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Need to develop powerful cyclone-warning radars: Kalam

India will have to go in for sophisticated radars for battlefield surveillance and location of weapons in high altitudes and snowy environment, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, principal scientific advisor to the Union government said today.

In a message to the three-day International Radar Symposium in Bangalore, he said the Kargil operations had revealed the necessity for such precision radars which should be compatible with the Indian weather cycle.

The architect of the country's missile systems said designers and production agencies of radars should learn from the recent experiences of the Orissa cyclone and set new standards in design and quality assessment. The indigenous radars for cyclone prediction should withstand wind speeds of 300 kilometres per hour accompanied by rain and thunderstorm. The development and production of any type of radar in India should not take more than four years if they have to be commercially competitive.

Dr Kalam, who was to address the inaugural session, could not make it and his message was read out by Bharat Electronics Limited Chairman and Managing Director Dr V Koshy.

In his inaugural address, Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman Dr K Kasturirangan advised the radar scientists to seriously look into cyclone forecasting and disaster management to offer solutions for mitigating the hardships of the people. This was one of the major challenges facing the scientific community, he added.

Dr Kasturirangan, referring to the development of advanced radars by the Indian Space Research Organisation, Electronics and Radar Development Establishment and other defence organisations, for defence and weather forecasting, said such developments augured well for radar activity.

He said the development of the 'Indira' and 'Rajendra' radars by the ERDE, the development of C-band and S-band tracking by ISRO, the joint development of PCMC radar by ISRO and Bharat Electronics and successful production of several state-of-the art radars had demonstrated the achievements of the radar system community in the country.

He said antenna technology would continue to flourish with greater demands being placed on faster scanning requirements and beam agility. Radar technology had far reaching applications and included mining, detection of buried objects like munitions, bombs and anti-personnel mines, topography and averting collision of ships. He said non-military applications would provide the next quantum jump in radar science and technology.

The challenges in military application would be detection of stealth aircraft, airborne active phased arrays and cost effective collision avoidance systems, he explained.

The three-day symposium, attended by over 220 scientists and engineers, would discuss the latest trends in radar technology across the globe. Experts from eleven countries are also participating in the symposium.

UNI

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