[font="Book Antiqua"][SIZE="5"]- ZODEAC MILCOM -
THE DEW NETWORK[/SIZE]
[SIZE="3"]By: Aaron Shadowtail[/SIZE][/font]l
The modern political climate has given rise to ever increasing military needs. While a tenuous peace has remained over the globe, the NHRE has, at the writing of this report, continued to instigate ever more acts of aggression towards our country. It was thus, with great wisdom, that the Triumvirate enacted
Prop 3017. This act went a long distance in updating our military structure at that time, all the way through the present and will be a potent tool for any future military conflict. One such result of
Prop 3017 was the development of a powerful
Detection Early Warning (DEW) Network designed to fully observe, identify and communicate any potential threat to our national security.
The
Detection Early Warning (DEW) Network is a collection of systems which observe, identify and communicate the presence of airborne military threats to responsible military parties within ZODEAC. It utilizes RADAR, IRST, and Optical technologies to help provide a continuous, sense of the military situation both within and outside of ZODEAC's borders.
[font="Book Antiqua"][SIZE="3"]
RADAR Systems [/SIZE][/font]
The primary ballistic missile and air-defense warning system is powered by a set of RADAR facilities scattered across ZODEAC. The DEW OTH (Over The Horizon) system consists of 7
Over The Horizon (OTH) RADAR complexes, designed to provide continuous coverage of any large scale military air-force movements in the NHRE, the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.
Fig. 1.0: Bedwere OTH RADAR complex that can extend out as far as 3500 km, it provides a powerful method of detecting military bomber aircraft from Europe, all the way down to the equator.
The names of these 7 military complexes are,
--- Kyng's Point
--- Percyvale
--- Bedwere
--- Lucane
--- Deulake
--- Delyens
--- Lamorak
Fig. 1.1: A RADAR Map of the 7 OTH RADAR Complexes and their approximate range (these systems can vary heavily from day-to-day, which requires other RADAR complexes to monitor their alert status depending upon the effective search range of the complex at the time)
While the tracking capabilities of OTH RADAR complexes is hardly accurate enough to coordinate missile launches, it can provide the intel necessary to put a region on alert, increasing the power to local RADAR systems, providing local AEWACs air-craft with general mission coordinates and putting
RFX-4 aircraft in the air with proper payload outputs. Precision RADAR support however, can only be achieved through a combination of Short-Long Range RADAR Systems, AEWACs regional support units and IRST stations.
Fig 1.2: An image of an
AN/FPS-117 Phased RADAR Installation.
The most powerful of these units is the
AN/FPS-117 Phased RADAR Installation. These RADAR sites provide the greatest power in tracking any air-craft in the sky.
Fig 1.3: ZODEAC's
AN/FPS-117 stationary RADAR coverage.
Fig 1.4: Combined Coverage of the
AN/FPS-117 and
OTH systems.
These points utilize
AN/FPS-117 RADAR systems, with 70 total stationary facilities scattered throughout the nation. The installations are commonly placed along "Achilles" points, where RADAR coverage from
OTH RADAR complexes end and are hence weakest. These are generally combined in threes to provide extremely powerful RADAR coverage in the event that an attack somehow manages to follow one of these vectors. Furthermore, because of our proximity with the NHRE, a powerful web of these RADAR installation is present along said border, to maintain RADAR surveillance even in the event that the NHRE does develop and deploy a stealthier class of air-borne units. Finally web of 5 such units surrounds the capital region, providing some of the densest RADAR coverage there in the entire country.
However, if you believed the above figure represents the whole of ZODEAC air-surveillance RADAR, you would be quite wrong. This is simply the primary collection of major permanent RADAR installations. These systems are in turn complimented by 21
AN/TPS-77 mobile RADAR installations, which is essentially a mobile version of the
AN/FPS-117. These systems are moved to regions where air-borne threats are perceived to be the highest and are camouflaged from view, they keep powered down until a threat is detected or observed, at which point they turn on, providing a host of dead ends in any gaps the enemy may try to move through within the ZODEAC DEW network. As a tight turn by any stealthy air-craft negates it's geometric stealth capabilities, such a dead end would force the pilot to reveal his position and expose his air-craft to more refined tracking and anti-aircraft munitions.
Fig 1.5: The mobile
AN/TPS-77 ready for regional RADAR support.
Additionally, the nation is covered in a far larger grid of medium and short range RADAR installations (such as the
AN/FPS-114), both as stationary infrastructure and as mobile units. As with the
AN/TPS-77, these units are typically scattered more heavily along regions where the
AN/FPS-117 power rating is weakest, they also often cease to operate except in the event of a suspected air-born attack. These systems are also complimented by squadrons of
AEWACS aircraft and
SENS03 War Tzar Combat Vehicles.
Fig 1.6: A ZODEAC AEWACS, which is a derivative of the Cargo Air-transport aircraft.
A further layer of security is provided by
Gorshkov MK II. Cruisers, whose onboard
AN/SPY-3 RADAR suite can track targets out to 375 km. At the current writing of this document, a total of [url="]72 of these units (18 Squadrons)[/url] provide continuous coverage over the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, The Atlantic and the Indian Ocean - with even more such units planned for the future. In addition to providing it's own dynamic highly powerful RADAR grid beyond the borders of ZODEAC, these platforms are also armed with additional RADAR and IRST capabilities, [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMDR]AMDR[/url] for anti-ballistic missile and anti-stealth capabilties,
Infra-Red Search & Track (IRST) capabilities for enhanced anti-stealth capabilities and and
RIM-174 missiles ready to take down any ballistic missile or air-craft threats to our borders.
The time may indeed come in the not to distant future, where a combination of these AEGIS systems and AEWACs based systems completely eliminate the need for
Over The Horizon (OTH) RADAR complexes. But in the meantime, a combination of these potent systems and a collection of other RADAR facilities and units provide a first-rate early warning system.