As I have said before on here, one of my brothers is an Electrical Engineer. The kind that makes computers go or, in the case of my brother, stuff related to NASA and then for most of his career, defense.
I have also recently talked on here about a nephew (son of the other brother) who is in the Army and recently got deployed to protect against the drone/rocket/missile barrage by Iran that targeted Israel.
Well, this weekend I learned of a connection between the two.
Visiting the EE brother, we were talking about our nephew and what he did in the Army, which is coordinate/operate a Patriot Missile Defense Unit. So, my brother tells me a couple of things he did years ago, but was always behind a security clearance that did not allow him to discuss what he did when he did it.
Turns out, many years ago, the company he worked for at the time developed the tracking radar that tracks, selects and targets incoming missiles as used in the Patriot Missile Defense system. Then, years later, but still a while back, my brother worked on a US version of what Israel had done to one-up our system with a prioritizing adaptation - to determine what was not going to hit anything valuable - and not waste defensive weapons on something that was going to hit a field of turnips.
Turns out, in between those two things, my brother had also worked on such a prioritizing software for the FA-18s weapons defense system to choose the biggest threat and shoot at that first. So they just adapted the FA-18 stuff to the Patriot system, which is kind of what the Israelis did.
So now my nephew is using what his uncle developed over about a 30 year timespan.
I have also recently talked on here about a nephew (son of the other brother) who is in the Army and recently got deployed to protect against the drone/rocket/missile barrage by Iran that targeted Israel.
Well, this weekend I learned of a connection between the two.
Visiting the EE brother, we were talking about our nephew and what he did in the Army, which is coordinate/operate a Patriot Missile Defense Unit. So, my brother tells me a couple of things he did years ago, but was always behind a security clearance that did not allow him to discuss what he did when he did it.
Turns out, many years ago, the company he worked for at the time developed the tracking radar that tracks, selects and targets incoming missiles as used in the Patriot Missile Defense system. Then, years later, but still a while back, my brother worked on a US version of what Israel had done to one-up our system with a prioritizing adaptation - to determine what was not going to hit anything valuable - and not waste defensive weapons on something that was going to hit a field of turnips.
Turns out, in between those two things, my brother had also worked on such a prioritizing software for the FA-18s weapons defense system to choose the biggest threat and shoot at that first. So they just adapted the FA-18 stuff to the Patriot system, which is kind of what the Israelis did.
So now my nephew is using what his uncle developed over about a 30 year timespan.
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