This has gotten to be a more and more common question in the civilian market. Yes, there was a time when mentioning Radar meant that you were talking about military bases or naval ships looking for rogue helicopters or submarines, but Radar has been around for over eighty years now. It’s taken decades, but now it has been made commercially available, so the question becomes: Is there a civilian use for radar?
The answer to this question, coincidentally enough, lies in the creation of so much modern technology. Even twenty years ago there was at least some use of civilian radar, but that use was limited to things like civilian ships, due to the fact that most people didn’t need to know what was flying around their building, but that’s changed.
Today, drones are a reality, and they can be a serious nuisance or security threat to many different businesses and operations. Private security had no choice but to step up and deal with these threats in a modern world where something as simple as a drone can actually be a threat to people’s lives.
It seems like such a statement would have to be mere hyperbole, though right? Whoever heard a drone hurting anybody? It’s hard to imagine such a thing as being an issue for anyone. They are, after all, just harmless little machines that fly around and might, at worst, annoy someone. The problem is where those drones fly. A drone flying around your house is nothing more than an annoyance, that’s true, but a drone flitting around an airport can get sucked into a jet engine.
That’s the central issue to safety and security in these times. A blown jet engine can result in loss of life, and we now live in a world where a person with a drone thinks that they’re just pulling a prank. They might even just be curious about the inner workings of this organization or that one, but those fantastic little machines can do real harm.
So, how do you detect these little machines flying around your office? That’s where Radar comes in. Advancements in Radar, and the fact that these are tuned to look for smaller objects, as opposed to something the size of an aircraft, allow for the detection of drones, vehicles, and even people. On the drone side of things, not only can an unknown drone be detected now, but security companies can dispatch intercept drones to determine what they’re up to!
The next area of modern, civilian radar usage was something that was previously mentioned. It is now possible to detect vehicles within the range of a radar tower. This is something that’s quite extraordinary, as this hasn’t been used before on this scale, but it is indicative of where radar is going. Detecting a vehicle was something that one thought just meant pointing a camera at a parking lot, but people are crafty. If it’s one thing that businesses have realized, it’s that people will park just outside of that camera’s range to avoid detection.
Private radar systems can now extend a kilometer away from the tower, and there isn’t one car or truck out there that will evade its detection systems. As a result, you no longer need that security officer staring at a video of a parking lot for hours on end. Radar systems like this not only detect vehicles but also alert users when they are detected. This is definitely among the more interesting features of new radar systems as they replace the limited views provided by security cameras.
There is also the ability for these systems to now detect people, yes even people! The truth is that radar operates by bouncing radar signals off of everything around it. Those signals are then detected by the radar station and are translated as small blips on the screen that may require investigation.
But, if that’s true, you ask would an airport’s radar detect everything, even a bird? The answer is that yes, it does, but they’re built to either be unable to detect anything below a certain size or the computer is programmed to ignore anything below that certain size. With these forms of civilian radar, the system is set to detect things that are the size of a person or a vehicle, so those pop up on the screen!
As a result of this, radar is fast becoming the new way of detection in North America, allowing for a more efficient method to run security services. In the end, the question becomes not “to sweep or not to sweep”, but when are you going to get the service as it is quickly replacing older methods of detection, and many companies don’t want to be left behind.
