Weapon Locating Radars (WLR) that can track artillery rounds, rockets, mortar shells and unguided rockets, have been developed by NATO, China and India

Weapon Locating Radars (WLR) are primarily used to detect and locate enemy Artillery units by tracking the trajectory of incoming rounds. They can also provide fire correction of friendly artillery units. WLRs usually can also track mortar shells and unguided rockets. Some WLRs also have limited missile tracking and Air Defence capabilities.

 

WLR is employed to locate the hostile artillery guns, mortars and rockets so that rapid counter bombardment can be resorted to in order to neutralise them. Time is of essence as hostile artillery can resort to shoot and scoot tactics. During an insurgency scenario it greatly helps in locating them if the insurgents are resorting to artillery fire. The technology employed for WLR is radar based arrays which detects and tracks the trajectory of round/mortar/rocket in various stages of the flight and then extrapolates the origin of the fire with the help of a computer.

 

State-owned electronics and radar systems developer China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC) has completed development of an updated variant of its S-band phased array SLC-2 weapon locating radar (WLR) system and is in advanced discussions with a number of potential export customers in the Asia Pacific, Central Asia, and the Middle East, Jane’s sources have revealed.

 

COBRA is a high mobility weapon location radar which meets all NATO requirements. The Euro-Art Consortium has been the first company worldwide to develop and manufacture this multifunctional counter battery radar with a fully active phased array antenna. 12 COBRA systems have been delivered to Germany, 10 to France and 7 to the UK.The € 500 million contract includes logistics and services.

 

India has also developed Swathi Weapon Locating Radar (WLR), a mobile artillery locating phased array radar. This counter-battery radar is designed to detect and track incoming artillery and rocket fire to determine the point of origin for Counter-battery fire.

 

Efforts to acquire such a system intensified after the Kargil War, where the Indian Army was severely disadvantaged by its lack of firefinding radars. While the Pakistani forces were equipped with American AN/TPQ-36 Firefinder radars, India only had British Cymbeline mortar detecting radars, which were not suitable. Almost 80% of Indian casualties during the war resulted from enemy artillery fire, making such a radar critical. The active radars can be countered by using Jamming of radars (overpowering the desired signals by noise) , deception by generating false artillery firing signals. However passive radars like Swathi are difficult to couter.

 

In recent war  Armenia suffer vast damages, losing millions of dollars’ worth of military assets in the war, Swathi radars did not find a mention in the war damage assessment reports. The country lost about 185 T-72 tanks, 90 armored fighting vehicles, 182 artillery pieces, 73 multiple rocket launchers, 26 surface-to-air missile systems, which include a Tor system and five S-300s, 14 radars or jammers, one SU-25 warplane, four drones and 451 military vehicles, as documented by analyst Stijn Mitzer in the military affairs blog Oryx.

 

India had in March 2020  won a $ 40 million defense deal to supply four indigenously built military radars to Armenia. Developed by India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and manufactured by Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Swathi Weapon Locating Radars (WLR) can track multiple targets simultaneously feeding the data to the artillery operator. It is noteworthy to mention that it had only been five months since the radar deal with India was signed by Armenia, and according to sources, only one unit had been supplied to the country by the Indian defense company, the rest are yet to be shipped.

 

The Azerbaijani drones had wreaked destruction of the Armenian frontlines with advanced drone attacks, destroying all the air defense systems. In such an environment, it was difficult for a radar-like Swathi to survive, since the attacks were aerial and not ground-based, which it is not designed to counter. Moreover, the Weapon Locating Radars playing limited roles in modern wars, and their capabilities are limited in a battlefield is network-centric, and air power dominated. Swathi has been useful for India on the Line of Control (Loc) while battling Pakistan, and it said the Indian army has deployed the radar in the Ladakh region too, where the country is locked in another conflict with China.

 

The latest trend is to combine air defence and WLR function in a single radar platform with 3D AESA technology which can detect long range missiles as well UAVs. Lockheed Martin’s Q-53 has the capability to identify and track UAVs thus combining air surveillance simultaneously with counter target acquisition in a single sensor.