MORTAR-​​FINDER BACKFIRES

An Army radar designed to spot enemy mor­tar attacks isn’t work­ing as adver­tised in Iraq.
“For mem­bers of the 1st Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, the 20-​​year-​​old AN/​TPQ-​​37 Firefinder Weapon Locating System was more of a prob­lem than an asset, Defense News reports. “The unit came under mor­tar fire 40 times in Iraq, but the sys­tem only detected rounds three times. The squadron suf­fered between 10 and 15 injuries from mor­tars.“

We stopped, we moved the radar around, the tech­ni­cal guys around worked the [soft­ware] pro­gram­ming, said Lt. Col. Gregory Reilly, squadron leader. We tried every­thing humanly pos­si­ble.
The unit even fired its own mor­tars at the sys­tem in an attempt to work out the bugs. Even under the best cir­cum­stances, the radar detected only one out of five rounds.
I just dont think there was fidelity in the sys­tem, Reilly said. I dont think that it worked.
Thales Raytheon Systems Q-​​37 Firefinder radar, which can be trans­ported on a 2.5-ton truck, was first fielded in the 1980s to detect rounds from long-​​range Soviet artillery up to 50 kilo­me­ters away…
Army pro­gram offi­cials, who say they track the per­for­mance of the upgraded Q-​​37 daily, rate its effec­tive­ness at roughly 90 per­cent when it is used cor­rectly by troops who have been trained exten­sively.
The radars are per­form­ing excep­tion­ally well for a sys­tem orig­i­nally designed and devel­oped 20 years ago for a dif­fer­ent type of war­fare, Lt. Col. Al Visconti, Firefinder prod­uct man­ager, wrote in a response to questions. 

October 15th, 2004 | Ammo and Munitions | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.