Development of the AN/FPS-16 Instrumentation Radar

The AN/FPS-16 Instrumentation Radar, the first radar to be developed specifically for instrumentation of missile test ranges, entered development in 1954 under a US Army Signal Corps contract. It is a monopulse C-band tracking radar designed to hold both systematic and random angle errors to less than 0. 1 mils* rms and range errors to less than 5 yards rms. At the time of this writing in 2010, the AN/FPS-16 and its variants remain the primary source of trajectory data at US test ranges. Along with similar radars subsequently developed in other countries, they are in use at missile test ranges worldwide.