Before we explain their powerful and unique advantages to warfighters, let's briefly review:
What are man-pack radars?
Man-Pack or Man-portable radars are medium-range devices, designed to detect people and vehicles up to 2 km away. They utilize FMCW (frequency modulated continuous wave) and pulse-doppler techniques to classify targets based on size and movement. Most often they are used in various military and other applications.
1. Mobile Situational Awareness for Any Terrain, Any Weather, & Any Mission
On today's dynamic battlefields, mobile situational awareness systems equipped with surveillance radars are crucial for effective operations. Portable military radars, like the Spotter Global Tactical Radar Kit™ (TRK™), maximize situational awareness for warfighters across a wide range of environments. The ability to detect and track targets over any terrain and through any weather conditions can make all the difference in tactical operations, including battles, triage, scouting missions, convoy protection, prisoner exchanges, and much more.
To save precious operational time, these lightweight surveillance systems can be easily deployed from vehicles or carried as a man-pack solution. The entire TRK and backpack weighs in at about 17 lbs or so depending on the radar model chosen for the kit. This weight can be carried by a single member of a mobile military team and used to keep the entire squad situationally aware and safe.
The fact that this small radar kit can maintain surveillance over several kilometers for several hours through any weather is astounding and what makes these kits worth their weight in the field. Once the tripod-mounted radar is set up (about 10 minutes), detection of threats is automatic, giving instant silent notification to the operator if any object large enough to be of possible concern enters the monitoring area.
Can Ground Surveillance Radars Operate in Challenging Environments?
Yes. One of the key advantages of these compact surveillance radars is their ability to operate well in difficult environmental conditions. While low-light conditions, snow, dust, fog, smoke, rain, and other environmental obscurants are known to interfere with other surveillance methods, radar remains largely unaffected.
Radars use invisible, fast-as-the-speed-of-light radio waves that the radar relies upon to detect targets. These waves pass cleanly through environmental obscurants, bounce off of targets, and return to the radar with data on the target's size, speed, location, and trajectory.
When mobile military teams have the advantage of man-portable radars and, thus, the ability to detect their enemies through environmental obscurants and while their opponents cannot, those very challenging environmental conditions can give special forces an added stealth advantage (see more on the stealth advantage granted by TRKs below).
2. Electronic Reliability—Batteries that can be Recharged in the Field
Like most man-portable devices in modern military operations, ground surveillance radar operates on rechargeable battery power. It grants a significant advantage to special forces and infantry when these devices can be charged with solar power. When military batteries can be recharged in the field from daily sunlight, operators can maintain operational readiness without relying on vehicle or mains power to recharge the batteries of their devices.
Spotter Global's TRK batteries can be recharged in the field using vehicle power or solar power.
These advancements in electronic reliability and battery technology suit the needs of modern warfare and enable soldiers to perform sophisticated missions with confidence. The ability to recharge in the field means that military operations can continue without interruption, ensuring that the advantage is always on the side of those equipped with the latest in military radar technology.
3. Long-Range Detection of Threats without Large Radars
Long-range detection of threats is crucial for effective ground surveillance and overall success in tactical operations. Knowledge is a force-multiplier. Among the most useful knowledge a mobile military unit can have is precisely where their allies and where enemies are currently positioned and where they each are heading. While large radar systems, mounted on buildings, ships, vehicles, airborne platforms, and planes, can provide some high level intelligence to military forces, they are large, heavy, difficult to move, and lack the ability to be useful in combat far away from their mounting position. More often than not large radars are just not suitable for most armed forces on the move.
Variations in elevation, buildings, forestry, and other geographical features can produce ground clutter that confuses the signals received by large radar systems. Sometimes this ground clutter is enough to allow small threats, such as foot soldiers or low-flying UAVs, to slip by unnoticed. Even if the signal accuracy is only temporarily interrupted, regular correction of data is essential to maintain accuracy, particularly in environments where threats may evolve rapidly. Also, for security's sake, on certain missions, mobile teams sometimes have to go "radio silent" and so are unable to receive intelligence from distant, large radar systems.
What Makes Compact Surveillance Radar Effective for Target Detection?
Small, man-portable radars fill the gaps created by ground clutter for large radar systems. Being closer to their targets, they are less likely to be confused by ground clutter. But they still detect threats at a range distant enough to make them highly useful to mobile military teams. For reference, the average military rifle has a small-target reliable shooting range of about 500 m. Thus, in a space with no environmental obscurants and unequipped with ground surveillance technology, the average mobile military team can be relied upon to maintain a defensive perimeter with a 500 m radius.
