Tactical Control is a term originating in the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

to refer to a class of medium-range

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, we ...

systems. They are generally used for controlling the airspace around a set location on the ground, sometimes a dispersed battery of anti-aircraft artillery or surface-to-air missiles, but they also found use as

air traffic control Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled airs ...

systems around airbases. They generally have a high

pulse repetition frequency The pulse repetition frequency (PRF) is the number of pulses of a repeating signal in a specific time unit. The term is used within a number of technical disciplines, notably radar. In radar, a radio signal of a particular carrier frequency is tu ...

and rotate quickly in order to provide rapid updates at the expense of reduced range. In the Army, these radars were initially grouped into the Radar, AA, No. 4 classification, with several Marks of such systems being used from the early

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

period into the early 1960s. The main purpose of these radars was to provide

early warning An early warning system is a warning system that can be implemented as a chain of information communication systems and comprises sensors, event detection and decision subsystems for early identification of hazards. They work together to for ...

to weapons crews, as well as "putting on" information so they could aim their

gun laying radar A fire-control radar (FCR) is a radar that is designed specifically to provide information (mainly target azimuth, elevation, range and range rate) to a fire-control system in order to direct weapons such that they hit a target. They are sometim ...

s in the general direction of the target. In the post-war era, this data was handed off electronically. When the RAF took over many of the Army's air defence duties in 1953, they also took over some of the Army's former radar systems, including their new tactical control system, Orange Yeoman. They assigned these an

Air Ministry Experimental Station AMES, short Air Ministry Experimental Station, was the name given to the British Air Ministry's radar development team at Bawdsey Manor (afterwards RAF Bawdsey) in the immediate pre-World War II era. The team was forced to move on three occasions ...

(AMES) number and generally referred to them by this number, Type 82. The term "tactical control" remained in use during this period, and has seen some usage by other forces.

References

* * Military radars of the United Kingdom {{mil-stub