Joint STARS—The Start of 50 Years of All Speed Surface Moving Target Detection and Tracking

The Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) radar program was conceived in the mid-1970s as a means of utilizing advanced airborne radar and smart munitions technologies to counter the potential of a massive armed vehicle invasion of Western Europe. Initiated by several cooperative research and development programs sponsored by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Program Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force's Advanced Research Laboratories in Rome, NY, USA, and supplemented by parallel complementary research and devleopment activities within various U.S. Army agencies, the technology was developed and field tested in a series of real-world tactical demonstrations. The demonstrations, conducted at the Air Force's extensive facility in Alamogordo, NM, USA, involved combinations of both stationary and remotely controlled tanks deployed in a variety of configurations and, additionally employed state-of-the-art airborne radar sensors from two different large radar system corporations and two different types of autonomous terminally guided multiple-submunition-based weapons designed to achieve multivehicle kills on each weapon launch. DARPA and Air Force programs that contributed to the success of the tactical demonstrations and the ultimate development and operational deployment of the Joint STARS system included Pave Mover and Assault Breaker. Related Army programs included Airborne Long-range Alerting Radar for MTI (ALARM), Project Periodically Elevated Electronic Kibitzer (PEEK), and Stand Off Target Acquisition System (SOTAS).