Wikipedia
An early-warning radar is any radar system used primarily for the long-range detection of its targets, i.e., allowing defences to be alerted as early as possible before the intruder reaches its target, giving the air defences the maximum time in which to operate. This contrasts it with systems used primarily for tracking or gun laying, which tend to be shorter range but offer much higher accuracy.
Usage examples of "early-warning radar".
High up and to starboard was one of Jefferson's four E-2C Hawkeyes, providing the entire, far-flung battle group with early-warning radar that could penetrate the sleet and dark across hundreds of miles and, at need, serve as airborne combat command centers.
Besides which there were the early-warning radar installations up there.
Not only would it be able to cover ninety percent of the Soviet Union with an early-warning radar screen and look in on any part of the US via the astoundingly advanced American-built spy satellites, but it would also be able to independently target any of the Red Star ICBMs with pinpoint accuracy to any spot on the globe.
They saw a bat-wing symbol with a small circle on the apex--the symbol for an airborne early-warning radar.
His group had been originally attached to a NATO early-warning radar unit.
Nor was it more than simply alarming that the site had been set up to look like a specific Pakistani early-warning radar—.
Only one aircraft was aloft now in the night, an E-2Can Hawkeye early-warning radar plane.
Dog Ear was an early-warning radar associated with the SA-13 short-range missile system.
According to reports transmitted from circling Hawkeye early-warning radar planes, several flights of Chinese-made fighters were scrambled.
These units, relying on a system of interlocking early-warning radar, had to conform both to the needs of combat maneuver units and the leapfrogging forward elements of the radar network to cover the entire corps.
During the tense moments that followed, emergency preparations for a nuclear retaliatory strike had been engaged, the Air Force planes actually in the air before NORAD's PAVE PAWS early-warning radar had detected the human error.
On one hand they go to great trouble to produce a mirage in the no man's land, all done at a distance because it is a no man's land, and on the other they plant mines -- as if I was facing an army equipped with both early-warning radar and clubs.
And not a single early-warning radar system anywhere would detect them, because the XCT flew less than fifteen feet above the surface of the water.
My early-warning radar was going off and I had learned a long time ago not to ignore it.