Hand-Held Radar Detects Jet?

An ATI Staff Member who has not taken any ATI Radar Courses yet found a story in her Inbox about a highway officer in Texas who was operating a hand-held radar to catch speeders.  As you can read in the following copy of the letter, the officer purportedly locked onto a USMC F/A-18 Hornet Jet.  The story purports that the Jet detected energy from the hand held radar, and automatic tactical systems on the Jet nearly fired on the radar/officer, but the pilot overrode those automatic systems preventing a catastrophic mishap.

Although this story is humorous, it also demonstrates that the writer, and some readers, are not familiar with how hand-held radars work, and how the Tactical Systems on the USMC Jet work.  In fact, a Snopes article gives an excellent explanation of why this story, although humorous and entertaining, is not factual, and could not have actually occurred.  A fascinating explanation of the fallacies associated with this story can be found at   https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/police-radar-missile/

So, in order to better recognize articles like this for what they are, please consider learning more about Radar Systems.  ATI offers 78 courses dealing with Radar, Missiles, and Defense, but our most popular Radar courses are Radar 101, Radar 201, and Radar Principles.  More information on all of these courses can be found on the ATI web page at the following links.