An Experimental Investigation of Radar Target Designation Tracking

This paper describes a study of radar designation performance in a simulated high speed, low altitude aircraft. Hypotheses were derived by means of closed-loop analyses for combinations of aircraft velocity, antenna scan rate, continuous versus discrete cursor generation, and cursor stabilization at aircraft velocity versus nonstabilized cursor. The results of the study showed that best performance was attained using a continuous cursor at high scan rates. Cursor stabilization improved performance only with the discrete cursor. Indications were that the human performed as a linear operator in this control situation.