Jindalee operational

[ORAC]

CANBERRA, Australia (Agencies): The Department of Defense this week switched on a new radar network able to detect vessels and planes thousands of kilometers (miles) from Australia's coastline and into neighboring countries.

Defense Minister Sen. Robert Hill said on Wednesday the Jindalee Operational Radar Network, or JORN, would provide surveillance over a 20,000-square kilometer (7,722-square mile) area covering the western, northern and northeastern air and sea approaches to Australia.

"JORN will act as an early warning tripwire in the defense and protection of Australia and our national interests," Hill said at the launch of the network. Hill said the network was activated on Monday - five years behind schedule, 13 years after it was initially approved by the government and 40 years after defense scientists began working on it.

The AU$1.2 billion (U.S.$1.1 billion) network extends Australia's surveillance more than 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) from its coast, taking in vast swathes of the Indian Ocean, all of Indonesia's main island of Java and its southeastern islands, as well as Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean.

"The network is a huge asset in terms of national security," Hill was quoted by Associated Press as saying

The system uses two high frequency-transmitters 2,300 kilometers apart, at Longreach in the eastern state of Queensland, and Laverton in Western Australia state. Signals are aimed at the ionosphere, where the beam is reflected over the horizon to distant targets. Receivers in Australia capture the return signal.

Referring to the project being five years behind schedule, Hill said: "With the benefit of hindsight we should have appreciated the extraordinary complexity of this task a lot earlier."

[BlueWolf]

Brilliant concept, using ionospheric backscattering as a "poor man's sattelite" to get an over-the-horizon radar image. Even before the system was commisioned, it was good enough to be able to track Hercs operating in and out of Dilli during the Timor op.

[brit bus driver]

I think it must have been operational about 3 years ago.

Heading from Darwin to Honolulu, sans certain dip clearance for some en-route islands, we decided to make an early left turn and lop off the corner of our cleared route, thereby saving vital minutes!! (NB We were random routing via specific lat/longs and TCAS equipped, so little chance of bumping into someone.) With a little imagination at the turning point, we pass our position report, only to find the captain being grilled over the HF as to his curent groundspeed, confirmation of time by last reporting point etc etc!!

We heard no more (and, to be fair, were only in error by a couple of minutes) but were very much aware that perhaps someone was watching over us...........

Either that or a bloody sharp bloke on Oceanic that day!:}

[jtr]

The AU$1.2 billion (U.S.$1.1 billion) network

$0.90 odd to the US??

[chippy63]

jtr

I think 1 Ozzie dollar is about 60 US cents, so the USD equivalent would be $720 mio or so.

[pulse1]

BBD,

There was a report in New Scientist about 5 years ago which said that the Australian Navy were able to measure wave heights up to 1500Km north of Australia. This was done by bouncing radar of the ionosphere. You probably got in the way.

I particularly noticed it because my boss, at the time, was trying to convince the RAN that some dodgy radar reflective material they had been sold did in fact meet the spec., if you took sea conditions into consideration. He seemed to be assuming that those colonials knew nothing about radar.

Drawing his attention to the article did my career prospects no good at all.

[PLovett]

The system has been under development for a long period.

In the early days the antenna was near Alice Springs and civil aircraft flying between SE Asia and Australia were requested to give position reports which included extra information. This information was to try and assess the accuracy of the system.

The initial contractor found the project was beyond them which led to delays and cost overruns. There was also a lot of speculation at one point that the whole project would be scrapped.

There was also a suggestion that the US tested the system with F117 and B2 aircraft. Never heard a suggestion of the results of that.

Will be very interested to see whether the reality matches the possibility in these increasingly interesting times.

[ORAC]

One has to wonder if the USA is twitched enough to resurrect OTH-B. I seem to recall that only 2 of the planned first chain of 6 were built and were then mothballed after being used for stealth/cruise missile trials. Don't know what was done with the kit.

[steamchicken]

Very impressive stuff. I recall a variety of odd rumours about it when I were in Oz - CIA weather weapons, birds falling dead from the sky and like bollox!

[DaveThorne]

JINDALEE has been around for a long time, see below, the original use was to detect storms in the Pacific before the days of reliable Wx sats.

Quote from FAS.

Australia and the United States have established a modest program of cooperation that focuses on common interests in preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and affording protection from missile attack. Cooperative BMD activities between BMDO and the Australian Defence Science and Technology Organization (DSTO) concentrate on technical and scientific cooperation and interchange. These activities are based on the Cooperative and Collaboration Research, Development and Engineering Agreement that was signed in October 1994.

As a result of the March 1994 U.S.-Australia Ministerial talks and the 1994 Australian Defense White Paper, a cooperative project involving sensor/data fusion testing was conducted at Australia's Woomera Missile Range in October 1995. This experiment correlated multiple sensors (optical and RF radar) during the boost phase of a rocket and transmitted the real-time data and imagery via satellite link to the United States.

A more elaborate missile target detection and identification experiment is scheduled for the Fall of this year. This project, called DUNDEE, will use the Australian Jindalee Over-the-Horizon Radar and the BMDO Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) satellite. Four short-range Terrier-Orion missiles will be launched out to sea from the northwest Australian coast in an experiment designed to explore the detection of missiles during their boost-phase.

In addition to these activities, the U.S. and Australia have sponsored a number of technical and scientific personnel exchanges. The first personnel exchange brought an Australian DSTO scientist to the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University to work on data fusion from electro-optic sensors as part of the MSX program.