Spc. Samantha Cabigon, radar operator for the Target Acquisition Section of Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, Field Artillery Squadron, 2d Cavalry Regiment, U.S. Army, sets up the AN/TPQ-50, Lightweight Counter-Mortar Radar for Belgian and Luxem… (Photo Credit: U.S. Army)
The Russian military had destroyed a U.S.-made AN/TPQ-50 counter-battery radar of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense announced on November 19.
According to the spokesman, Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov, the radar was destroyed on Donetsk front a day earlier.
“In the area of the settlement of Avdeyevka in the Donetsk People’s Republic, an AN/TPQ-50 counter-battery radar of United States manufacture was obliterated,” the spokesman said during his daily press briefing.
The SRCTec AN/TPQ-50 is a highly mobile counter-battery, target acquisition radar that was designed to provides 360 azimuth coverage. It can automatically detect, classify, track and locate points of origin of projectiles fired from mortar, artillery and rocket systems.
The radar can reportedly detect mortars from 5-10 kilometers, artillery shells from 1-10 kilometers and rockets from 1-10 kilometers.
The AN/TPQ-50 is typically mounted on a vehicle, like the U.S.-made HMMWV, but can be also operated in the tripod-mounted configuration.
The U.S. first supplied several AN/TPQ-50 counter-battery radars to the AFU following the outbreak of the war in Donbass in 2014.
After the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, the AFU received addition counter-battery radars of different types, including AN/TPQ-36, AN/TPQ-48, AN/TPQ-49, AN/TPQ-50, AN/TPQ-64, COBRA and MAMBA, form the U.S. and other NATO countries. These radars didn’t have any real impact on the battlefield, however.
Many of these NATO-supplied counter-battery radars have been already destroyed, damaged or even captured by the Russian military.
