P-70 radar

Development

Development of the P-70 early warning radar began in 1960 and concluded in 1968, when state testing was completed and the radar was accepted into service. Its purpose was to provide long-range early warning of aircraft across the Soviet Union in support of long-range missile batteries. The SKB Design Bureau, a division of State Plant No. 197 named after V.I. Lenin (predecessor of the current NNIIRT), developed the radar. A total of 11 units were produced and deployed to regions including Estonia, Kotlas, Lithuania, the Rybachy Peninsula, Kerch, the North-East Bank, Azerbaijan, Mongolia, Russian Island, and Anadyr.

Description

The P-70 radar was housed in a static, two-story building that contained the radar and power supply equipment, along with living and working spaces for its operators. Support facilities could be situated as far as two kilometers from the main structure. A single, large open-frame truncated parabolic antenna, measuring 48 by 25 meters with a surface area of 850 square meters, handled both transmission and reception. This antenna was mechanically scanned in azimuth using hydraulics.

The radar was dual-channel and could operate in both horizontal and vertical polarization. It was one of the first mass-produced radars to use pulse compression, which gave it excellent long-range resolution—ten times better than the P-14—and protection against active and passive interference. The P-70 used two pulse repetition frequencies: 140 Hz for tracking low-altitude targets like aircraft and missiles, and 70 Hz for high-altitude targets such as satellites. A fully coherent transmitter and an MTI system compensated for wind and passive interference like chaff, resulting in a low false alarm rate.