Siheyuan: I eat melons while doing scientific research

Chapter 1331 No way to heaven, no way to escape to earth! (4k)

Otherwise, if we follow the Air Force Equipment Bureau's idea to fully equip the fleet, not to mention the new aircraft, just replacing the already produced Fighter-7s would be a huge undertaking. If there are any problems, it would be a complete waste of time and effort.

Gao Zhendong nodded: "Yes, that's good news. Okay, I'll definitely be there!"

As someone who lived through those decades, especially after witnessing the 6-0 scoreline on Tianya, he knew very well how important an advanced radar system was for air combat.

The US Navy has always been fond of the F-14A. Actually, the Tomcat's maneuverability is secondary; what they like most is the combination of a radar that can see and shoot far, and has tremendous power.

Of course, Talking Tom being handsome is also a very important point. After all, performance is temporary, but being handsome is for life.

After these "unimportant" important matters were discussed, the comrades from the radar institute finally revealed the purpose of their visit.

"Chief Engineer Gao, I remember you mentioned in a meeting once that anti-ship missiles could have a range of over 50 kilometers without the need for aircraft in the air..."

Gao Zhendong laughed: "I guessed it. I bet you guys aren't the only ones who're anxious, other comrades are too, right?"

The colleagues at the radar institute laughed too. They knew perfectly well who Gao Zhendong was referring to: "Yes, yes, they're even more anxious than we are! Hahaha. They've been urging us more than once since the last meeting."

At the last meeting, Gao Zhendong had barely started when he was stopped by the leaders of the National Defense Industry Committee, because the circumstances at the time were indeed not suitable for discussing this matter. However, the comrades from the Navy who had only heard the beginning were extremely anxious.

Since long-range weapons first appeared on the battlefield, range has always been one of the ultimate pursuits. However, unlike the navy and air force, due to the natural curvature of the earth, their range is limited to within 50 kilometers without the assistance of other equipment.

This has nothing to do with the weapon's performance itself, but is due to obstruction of vision.

Hearing that a missile can break through 50 kilometers in range without the aid of external forces would make anyone anxious.

The comrades from the Naval Equipment Bureau also arrived. Hearing their conversation, they laughed and said, "Chief Engineer Gao, let's not beat around the bush. I'm not pretending anymore. I'm laying my cards on the table. It's us."

There's nothing to be embarrassed about. We're all sensible people. Besides, there's no way to avoid this.

Gao Zhendong laughed even harder; those words sounded familiar!

He finally managed to stop laughing and his expression became serious.

"But let me make this clear first: this technology is not 100% effective. There is a possibility of failure and misjudgment, and the possibility is not very low. It is also affected by the weather."

The comrades from the Naval Equipment Bureau didn't take it seriously: "We could have predicted it. It's okay, something is better than nothing."

To overcome the theoretical limitations of Earth's curvature, even those who aren't technically proficient could guess that this thing would be less effective than a normal radar.

If this thing is stronger than normal radar, such as the Air Force's high-altitude radar under the same conditions, then they would be worried, which would be abnormal.

“That’s right, Chief Engineer Gao. Even radar itself is affected by the weather, so it’s not a big deal,” said the colleague from the radar institute.

Gao Zhendong shook his head: "The problem with this technology being affected by the weather is that assessing the degree of impact is not as easy as with ordinary radar. In other words, let alone quantifying it, even qualitative assessment is quite difficult."

The comrade from the Naval Equipment Bureau laughed and said, "Anyway, is this thing useful or not?"

And you know what? He really knows how to grasp the main contradictions.

Gao Zhendong nodded: "It's useful, and it's good enough for tactical applications."

If this thing wasn't useful, we wouldn't have directly copied it and deployed it on all our main frigates after only buying a few sets for trial. Our technology might not have been great back then, but our vision was far superior. So much so that some shrewd countries had the principle of "I don't want anything else, just give me one set of the Dongda's model" when making military purchases.

Therefore, Gao Zhendong has no worries about its effectiveness. The fact that it was chosen by the three senior officials during his most difficult time must mean that it has something special about it.

