The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) of the ministry of defence has cleared the acquisition of 30 weapon locating radars – Swati – from Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) at a total cost of Rs 1,605 crores ($256 million).
Till the Kargil War India did not have any Gun Locating Radar. It only had the British Cymbline Mortar locating Radar. About 20 American ANTPQ 37, Fire finder radars were bought off the shelf to meet the immediate requirements during the Kargil War. The purpose of such radars is to find the position (location) from which the hostile flat trajectory, high angle trajectory guns & mortars and rockets are being fired on own troops. This facilitates the direction of the fire of own artillery guns & rockets to silence and destroy such enemy guns and rockets
Indian Swathi Mobile Phased Array Weapon Locating Radar (WLR) to locate the enemy artillery. Swathi Weapon Locating Radar has been jointly developed by DRDO’s Electronics and Radar Development Establishment (LRDE) and Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL). Their first version was called Rajendra. Swati Radar is their latest improved version. The WLR is similar to the AN/TPQ-37 radar in design and performance but is reportedly more user friendly.
A scale model of the WLR. The array is at its maximum slew setting of 125°.
The radar antenna is slewable up to +/-135° within 30 seconds, which gives the WLR the ability to quickly change its scanning sector, and provides it 360° scan capability. The Coherent TWT based transmitter of the WLR emits 40 kW of power. The range for the Swati radar while tracking gun shells is more than 20 kms and for rockets, about 30 kms.
Information is displayed on ruggedised power PCs on a high resolution multi-mode colour display. The data is displayed in real-time and can be overlaid on a 3D digital map. The WLR can store a 100 km x 100 km size digital map for display at any time. Other modes include Plan position indicator (PPI) display, RHI displays, etc.[2] Up to 99 weapon locations can be stored and tracked at any time and can be transmitted to the command centre
It is believed that the DRDO scientists while testing the trajectory of the missiles at Chandipur observed that their tracking radars could pick up artillery guns booming at a nearby army firing range. This led to the development of Rajendra model & its improved version Swati.
These radars will be used by the Surveillance and Target Acquisition Branch of Indian Artillery. Swati, the radar has been developed as a coherent, electronically scanned C-Band pulse doppler radar.
The radar will automatically locates hostile artillery, mortars and rocket launchers and direct friendly fire to locate the impact point of friendly artillery fire to issue necessary corrections.
Defence & Security Monitor 