36 ELEMENTS OF AIRBORNE RADAR SYSTEMS DESIGN PROBLEM 



Other systems; electronic countermeasures; propagation anomalies, at- 

 mospheric attenuation; and target radar reflective characteristics. 



5. Logistics Environment — This includes all salient considerations of 

 the parts of the weapons system that affect reliability, maintenance, han- 

 dling, stowage, supply, replacement, and transport. 



6. Weapons System Integration Environment — This is the environment 

 formed by other systems with which the system under consideration must 

 be compatible. An example would be the environment formed by a ground- 

 to-air missile weapons system operating in the vicinity of a proposed 

 interceptor weapons system. 



These environments should be looked upon as boundary conditions 

 imposed upon the systems design problem. The concept is shown diagram- 

 matically in Fig. 1-26. Each element of the system design must be com- 



System 

 Environment 



Logistics 

 Environment 



Weapons System 

 Integration Environment 



Fig. 1-26 The System Environment. 



patible with the requirements and limitations imposed by all of these 

 environments. 



1-10 WEAPONS SYSTEM MODELS 



A weapons system model is a simplified representation of the actual 

 system which can be used to predict the changes in system performance 

 when one or more of the components which make up the system are 

 changed. For example, a common problem in radar system design is to 

 determine the effect of radar detection range on the performance of the 

 overall system. Such a problem would be solved — as will be shown in 

 Chapter 2 — by constructing a model containing radar detection range as 

 a variable parameter. The radar detection range would be related by 

 appropriate means to the pertinent characteristics of the overlapping 

 environments which make up the system complex. Within the model. 



