HMAS Perth returns to Garden Island after being fitted with
the new Phased Array RADAR System. Photo: Royal Australian Navy
Most modern radars really do work like the ones in the movies: they spin around, creating the familiar green line moving around a circle like a clock hand in fast-forward.
The problem with such radar for self-defence systems – shooting down incoming missiles – is the system can only check a particular direction every few seconds as the radar swings around.
With the fearsome weaponry carried on modern warships, every second counts in a fight – future sea battles might not last very long.
In the backstreets of Fyshwick, the light-industrial suburb of Canberra reputed for its brothels and adult entertainment shops, an Australian-owned firm has created a technology that is already giving the Royal Australian Navy that few-second edge.
One of the Navy's Anzac-class frigates, the HMAS Perth, has already been fitted out with the CEA Technologies-built ''phased array radar'', the eyes and ears of the ship's self-defences.
The HMAS Perth is arguably now the most advanced warship of its kind in the world, able to shoot down incoming missiles skimming the sea surface at supersonic speeds with unrivalled consistency.
With interest now coming from the US, Canada and Spain, among other countries, the radar system could bring Australia more than $1 billion in exports in coming years, the firm says.
Defence Minister David Johnston, an irrepressible enthusiast for the technology, hosted a briefing Thursday night at the Australian Defence Force Academy to plug the system to potential buyers.
It is one of those ideas that sounds obvious in retrospect: phased array panels, arranged hexagonally, watching all directions at once. There is no five-second delay while the radar swings around for a second or third look.
''This is a game-changer. It's not just world-leading, it's world-beating,'' said RAN Commodore Stuart Mayer, the chief of staff at Navy Headquarters.
The current generation of missiles, he explains, flies about 1000km/h. The next generation will fly more than five times faster than that.
A conventional radar system might pick something up but be unsure of whether it's a threat. It has to wait for the radar to come around again to take a second look. And again for a third.
''If you're waiting five seconds, you're giving up about 10 miles of detection,'' Commodore Mayer said. ''(With the new system) you actually allow yourself to detect, classify and engage far sooner than on a conventional radar.''
At a test last year off Hawaii, the phased array radar system took on all comers, finding and identifying the toughest threats the testers could throw at it: multiple missiles flying at two-and-a-half times the speed of sound (about 3000km/h).
''This is the technology advancement that allows us to ensure the protection of our surface ships,'' Commodore Mayer said.
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