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by MindSpunk
255 days ago
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IR sensor based tracking has existed for decades [1]. But aircraft equipped with them still equipped radar systems because of their significantly longer range tracking capability. Optical has all the same downsides as IR tracking, on top of not working at night. It's like people forget that radar relies on the scanning aircraft to actively illuminate their targets with the radar emitter, where as optical systems rely on the sun to do that. Targets are at least partially self illuminating for IR trackers thanks to the hot jet engines. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_search_and_track |
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