Beijing’s monstrous ‘six story’ radar detects threats from thousands of miles

Astunning close-up footage of China’s strategic long-range radar was seen on a state television report of President Xi Jinping’s Lunar New Year message to the military.

Details on this seemingly advanced radar system that was featured again in a CCTV (China Central Television) report on Saturday remain obscure. Close-up footage, however, reveals dozens of antennas lined up in an octagon array in a structure approximately six stories high.

SCMP reports analysts saying that the long-range radar in the footage has a key role in Beijing’s strategy to enhance early warning capabilities against missile threats. Military commentator and former PLA instructor Song Zhongping also said the structure in the footage appeared to be a “strategic, active phased-array radar” capable of detecting missile threats within “a few thousand kilometers.”

On Friday, an end-of-year video sent to Xi by the People’s Liberation Army featured a group of “early warning and monitoring” troops standing before the ground-based phased-array radar station. This video included representatives from various military divisions, including the army, navy, air force, and even the aerospace force.

“We will strictly monitor the battlefield situation to ensure that if there is any situation, we will respond immediately.” an aerospace force representative, Standing before the radar, was observed firmly making this statement. As a part of this report, Xi extended Lunar New Year greetings to the troops and insisted that they “strengthen combat readiness duties” during the festival to face emergencies.

Former PLA instructor Song told SCMP it was “at the forefront” of the country’s anti-missile defense system. “It is key to receiving warnings early so that you have enough time to organize anti-missile forces to react.” He also indicated that China will potentially use this system to detect hypersonic missiles.

Phased-array radar systems have faster scanning speeds and better accuracy than traditional radars. The radar does not move physically, but instead, the array is controlled by computers to scan different directions electronically. China has heavily invested in phased-array radar systems since the 1970s as part of its military modernization program.

Alongside new anti-ballistic systems like the surface-to-air HQ-19, which has been compared to the US Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence System, or THAAD, China also claims to have developed the world’s first ‘seabed radar‘ capable of detecting high-altitude aircraft at a depth of 1,000 meters. While the HQ-19, capable of hitting targets at an altitude of 200 km, was publicly revealed at Zhuhai Airshow in 2024, the Chinese ‘seabed radar’ is still a secret project that could dramatically change combat dynamics by improving submarine offensive capabilities substantially.

Pentagon’s report from last year also mentions, “Several ground-based, large-phase array radars, similar in appearance to US PAVE PAWS radars – that could support missile early warning role.

While the PLA has not disclosed the number or any details of its long-range early warning radar systems, the Pentagon estimates that it has “several ground-based, large-phase array radars – similar in appearance to US PAVE PAWS radars – that could support a missile early warning role,” according to their report, last year on the development of the Chinese military.

Developed during the Cold War, the PAVE PAWS (American Precision Acquisition Vehicle Entry Phased Array Warning System) can detect missiles from as far away as 5,000km (3,100 miles). It tracks moving projectiles in great detail from 2,000km (1,200 miles), tracks satellites, surveils space, and even detects submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks.

It looks remarkably like COBRA DANE (which I spent some time at). COBRA DANE is L-Band (~ 1200 MHz) and was originally placed in North Dakota as a ballistic missile defense radar in to defend missile siloes. Jimmy Carter, may he burn forever in Hell, shut it down his first day in office, before it transmitted its first pulse.

It was later moved to the Western Aleutians where it has been reliably performing sentinel and reconnaissance duty ever since.

PAVE PAWS and BMEWS are ballistic missile early warning radars on the periphery of CONUS (including Greenland and Britain), operating at UHF (420 MHz, a slot allocated by the ITU for radio location.)

There is a HUGE three-faced Phased array in Taiwan, larger than BMEWS, and taller, sitting on top of an 8,000 foot mountain. Reputedly, the most powerful UHF radar in the world. The Taiwan Radar Surveillance Program is staffed by the Taiwan Air Force, and Raytheon. Much of the equipment is US access only inside a vault, including all of the radar controller software and a good deal of the IBM made hardware.

Was once capitalist influenced shopping mall but now is converted to service of people’s defense system against imperialist West. Still miss the Dollar Hot Dog and 24 Hour Game Palace, though.

LOL! If there is one thing today's China is not short of, it's giant shopping malls.

The Germans had phased array air defense radars during World War II. It used analog circuitry, and swept a constant search pattern. It had no beam agility, and no automatic target detection. The Germans also invented the LFM waveform, using analog dispersive delay-lines, the favorite waveform of Phased-Array radar.

One of the “breakthroughs” that made PAVE PAWS economically feasible was the Werk (In-place) FFT. Werk invented and built a one-k FFT box at Raytheon, Wayland, which was the home of PAVE PAWS and BMEWS. The in-place FFT shuffles the data to use the same memory for storing the time domain and frequency domain data. It is commonplace these days. PAVE PAWS Cape Cod had an 8-K FFT, his big brothers in Thule and Flyingsdales Moor had 16-K.

Yes, true. There was also the direct predecessor down at Eglin in Florida, Site C.

I arrived at Cape Cod in October 1979. We went live the next year. Most of the people I initially worked with came up from Florida Site C.

FPS-85? I believe. Raytheon hired the designers away to enter (and in some ways) dominate the Phased Array radar business. When I was there they used to say that they built more acres of phased arrays than anyone else in the world.

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