AN/SPG-59
Country of origin | United States |
---|---|
Introduced | Canceled 1963 |
No. built | 1 |
Type | 3D Air-search and tracking |
Range | 110 nmi Maximum |
Azimuth | 0 to 360° |
The AN/SPG-59 was an advanced
The Typhon Combat System
The
Adding additional radars was possible, but difficult to arrange as the radars were fairly large and required a clear view of the sky, limiting the number of suitable locations. This led to a "specification convergence"; since there could only be a small number of radars, the missile receivers were built to tune in only a small number of potential "channels". That meant that increasing the number of radars would also require the missiles to be updated as well.
System Characteristics
The AN/SPG-59 avoided this problem by acting as both the search and illumination radar. This reduced the problem of siting, as there needed to be only one radar on the ship, albeit a very large one. The Typhon missiles also helped solve this problem, switching from semi-active radar homing, and beam riding to tracking by a track-via-missile system. In this system the receiver on the missile is a wide-band receiver, and forwards its received signals back to the ship. The ship's on-board computers then calculate the interception course and forward it back to the missile from an omni-directional antenna. This is similar to the older command guidance system, but avoids the inaccuracies of that system by locating the receiver on the missile, which is closer to the target and therefore sees a stronger signal. Although this system required the missiles to be able to tune in a number of command radio channels, these are generally much simpler and smaller than radar receivers, allowing a much larger number of channels to be supported.
Development Problems
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Development of the radar suffered from multiple problems from its start. The phased array radar required a very large number of individual broadcaster elements which proved to be unreliable and very expensive. Additionally, the power requirements of the system were so huge that only nuclear-powered ships could provide the necessary power to operate the system. Although such ships were then under construction, they were politically controversial. The radar was canceled in December 1965 (?), because of mounting technical problems and being considerably over budget.
One of the developmental failures was that of a
The 1:2 switch also failed high power test. When fed the kilowatt+ microwave energy from the system TWT, the ferrite lost its magnetic properties and it became a 1:2 power divider rather than a switch with a 20 dB isolation between the 2 output ports. This had a devastating effect on the radar's transmit beamforming. (WFJ)
Typhon Test Vessel
In November 1962
References
- ^ Dranidis, Dimitris V. Shipboard Phased-Array Radars Archived 2017-11-18 at the Wayback Machine. Waypoint Magazine. February 2003. (Written to support wargames, but informative.)
- ^ United States Navy. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. Norton Sound Archived February 8, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.