Glimpses of Early Radar Developments in Ukraine and the Former Soviet Union

Abstract

The first experimental work on practical radar detection in the USSR was done in 1934, to detect an airplane in flight as a target for flak or antiaircraft artillery. This work was absolutely independent of radar research and development in other countries. The outline of the first work on radar development in the USSR is briefly described in this paper on the basis of generalizations of documents, articles, and books published earlier (mostly in Russian). The attention in this paper will also be focused on the original radar research and development in Ukraine, which was then a part of the USSR. The first three-coordinate radar system was developed in 1938 in Kharkiv, the capital of Soviet Ukraine in the 1919-1934 period. Earlier, in the 1920s, the first powerful UHF and microwave oscillators were also created in Kharkiv, including magnetrons, which served as key engineering components of the future radar systems. Later, many important achievements were made in Ukraine, such as wideband signal generation, and pulse compression using a matched filter, in the middle of the 1950s. Radar development in modern Ukraine was based on its powerful scientific schools and industry.