Isaac Weissman

(202) 244-7200 (Office) (202) 669-2217 (Mobile)

Weissman.ike@ieee.org (Business) ikew@aol.com (Personal)

Isaac (Ike) Weissman is a freelance consulting engineer currently based in Washington, DC, USA. His specialty is radar systems and techniques, with applications in both the civilian and defense sectors. Based on his decades of experience, he can provide objective technical assessments and top-level program reviews.

Mr. Weissman was born in Frankfurt, Germany and was settled in New York City at an early age. He earned engineering degrees from what are now the City University of New York and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, and from Columbia University. After his military service, he joined the Columbia University Electronics Research Laboratories (ERL), which later separated as the Riverside Research Institute (RRI). At the latter, he rose to the positions of research director and corporate officer.

During that period, he conducted or directed a very broad diversity of projects. Many of these involved the planning, execution, and analysis of large-scale field experiments, including radar measurements at the White Sands Missile Range and at other test ranges. Concurrently, he led various efforts related to ballistic missile target discrimination, reentry physics, cruise missile detection, space object identification, ionospheric phenomenology, and anti-submarine warfare. Many of his activities involved innovative radar techniques, radar designs, and test range radar upgrades, as well as some work in infrared (IR), electro-optic (EO), and laser radar technologies. He also organized or participated in a large number of panels, workshops, and proposal efforts. The sponsors of most of these activities were DARPA, the military services, and ballistic missile defense agencies.

Of all the programs he led during this period, probably the one of most lasting importance was in connection with the Cobra Judy shipboard threat data collection system that served the nation so well for almost thirty years. He played a key role in starting Cobra Judy by presenting its potential capabilities and value to senior DoD and intelligence community staff and by subsequently preparing specifications for the Cobra Judy radar. He then directed the engineering support to the government for the source selection, design, acquisition, and operational testing of the Cobra Judy system. An RRI facility was established near Hanscom Air Force Base, MA for providing this engineering support. Cobra Judy served vital functions for measurements of foreign and domestic missile tests, for treaty verification, and for arms control.

Among the outgrowths of the Cobra Judy work was the acquisition support for a large land-based multi-purpose dish radar and a land-based phased-array data collection radar, both located on foreign soil. Prior to their acquisitions, Mr. Weissman briefed the value of these radars to U.S. intelligence community and host-nation staff, and this helped to secure their eventual funding.

Since 1990, Mr. Weissman has been very active as an independent consultant or subcontractor to large and small aerospace and defense companies, as well as to several research laboratories. Many, but not all, of these efforts have been in support of projects related to ballistic missile defense (BMD) and sponsored by the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and other BMD organizations. The activities can be roughly divided into the following categories, with examples of his work in these mentioned:

System Engineering. With respect to BMD, much of his work pertained to optimizing the locations, coverage, and major characteristics of defense radars, their relation to other components (e.g., interceptors), and their costs. Examples include the consideration of the global placement of X-band phased-array radars, the use of inexpensive and low-risk gap-filler dish radars, and the utility of forward-based radars. Also, the use of over-the-horizon (OTH) sky-wave radars and unattended air vehicles (UAVs) for detection and tracking of offensive threats in their early boost phases was investigated. Additional efforts consisted of preparing top-level performance requirements (“thinspecs”) for advanced BMD X-band solid-state phased-array radars. Particular attention was devoted to architectures that support early engagements -- that is, boost-phase intercepts and in the early phases of offense post-boost trajectories. In addition, he examined the architecture of the European Phase-Adaptive Approach (EPAA), designed to protect our European allies against ballistic missile threats originating in the Middle-East, and proposed certain improvements.

Radar Technology. These activities have included search, tracking, discrimination, and electronic counter-countermeasure (ECCM) radar functions. Mr. Weissman’s early work helped two contractors to adapt Navy air defense radars, specifically the Aegis SPY-1, to BMD functions despite their limitations. Other investigations entailed performance and cost comparisons of dish vs. phased-array radars, wideband radar technology, solid-state vs. traveling-wave tube (TWT) phased-array antenna apertures, and comparisons of S-band vs. X-band operating wavelengths for BMD. Related efforts involved lightweight low-power-density solid-state antenna apertures for their potential installation on large airships. In addition, the development of a multistatic radar approach for obtaining extremely precise 3-D position and velocity of ballistic missile targets was completed. Further, he has explored some unconventional radar applications. As an example, he set up an outdoor experiment to successfully demonstrate the concept of noncoherent passive interferometry (Hanbury-Brown and Twiss technique) as it can apply to active radar measurements of the crossrange extent of certain radar targets.

