So, one of the really interesting things to me about this approach is that it offers the same asymmetric value proposition that cheap attack drones do to modern pre-drone IADS.

That is: this is a platform that costs 10-15k, and an AGM-88 of modern manufacture costs almost 900k, and a Kh-31 costs about 550k - and, just as importantly, both require a long time to manufacture. So, you could theoretically make a moderately large distributed array sprinkled over a few square kilometers, and even if they’re ALL turned on, it quickly becomes logistically infeasible to knock them all out without spending a silly quantity on antirad munitions, as well as massively attriting your stocks of antirad munitions. And if you turn like 10-25% of them on at a time and cycle through your array, the problem becomes even harder for the attacker. And if you have some sort of process or mechanism - like, oh I don’t know, figuring out how to do light aerial transport with cargo drones, or even figuring out how to mount these distributed array nodes on the drones themselves, and some sort of lightweight tether for providing power - the problem becomes a MASSIVE pain in the ass for an adversary (especially that last idea, which introduces z-axis and immediate maneuverability, such that the array could feasibly detect and altogether avoid an incoming antirad munition).

And that’s the paradigm of modern warfare - not just drones, but also networked and attritable systems that maintain functionality when elements are taken offline

This is absolutely a thing. I remember reading a story about this, this was years ago, but this guy worked for the air force of some nation in heavy conflict. One of the most used weapons in this war was an anti-radiation missile, it would loiter for some time until it detected an emissions target then lock on and destroy it. Whenever they needed to use radar, they would hotwire a bunch of microwave ovens to work with the door open, then plug them in with like six extension cords plugged together. The missiles would lock right onto those microwave ovens and blow them up. He was joking about how the enemy would boast they destroyed 15 aircraft that week on the ground, when his force only had 10 aircraft to begin with.

Hmm, considering how cheap these are to make (relatively speaking) could it make a good decoy? Basically set a bunch of these up in random places away from anything important with remote on switches and when missiles start flying power them up one at a time. They're more expensive than the anti-missile drones (those are supposedly about $1000 a piece) but they might be more effective in their own way.

Turn it on in peacetime anywhere near to anything interesting and you'll get a visit from your local military police.

My German U-boat neighbors are seething right now.

You're lucky to have that. My radar has ads.

There are companies that offer RaaS, basically radar rentals.

Source: my company had a customer who rented a weather radar for a year to do a study on weather patterns in South America

Does that price include the Pepsi cans?

Strapping you and your almost-ex-wife onto some random pipe in a barn so you can both get sucked up by an F5 tornado?

I'd say that's worth it.

This doesn't have any practical application in Ukraine.

Ukraine detects FPV drones with numerous distributed and networked microphone/acoustic sensors. You're not going to get any cheaper than a used phone paired with a $2 USB solar panel.

The larger Shahed/Geran and above stuff isn't limited by radar detection. What they need are cheap interceptors to deal with swarm attacks.

Military tech companies will be perfectly fine. They typically have 10+ year contracts, and military equipment has a huge price margin in exchange for being reliable and field-serviceable, and the main disadvantage of DIY radar is reliability (unless you also recruit the guy who built it into the army).

It will probably impact civilian market more, where the same companies will try to sell you an unnecessarily hardened machined aluminium box full of cheap Chinese electronics, camo painted for an additional ten thousand bucks.

Their next commercial offering might just be cheaper.

Dont forget support

Nah, that missile was visual tracking. Not radar guided. Also, way too small to intercept anything going high and fast which is generally what the patriot is for. Intercepting an aircraft requires a really powerful motor to give it enough speed and altitude to catch a plane.

This radar could maybe be used with a semi active radar guided missile, where the ground radar lights up the target and the missile just has a detector that homes in on that, which is what early patriots used. But it’s only got a 20km range which isn’t really enough for an anti aircraft system, unless all you’re worried about is something slow and low to the ground like a helicopter or cesna. Need enough time for the radar to detect, identify and lock the target, fire the missile, and have it track to the target, and something moving fast and high will be in and out of the range of the radar before all that can be done. Especially if the target is high up at 10km, which would half the effective range.

Not even close, both of these projects are wildly deficient for that kind of use and the effort required to solve those deficiencies would at least 10x if not 20x the cost.

That doesn't mean they are useless, I can definitely see some eyebrow raising asymmetric possibilities.

If you're seriously interested in this DIY Radar System I strongly suggest you grab a full copy from Github and put it on local storage as I doubt it's going to remain up for long.

I bet more than one billionaire has them on their doomsday compounds. Who am I kidding, they buy the new $250k system.

Small airfields?

IDK maybe they can be repurposed into something. Industrial sized microwave?

A lot of paramilitary organizations are suddenly showing a lot of interest in the things on Github.

Counter measures don't typically make a weapon platform obsolete.

What makes a weapon platform obsolete is that it's role is no longer needed in battle.

Long-rang strikes and precision fires, are the new meta.

Expect to see a proliferation of new countermeasures, such as cheaper and more plentiful detection systems, of which radars will play a part, but they're also easy to detect and destroy i.e. SEAD.