"That's good. If it's useful, that's its ability. If it's not useful, that's our own problem." The comrades from the Naval Equipment Bureau were very generous and even took the initiative to take responsibility themselves first. In fact, the comrades all knew that what Comrade Zhendong brought up was something that, despite his words about its various shortcomings, there must be a solvable problem behind those shortcomings, and that was the most important problem.

This new technology may have low effectiveness, limited applicable environments, and be affected by weather, but as long as it can meet the requirements of anti-ship missiles for beyond-visual-range strikes to a certain extent, then it is worth developing.

Having something that others don't have is, in some ways, more important than having something that others have but is better.

"Yes, yes, Chief Engineer Gao, if it's not working out, then it's our problem. Please tell us quickly." Knowing that Gao Zhendong was only trying to prepare them by clarifying the technical flaws and explaining the technical background, giving them a clear understanding of the overall technology, the comrades at the radar institute still couldn't help but speak up.

Anyone would be tempted to do that.

Gao Zhendong nodded. He had said everything he needed to say, and now it was time to bring out what he needed to bring out.

"I think you comrades should actually know some of the working principles of over-the-horizon radar, right?" Gao Zhendong didn't rush to reveal everything, but asked a question first.

The comrade from the radar institute nodded: "Yes, we have considered long-wave radar. The electromagnetic waves of this type of radar can achieve the effect of crawling along the ground. However, as you, Chief Engineer Gao, know, this thing has too many flaws. Even without considering the accuracy issues, it is really unlikely to be used as radar on warships."

Long waves are a valuable tool, and even in the 21st century, they are indispensable for nuclear submarine communications. However, in the current technological environment, not only are long waves less accurate and subject to size requirements, but the key issue is their size. Using them as radar on warships is currently almost impossible.

Long waves, also known as ground waves, are one of the three most common types of over-the-horizon radar.

At the same time, long-wave radar is the easiest to implement and the most readily conceived principle for over-the-horizon radar. Theoretically, long-wave radar is no different from ordinary radar and doesn't involve any strange or unusual components. However, the simpler something is, the more obvious its shortcomings may be; resolution and size are its inherent weaknesses. Therefore, while the researchers at the radar institute could conceive of this idea, they couldn't implement ground-wave (long-wave) radar on a ship.

Gao Zhendong laughed and said, "Well, this thing is fine for use on land, but it's a bit too big for use on ships. But you guys shouldn't stop working on this. Don't neglect the basic research on long-wave radar. I feel this thing will be very useful in the future..."

Long-wave radar is truly effective against the US stealth aircraft, and even the Type 52D destroyer is equipped with many of them. To say it's useless would be utter nonsense. The thought that the Nighthawk and Raptor would have a big stick waiting for them as soon as they were introduced made Gao Zhendong extremely happy.

However, he can't say it explicitly right now, he can only say "it feels like".

Fortunately, Gao Zhendong felt that while it was hard to say whether other units valued it, the Naval Equipment Bureau and the Air Equipment Bureau definitely did: "Okay, even if we can't invest heavily in the research of long-wave radar, we will try our best to ensure the continuity of the research and the reserve of technology."

Gao Zhendong nodded, then turned to the comrades at the radar institute and asked, "Have you considered that wave?"

"Skywave? We did receive news that the Americans have developed a skywave radar, but we don't know much about it yet." The comrades from the radar institute were pleasantly surprised, as if they had found something they had been searching for without any effort.

According to intelligence, the Americans developed an over-the-horizon radar in 61 that could see several thousand kilometers away. The comrades were amazed and envious, but they only knew that the radar used skywave, and they didn't know anything more detailed.

Gao Zhendong shook his head and said, "Skywave radar won't work here either. Skywave radar uses the ionosphere in the atmosphere to reflect shortwave signals to achieve beyond-line-of-sight range, but this radar has several major problems under current technology, which makes its prospects even worse than ground wave radar for the time being."

The implication is that while Gao Zhendong himself still supports research on ground-wave radar, he has no intention of researching sky-wave radar for the time being. However, Gao Zhendong did not explicitly state this.

Gao Zhendong was willing to leave one path open, but he was very cautious about completely cutting off one path in the short term, since his words now carried considerable weight.

The comrades didn't understand or pay attention to the meaning behind Gao Zhendong's words. Instead, they all looked very interested. Sure enough, Chief Engineer Gao had indeed studied and understood skywave radar.

