3 articles tagged “radar”.
Temperature inversions, birds and faulty filters routinely fake solid radar targets. Here's the physics behind the false returns — and the radar-visual cases that genuinely don't fit any of it.
A 26-year air traffic controller has gone on the record about what civil radar does with unidentified targets: filters them out, then wipes the raw data after 45 days. Both rules live in the same FAA order.
For two weekends in July 1952, unidentified blips appeared on radar over Washington D.C., jets were scrambled, and the Air Force held its largest press conference since the war. The official answer — a heat haze on the radar — has never fully satisfied.