the AN/APQ-120 radar on the F-4E phantom and all its other variants is missing the Pulse Doppler mode despite multiple online sources stating that it indeed was developed as a Pulse Doppler radar.
Sources:
and there exist others
missing the pilot RWR
what? it does have RWR
Yeah it aint PD
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IRL it was
I said pilot not Copilot
AN/APQ-120 isn’t a Pulse-Doppler radar
It’s just Pulse
A common mistake
It was capable of filtering chaffs under VERY specific conditions by speedgating, but that’s not even MTI mode
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then why do multiple sources say pulse doppler? I’m just curious, not tryna sound offensive
Incorrect translations or just plain laziness, IDK. Maybe someone saw that NAVY F-4s had PD radars and thought that all later models also had them.
Here’s a thing about internet, don’t trust any info unless it has some actually good sources. Neither the USAF manual for the F-4E nor the actual radar control panel in the cockpit show any controls for a PD mode.
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It also have some limited ld/sd but thanks to the TISEO
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not really limited
It is limited, the tiseo is still an electroptical system, the camera performance, weather and light conditions would limit it
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no.
Well, it had the capability of filtering chaff/ ground clutter in CAA mode which was a mode inside ACM mode…
However , that’s not PD.
If for example they give the capability only in ACM mode , it will be the correct implementation.
That means we are talking about a TCTO 556 Phantom at the very least. Not all F-4Es had them.
It was implemented in all Rivet Haste Phantoms.
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Not VERY specific conditions.
They are pretty wide and basically anything thats headon high closure.
All pulse radars filter out chaff in headon / flanking approaches by simple range-gating, aka what all pulse radars do to even keep the freaking lock on target. IRL, before chaff packet blooms out and actually produces radar returns, its outside of range gate as its approx as long as target you are locking and is actually slightly forward so chaff cant really affect it, also another reason why PULSE radars can keep lock in lookdown even against pretty low altitude targets, until strong enough ground return gets into range gate, it wont swap. All pulse radars ingame are SEVERELY underperforming against chaff in headons.
This mode was pretty much limited for co-alt / lookup only or at altitude. It was more like vertical scan thingy. It also supressed range returns based on angle against ground but did not filter out ground, sidelobe or altitude line returns .
CAA is often the thing mistaken for PD capability because it allows to look down and lock enemy if you are high enough and so is target.
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Theyre probably confusing it for other nations f-4es. for exxample, israeli, japanese, and german f-4es eventually got a pulse doppler radar
Your own source states it is not pulse Doppler:
Moreover, the Pulse-only APQ-120 suffers from the constant issues of clutter and limited detection range thus requiring a non-indifferent amount of work and attention by the WSO.
As others have said the F-4E’s radar was not pulse doppler, mentions of it being pulse doppler online are confusing it with other version of the F-4.
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Simple, they’re just wrong. Likely some relying on each other as incorrect sources and thus propagating the error.
It has a Doppler mode where, if youknow the attitude of the target compared to you, the RIO can make it so that the radar is tuned to that Doppler shift, but it is entirely manual and would just be unfun imho