For entirely separate applications, he investigated multibeam synthetic aperture radar (SAR) methods for enhanced ground-target imaging.

Target Classification. An important subset of this category is the area of discrimination, in which lethal offensive warheads are separated from decoys, tank fragments, and other “penetration aids.” A significant portion of Mr. Weissman’s work at ERL and RRI was to lead discrimination studies based on field measurements as well as on theoretical modeling. At the request of DARPA, he organized a classified workshop in New York City on the subject of reentry wakes, relating to the exploitation of the ionized turbulent trails of reentry vehicles (RVs) in the atmosphere.

As an independent consultant, his initial efforts emphasized raid characterization and discrimination for terminal defense, including reentry discrimination and “bulk filtering” techniques, for a contender’s proposal for what later became the THAAD radar. Subsequent emphasis was shifted to evaluations of midcourse exoatmospheric discriminants and those applicable to forward-based radars (FBRs); particular contributions were made relative to ascent-phase discrimination using Doppler waveforms. An important activity was Mr. Weissman’s multi-year membership on an MDA “White Team” review panel to assess development efforts for advanced radar and EO/IR discrimination algorithms, as well as algorithms for other BMD functions, such as multitarget tracking and battle management.

Threats. Mr. Weissman served on a panel that met periodically to review postulated adversary threat systems and postulated threat component and countermeasure characteristics. He reviewed threat assessment documents in detail and provided written suggestions for clarifications and corrections. In addition, he formulated an initial test matrix for large-scale laboratory simulations for a midcourse defense system; this matrix contained a variety of postulated threat characteristics and countermeasure suites. Lastly, for certain FBR analyses, he prepared a “generic” (i.e., simplified) threat document that included radar and EO/IR observables and physical characteristics of components and countermeasures assigned to a particular postulated adversary ballistic missile system.

Platforms. In 1992, Mr. Weissman, in collaboration with two prospective subcontractors, submitted formal proposals for the use of IR sensors aboard UAVs to provide boost-phase cueing of defense elements for engaging theater ballistic missiles (TBMs). Subsequently, he conceptualized the use of solid-state bistatic radar receivers aboard UAVs for early launch detection. After that, he participated simultaneously on two competing proposal teams (with an appropriate “firewall”) for what would later become the Global Hawk high-altitude long-endurance UAV, and for these he was tasked with selecting or configuring on-board strip SAR and spotlight SAR for the surface surveillance function. An ongoing interest of his relates to wide-area radar surveillance using a prospective large unmanned high-altitude airship radar for the detection and non-cooperative identification of hostile cruise missiles and low-flying aircraft, thereby permitting attack attribution and assisting the timely cueing of fighter interceptors. Finally, the use of small solid-state phased-array radars mounted atop towers or other elevated sites has been proposed (and patented) by him; applications include civilian vehicular traffic monitoring and border protection.

Space Radars. More recently, Mr. Weissman’s investigations have emphasized the prospective (patented) employment of small radar satellites (“smallsats”) for greatly-improved surveillance of the Earth.

Smallsat constellations can be spread out in space to form much larger effective apertures than those feasible with conventional spacecraft antennas, thereby potentially providing substantially finer angular resolution. The accompanying employment of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) processing can greatly reduce the number of physical smallsats actually needed while preserving a virtual spread-out aperture. This would give a potential user a huge competitive advantage in satellite projects typically worth hundreds of millions to over a billion of U.S. dollars.

There are numerous potential military and civilian applications. To cite just two examples: (a) such a smallsat constellation deployed in geostationary orbit (GEO) would provide uninterrupted all-weather surveillance of wide maritime regions, thereby instantaneously identifying illegitimate activities (e.g., sanctions violations, illegal fishing) or emergency events (e.g., capsizings, rescue operations); (b) practical smallsat constellations in low Earth orbit (LEO) can provide factors of five to ten improvement over the capability of current radar spacecraft in the resolution of meteorological regions (e.g., storm cells).

Other Activities. Mr. Weissman is a Life Senior Member of the IEEE and a Senior Member Emeritus of the AIAA. He has been awarded two patents and has authored or co-authored approximately twenty available publications. Additionally, he has authored a very large number of classified reports.

After being awarded major contracts related to the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), circa 1982, he took charge of RRI’s recruitment processes, resulting in the hiring of about twenty new technical staff members. He was also instrumental in the opening and staffing of the aforementioned office near Hanscom AFB.

Finally, he has written and self-published, an online textbook titled “Radar Overview and Applications,” and intends to follow up with a Second Edition.