Defence aims to improve radar capability
- December 05, 2012
DEFENCE plans to upgrade its Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) to boost its ability to detect and track small surface targets, which include asylum seeker boats.
Defence force chief General David Hurley says while JORN is the best over-the horizon radar in the world the mid-life update due later this decade would make it even better.
The network would get a number of new capabilities, including a new receiving system that can process high frequency information from multiple sources at the same time.
"It is also planned to improve the tracking of surface vessels using a new class of radar called the mode-selective radar," he told an audience ahead of the inaugural National Defence Science Lecture in Canberra on Tuesday night.
"Better performance against small targets and an expanded rate of coverage are also envisaged for the next generation of JORN."
Australia's JORN project was launched in 1974 and the system officially switched on in 2003.
It gives defence the ability to monitor a vast area of Australia and its northern approaches as far as Indonesia, observing air and surface targets in an arc from Geraldton to Cairns.
The system includes stations at Longreach in Queensland and Laverton in Western Australia which can detect aircraft and vessels 3000 kilometres away.
Under good conditions it can see much further but full details of its capability remain top secret.
JORN operates by bouncing radio signals off the atmospheric layer known as the ionosphere, to follow the earth's curvature, which allows a far greater range than conventional line-of-sight radar.