Watch SkyRadar demonstrate Range Gate Pull-Off with a real radar and active jammer. Explore physical range deception and its role in practical ECCM training.
Electronic warfare is often explained through diagrams, simulations and carefully prepared scenarios. But what happens when a real radar is exposed to a physical deception jammer?
In this video, SkyRadar demonstrates its new Active Target in a live laboratory experiment with the NextGen 8 GHz Pulse Radar. The experiment is deliberately presented without elaborate production or post-processing. What viewers see is the radar's actual response to an electronically manipulated return, including the effects of signal amplification and artificial range displacement.
The demonstration provides a practical introduction to Range Gate Pull-Off (RGPO), one of the established techniques of radar deception. It also illustrates why working with real RF signals is an important complement to simulation-based electronic warfare training.
Video: Live experiment with the SkyRadar Active Target, demonstrating echo amplification and controlled range deception on the NextGen 8 GHz Pulse Radar.
What Does the Experiment Demonstrate?
The laboratory setup combines passive reflectors, a physical Active Target and the SkyRadar NextGen Pulse Radar. Their responses can be observed directly on the radar's A-Scope in FreeScopes.
Initially, the radar receives ordinary reflections from objects in the experimental environment. The Active Target then introduces an electronically generated response that can become substantially stronger than the surrounding echoes.
As this response dominates the display, weaker genuine reflections become increasingly difficult to distinguish. The A-Scope's automatic scaling contributes to this visual effect.
The more significant observation follows when the artificial response is progressively delayed. Although the physical Active Target remains stationary, its apparent position on the radar display changes.
The radar receives a return that seems to originate from a different distance.
This is the fundamental principle behind range deception: the radar measures the timing of a received signal, but that signal does not necessarily represent an ordinary reflection from a physical object at the indicated range.
What Is Range Gate Pull-Off (RGPO)?
Range Gate Pull-Off is an electronic-warfare technique designed to mislead a radar's range-tracking process.
An RGPO jammer creates a deceptive radar return, initially close to the genuine target reflection. By progressively changing the return's delay, the jammer makes the false echo appear to move away from the real target.
In a susceptible tracking radar, the objective is to cause the range tracker to follow the false return rather than the actual target.
The SkyRadar experiment demonstrates the underlying physical effect: an electronically controlled, progressively displaced radar echo. It does not attempt to reproduce every aspect of an operational radar-tracking engagement.
This distinction is important for technical training. Understanding how a deceptive signal is generated is the foundation for understanding how it can influence radar processing and how such interference might be identified.
Why Does Real-Hardware Experimentation Matter in Electronic Warfare Training?
Simulators are essential for studying electronic attack and electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM). They allow instructors to construct controlled scenarios, change parameters and repeat experiments under identical conditions.
However, physical experiments introduce an additional dimension.
Students observe signals that have actually passed through an RF transmission and reception chain. They encounter the combined effects of target reflections, background clutter, receiver behaviour and processing configurations.
The distinction between a genuine and a deceptive return is no longer simply a property defined in a simulation. It becomes a question that must be investigated using measured data.
This is particularly relevant for radar engineers and electronic-warfare specialists. Their task is not merely to recognise a disturbance but to understand its characteristics, evaluate the reliability of radar information and select appropriate countermeasures.
An unfiltered laboratory demonstration also has educational value because it exposes practical behaviour that idealised examples may conceal.
From Radar Deception to Electronic Counter-Countermeasures
Producing a deceptive radar return is only the first part of the training exercise. The next question is how the radar can recognise that the apparent target movement is not genuine.
This is where SkyRadar's FreeScopes processing environment becomes relevant.
With FreeScopes ECCM I, trainees can investigate range-deception detection and compare different processing approaches, including moving-target indication (MTI), clutter-map techniques, moving-target detection (MTD) and Kalman-based processing.
The learning objective extends beyond observing a misleading A-Scope. Students investigate how alternative processing chains behave under disturbance and whether meaningful target information can be recovered.
The present video concentrates on generating and observing the deceptive response. The detection of the actual target and the analysis of countermeasures are subjects for subsequent experiments.
The Active Target Within SkyRadar's Integrated EW Training Environment
The Active Target is one component of SkyRadar's broader electronic-warfare training architecture, which connects physical radar measurements, simulation, digital signal processing and advanced deception analysis.
The NextGen 8 GHz Pulse Radar provides real radar measurements. The Active Target introduces controlled physical deception effects. FreeScopes gives trainees access to the received data and the signal-processing methods required to investigate those effects.
Alongside this physical environment, SkySim and its ECCM extensions provide configurable electronic-warfare scenarios, including noise jamming, range deception, chaff and decoys. More advanced simulation modules extend the curriculum to velocity and angle deception, waveform agility and related countermeasure concepts.
This combination allows instructors to progress from basic radar reflections to increasingly complex EW scenarios, while maintaining a connection between physical measurements and simulated behaviour.
It also establishes a foundation for AI-oriented radar training, where the origin, quality and possible manipulation of radar data must be understood before applying data-driven interpretation methods.
The distinguishing feature of SkyRadar's approach is therefore not the jammer in isolation. It is the ability to connect an actual electronic attack experiment to a structured learning environment for radar analysis and ECCM.
Learning to Question What the Radar Sees
Electronic warfare introduces a fundamental challenge to radar engineering: not every plausible radar return corresponds to a genuine target.
Understanding this requires more than identifying the names of jamming techniques. Engineers must learn how deceptive signals enter the radar processing chain, how they affect measurements and which methods can help establish reliable target information.
The experiment shown here addresses that challenge at its physical origin.
A target remains stationary. Its electronically generated echo moves. The radar reports what it receives.
The task of the radar engineer is to determine what can be trusted.
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