"Chief Engineer Gao, what's wrong with the skywave radar? Could you give us some guidance?"

Even if you don't study it yourself, knowing its shortcomings will make you prepared when you actually face this kind of radar, and you'll have some targeted measures or tactics.

Gao Zhendong didn't actually know much about this stuff, but what he had learned online in his previous life was enough to explain it.

"We know that the ionosphere is unstable and is also affected by factors such as location and weather. This leads to a major problem for skywave radar – it is not only affected by the weather, but even if the ionosphere still meets the basic conditions for operation, the same ionosphere under different conditions can reflect different wavebands. In other words, in addition to the radar itself, skywave radar must also monitor the ionosphere and select the wavebands."

Upon hearing this, the comrades gasped in shock.

"Monitoring the state of the ionosphere?" While changing wavelengths to some extent to cope with changes in the ionosphere might not be a big problem for our comrades, the additional task of monitoring the ionosphere is clearly beyond our scope.

"This is a difficult matter."

"No wonder the US's skywave radar is so huge. I was wondering why shortwave radar needed such a massive structure. Now I understand." Although our comrades didn't have in-depth knowledge of skywave radar, thanks to satellites, they still knew roughly what the US's skywave radar looked like.

Gao Zhendong added: "Moreover, skywave radar has another problem: it is farsighted and cannot see things up close. In fact, this 'up close' is quite far, which means that the near-boundary blind zone is very large."

"why is that?"

"Because the beam has width, and the ionosphere is very high. The ionosphere D, the closest point to the ground, is 50 to 100 kilometers high. If you do some trigonometric calculations, you'll see that in order to avoid interference between the transmitted and returned signals, the distance between the radar and the target must be far enough. I've calculated that, under current technological conditions, this distance is probably over 300 kilometers!"

The comrades from the Naval Equipment Bureau almost jumped up: "300 kilometers? That means the skywave radar is blind within a 300-kilometer range right under our noses?"

Of course, the US government wouldn't release all the parameters of the skywave radar, so everyone only knew that this thing could see for thousands of kilometers, which made them very envious, but they never expected that there were 300 kilometers in front of them that they couldn't see.

Gao Zhendong nodded and smiled, "That's right, it will definitely not be less than this number! This is determined by theory and technical conditions. Even if the Citibank doesn't say it, they can't break through this number!"

Like the US military, the US military only reports good news and hides bad news regarding weapon specifications, desperately trying to drag the other side into the quagmire of an arms race—a traditional skill of theirs.

“300 kilometers? That’s useless on a ship. If you can’t see anything within 300 kilometers, there’s no point in fighting this war.”

Gao Zhendong nodded and added, "Skywave radar is useful for long-range early warning, but it's not suitable for use on ships right now. Moreover, it's large-scale, expensive, and generally unreliable, so its usability as tactical equipment is questionable."

There's no way to ascend to heaven, and no way to escape to the earth!
Although Gao Zhendong rejected both ground wave and sky wave, the comrades from the Naval Equipment Bureau and the Radar Institute became increasingly excited!
Since Chief Engineer Gao could so confidently refute the earth wave and sky wave, and with such reason and evidence, it can only mean one thing.

—He also possesses an over-the-horizon radar technology that can be used on warships!
"Chief Engineer Gao, what is your solution?"

Gao Zhendong did not give a direct answer, but instead took out an optical fiber.

"Comrades, do you know what this is?"

"I know, fiber optics!" No, this is about radar. What's with bringing out a whole fiber optic cable?
I know you have recently published some excellent results in the field of optical fiber, but it seems a bit out of place to bring this up now.

Indeed, light is an electromagnetic wave, and radar waves are also electromagnetic waves, but the difference between these two types of electromagnetic waves is rather significant.

Gao Zhendong smiled and said, "Comrades should know that the reason why optical fiber can make light bend is by making light undergo total internal reflection within the optical fiber. That's why it's called optical fiber. My idea is similar to that of optical fiber, to make electromagnetic waves produce a phenomenon similar to traveling in a pipe in the atmosphere, so it's called atmospheric waveguide."

(End of this chapter)