The Cyrano radars are a family of French onboard radars, manufactured from the 1960s by the Compagnie Générale de la Télégraphie Sans Fil (CSF). These radars were originally used on the Mirage III C and

Saab 35 Draken The Saab 35 Draken (; 'The Kite' or 'The Dragon') is a Swedish fighter-interceptor developed and manufactured by Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget ( SAAB) between 1955 and 1974. Development of the Saab 35 Draken started in 1948 as the Swedish air fo ...

, and then in constantly evolving variants on different models of aircraft from

Dassault Aviation Dassault Aviation SA () is a French manufacturer of military aircraft and business jets. It was founded in 1929 by Marcel Bloch as Société des Avions Marcel Bloch or "MB". After World War II, Marcel Bloch changed his name to Marcel D ...

and

SEPECAT SEPECAT (french: Société Européenne de Production de l'avion Ecole de Combat et d'Appui Tactique) was an Anglo-French aircraft manufacturer. Established during 1966, its aim was to handle the development and commercialization of the Jaguar, ...

Cyrano I

The Cyrano I was developed from 1958 for the French Air Force by CSF.

Components

The monopulse radar Cyrano I is located in the nose of the aircraft, in a pressurized enclosure. The antenna, with a diameter of 0.36 m, is movable in both

Inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a Plane of reference, reference plane and the orbital plane or Axis of rotation, axis of direction of the orbiting object ...

and

azimuth An azimuth (; from ar, اَلسُّمُوت, as-sumūt, the directions) is an angular measurement in a spherical coordinate system. More specifically, it is the horizontal angle from a cardinal direction, most commonly north. Mathematicall ...

, using servo mechanisms. It includes a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter, with a peak power of 300 kW in the band (λ = 3 cm), is a 4J 50 type

magnetron The cavity magnetron is a high-power vacuum tube used in early radar systems and currently in microwave ovens and linear particle accelerators. It generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field whil ...

. The receiver has a noise figure of 9 dB, with mixers and preamplifiers. The entire system consists of subminiature tubes of types 6111 and 61126, arranged in 30 rows containing 9, 7, or 5 tubes. Cooling is provided by a circulation of water and glycol. The radar has analog electronics responsible for processing the signal, telemetry, deviation measurements, antenna controls, as well as the navigation commands to the missiles before and after firing.

Capabilities

The radar is designed for the interception of bombers flying at high-altitude. It includes functions for detection, tracking, automatic navigation, missile guidance, and ground and contour mapping. It can help guiding when firing of 30mm DEFA and ADEN cannons,and guide the Matra R511 and R530 missiles, with a range adapted to the capabilities of these missiles.

References

Works cited

* * {{cite journal , first1=Jacques , last1=Darricau , first2=Yves , last2=Blanchard , title=Histoire du radar dans le monde puis en France, Partie 1 , journal=Revue Pégase , issue=107 , date=November 2002 , pages=14–15 , url= http://radars-darricau.fr/livre/2-PDF/histoire.pdf , format=pdf Aircraft radars Military radars of France Military equipment introduced in the 1960s