M247 Sergeant York

The M247 Sergeant York DIVAD (Division Air Defence) was a self-propelled anti-aircraft weapon based on the chasis of the M48 Patton tank, the main armament was a twin Bofors 40 mm gun.

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The M247 Sergeant York DIVAD (Division Air Defence) was a self-propelled anti-aircraft weapon based on the chasis of the M48 Patton tank, the main armament was a twin Bofors 40 mm gun. Moreover,the individuals involved with this weapon system came from both Rock Island Arsenal and Frankford Arsenal. <gallery> One of the major problems was that the these individuals working the program had: "NO" hardware experience, nor search/track radar understanding and NO digital signal processing and NO fire control software experience. Another issue was the long target acquisition times (11 to 20 seconds). The most likely cause for this is the failure of the search to track handoff or acquisition. Poor design.Looking at the system it appears that the antenna placement was an afterthought! It also appears that the track radar antenna is shadowing the search antenna (between 3db and 10db points).

The Sgt. York radar from Westinghouse uses a Medium PRF waveform w/pulse compression (most likely). This waveform should provide some processing gain against pulsed jammers, white noise jammers and chaff entering the sidelobes. Moreover, the search antenna most likely was a slotted waveguide array at X-band. This antenna has difficulty controlling the sidelobe levels. I would guess that the peak sidelobes were -20dB.

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