Nim AEW
GMP,
Reason for NATO delay in go-ahead for NAEWF was caused by MONEY - who should pay for what. The result was RN pressure for UK to go alone because of the decision to scrap the big carriers and the loss of the AEW Gannet (Falklands showed the wisdom of that decision). The base was to be in the UK - either Brize or Fairford - although I am not sure if that decision was taken. Needless to say, if we pulled out then the base had to go elsewhere. The only possible location was in West germany (Benelux not wanting high value targets on their soil and the rest either too north or south for operations. Therefore, once the UK had stated that it would pull out if costs could not be agreed then the Germans knew that they would get the base and the financial benefits that that bought. Once we pulled out, the germans tactfully waited for a couple of months then signed up for what was to become the NAEWF at Geilenkirchen. (The cash for which, under German law has to go through a German bank - I wonder who got the interest. Rumour has it that the TCAs were allegedly funded by the "fine" levied once the rest of NATO found out how much the Germans were raking in).
My statement of "low PRF" is of course relative - I don't want to go into the current system in this forum. However I must take issue with you about the performance of the "Offset Pair of Bo****cks" - sorry Parabolics. You have fallen for the GEC line about road traffic. If this is the case then the Shetland Islands have a huge number of articulated trucks driving over them. The problem was the very large first sidelobe which painted land as moving targets due to the too small clutter notch. Hence the UK coastline and oil rigs being tracked as huge formations of aircraft doing 47 Kts. This is the reason that we could not directly illuminate the coastline within 120 nmi without crashing the computer.
I also disagree about the tracker which gave appaulingly short track life if the aircraft turned. I refer the Gentleman to the results of the final trial before the decision to scrap where the AEW 3 was trialled against a common datum (E-3A flown the day after). The results are classified so I cannot say too much, however the results were damning.
There is a book waiting to be writen about the whole episode - as you rightly say, we learned a lot from the whole mess.