienced soldiers, security professionals, and people of action know (those who work in high-stakes fields where situational awareness is paramount), 1.8 seconds is too long. Far, far too much can happen in 1.8 seconds to change a security landscape. When an enemy approaches and disaster looms, 1.8 seconds is simply too much time to wait for complete information.
A narrow-beam flashlight scanning through a field of darkness is not enough for one who has to make millisecond decisions for an entire battlefield- or sky-worth of a threat landscape.
The Picture Delivered by Volumetric Persistent Radars
A floodlight approach allows the full picture to be gathered all once and consumed all at once. This is how volumetric persistent radars work.
The radar signal sent out from the radar unit travels at the speed of light through the entire coverage area and, bouncing off of anything of significant mass in its path, including large drones, small drones, radio-transmitting drones, fiber optic drones, etc. Having encountered and bounced off any of these, the radar signal then returns to the radar, again traveling at the speed of light.
The entire signal-out and signal-in process takes 56 milliseconds. This means that the operator gets a refreshed, accurate view of the entire airspace eighteen times per second (18 Hz), making for smooth, unbroken real-time data on the 500m-minimum stretch of airspace covered by the radar.
See the difference: