Radarendra Modi

During an interview to News Nation aired on Saturday 11^th May 2019, Modi said, "Experts were re-thinking the airstrike due to bad weather, but I said, so much cloud cover and rains could be beneficial. Maybe we could escape their radar. This was my raw wisdom, I said there could be a benefit. Ultimately I said, there's cloud cover, please go ahead."

This triggered a troll-fest over the social media handles of several many celebrities, politicians and the general public at large. The people were left incredulous,dismayed and irked. Amidst this fiasco, some tweets were hysterical while some called for thoughtfulness.

"Modi ... will ask ISRO to send a Spacecraft to Sun during night because it will be cooler," another wrote.

But let us delve deeper into this ‘raw vision’ and bust the related core myths to Radar.

What is Radar?

Radio detection and Ranging acronymed as Radar has a magnetron, transmitter, receiver and screen. The basic principle of a radar is that it sends out radio waves generated by the magnetron, through its antenna which are reflected back and received by its receiver in the presence of an object( aeroplane, drones etc). The surveillance radars arelargely transparent to the typical wavelengths at which they operate irrespective of dawn or dusk. This is why the jibe of Rahul Gandhi sounds sensible, "Modiji, whenever it rains in India, do all aircraft disappear from the radar.”

During the Balakot airstrike on February 26, IAF had deployed both indigenous and Israeli AWACS to direct the fighters jets on their strike mission and monitor the skies for any acitivity by Pakistani jets. The Pakistan Air Force missed the presence of the Indian fighter jets as it was already too late for them as their surveillance system had been jammed by the IAF during its raid at Balakot militant camp
To put this into perspective, we now focus our attention to the ways this may be evaded. One out of the many is stealth technique which is largely used by America’s stealth warplanes. The concept though relative is not absolute. The US F-117(now obsolete ) is a classic illustration for this technique. The other way is through Radar absorbent paint of which the US B2 is a perfect example.

So all in all, we may agree to one Nissim Mannathukkaren,”The joke is on the "educated" elite/middle class supporters of Modi who have made idiocy and ignorance fashionable". In moment like these, we as Indians are embalmed with skepticism related to our National Security because these ‘raw visions’ can be perilous to the safety of the ‘sava sau karod deshvaasi’ (125 crore Indian residents).