TRKs extend that radius allowing mobile military teams more time and tactical options to respond to oncoming threats, even when those threats approach through darkness, fog, snow, or other obscuring conditions. A TRK equipped with a C40-EXT radar unit will detect threats from 600 m away and cover about 50 acres of ground and other C Series radar units will extend that surveillance even farther. The maximal distance is 1500 m and 250 acres for TRKs equipped with C1200 radar units.
Equipped with backpack systems, operators can remain mobile and agile, taking their secure perimeter with them wherever they go, including into canyons, urban environments, valleys, and other challenging locations.
4. Fast & Easy Application: Fifteen Minutes Pack-to-Track
Fast & Easy Application enables users to quickly initiate a range ground surveillance system with minimal effort. Every minute counts, especially during in-field operations, and so mobile military teams need devices that can be set up quickly and interfaces that are simple to use.
Spotter Global engineers specifically designed these portable radar systems to be easy to use, enabling operators to conduct surveillance missions with minimal setup time. Whatever the surveillance needs of the mission, from artillery spotting, to infantry unit tracking, with the ability to go Pack-to-Track in under fifteen minutes, the TRK solution simplifies and expedites the process of setting up ground surveillance. The entire kit, backpack, battery, radar, tripod, cables, rugged POE converter, and Panasonic Toughpad all weigh 16.5 lbs. This lightweight design allows for easy transport and rapid setup, which in turn ensures the enhanced operational readiness essential for military applications.
Easy-of-functionality is also important. The highly-intuitive, easy-to-use user interface presented on a ruggedized tablet offers easy detection and tracking visualizations and even includes the ability to quickly set up alarm zones within the radar's monitoring range. Training on how to set up, take down, and operate a TRK ground surveillance system usually takes about thirty minutes maximum.
As convoys navigate complex terrains, the low SWaP (Size, Weight, and Power) TRK provides a tactical edge, ensuring all targets are monitored from meters away for swift acquisition and response.
5. Stealth Scan: Staying Low with Long Cables
Stealth Scan abilities are essential for mobile team survival. It is vital to know your enemy's location, but it's much better if you can ascertain and track your enemy's movements without being detected or tracked yourself.
The TRK is a subtle piece of equipment. A small radar mounted on a small 53-inch tripod doesn't draw a lot of attention, especially from long distances as far out as the radar's maximum detection range. And even if the TRK radar and tripod are spotted, they won't necessarily give away the position of the operator or his team, thanks to the TRK's long cables.
The standard TRK comes with two twenty-five-foot cables. One of these long cables connects the radar to the rugged POE converter and the other connects the rugged POE converter to the Panasonic Toughpad. This means that the operator can be hidden up to fifty feet away from the radar setup and the rest of the mobile military team can be even farther away. These long cables allow users to set up the surveillance radar on higher ground, for example atop a hilltop, wall, or top of a ditch and survey the surrounding area while staying safely concealed in a more sheltered position.
The interface alarm that goes off when a target has been detected can be set to silent when extra stealth is required. No sounds to give the operator away, just a silent visual alarm on their small interface to alert them to approaching targets.
Mastering the Stealth Scan abilities of the TRK is easy and perhaps crucial for any warfighters working to navigate a contested landscape safely.
What Customizations are Available for Man-Portable Radar?
TRK features that can be standardly customized include:
- Radar model
- Radar color
- Backpack color
- Battery size and quantity
Other possible customization options must be discussed directly with Spotter Global representatives.
What Other Applications are Available for Man-Portable Radar?
The man-portable radars included in the TRK are used in a variety of non-portable applications as well. Linked with Spotter Global's Command and Control (C2) system, NetworkedIO™ (NIO), these light, compact radar help create some of the most sophisticated and layered site security designs in the world, implemented around military bases, critical infrastructure sites, high net worth homes, national borders, and much more.
With the NIO, Spotter radars can integrate with the various built-in sensor technologies around a high-value site. With all of a site's sensors and deterrence measures integrated together, the CSR system can automatically cue cameras to radar-detected targets for simultaneous visual and radar tracking, cue recording of perimeter breach incidents, apply video analytics, behavioral filters, and AI-filtering for false and nuisance alarms, maintain alarmed alert zones, trigger automated defense and deterrence measures (such as floodlights, sirens, hyper spikes, security personnel notifications, law enforcement notifications, etc), and more. The applications for compact radar are virtually endless where surveillance is concerned as they are used in ground surveillance, overwater surveillance, airspace surveillance, on-site surveillance, and remote surveillance.
The History of Man-Pack Radar
Spotter Global, aka "SpotterRF", developed the first man-portable radars for mobile military service in 2009. Since then, they have served as essential assets for monitoring border security and coordinating the personnel movement of warfighters in the field.