One of the primary sensors on F16 (simulators in the early 1990s) was a passive radar — called that — that detected and pointed at those things trying to ping my plane.
Since it detected transmissions outside effective range, it meant I tracked them sooner than they tracked me, much the way automotive radar detectors have different warning sounds for when they sense radar around somewhere and when the car is being pinged directly.
Technically (the best kind of correct!) There is a transmitter in these cases, just not controlled by the same source as the detector.
I suspect radiolocation isn’t restricted to radar signals but can track stars and radio stations. Though they too transmit.
Just because they dumbed down what a radiolocation sensor is and called it passive radar doesn’t make it a radar. RADAR was an acronym radio detection and ranging. Passive systems triangulate that is different than ranging. For ranging to work you need the transmitter and receiver to cooperate.
Radiolocation can be passive radar can not. Radar requires one or more transmitters and one or more receivers.
One of the primary sensors on F16 (simulators in the early 1990s) was a passive radar — called that — that detected and pointed at those things trying to ping my plane.
Since it detected transmissions outside effective range, it meant I tracked them sooner than they tracked me, much the way automotive radar detectors have different warning sounds for when they sense radar around somewhere and when the car is being pinged directly.
Technically (the best kind of correct!) There is a transmitter in these cases, just not controlled by the same source as the detector.
I suspect radiolocation isn’t restricted to radar signals but can track stars and radio stations. Though they too transmit.
Just because they dumbed down what a radiolocation sensor is and called it passive radar doesn’t make it a radar. RADAR was an acronym radio detection and ranging. Passive systems triangulate that is different than ranging. For ranging to work you need the transmitter and receiver to cooperate.