Från IARU Region 1 HF-managers list:
”The French Ministry of Defense has announced that it will make a major investment in the Nostradamus over-the-horizon radar. It is intended to improve France’s ability to predict threats from ballistic and hypersonic weapons. The war in Ukraine has shown how important this is. Paris wants a radar that is capable of tracking the trajectories of missiles at very high speeds in real time. Europe is still dependent on American early warning systems, but the modernization of Nostradamus is an important step towards its own early warning capability.
Nostradamus (French: nouveau système transhorizon décamétrique appliquant les méthodes utilisées en studio) is a French military over-the-horizon radar. The facility is located at the former Dreux-Louvilliers Air Base of the United States Air Forces in Europe in the Eure-et-Loir department.
The system was developed by ONERA and is operated by the French Air Force. Nostradamus transmits on shortwave with a pulse repetition time of 30 ms. The antenna array consists of 288 seven-meter-high biconical antennas arranged in a star-shaped structure with three rows, each about 400 m long and staggered by 120 degrees.
Photo: French MoD ( Ministère des Armées )
An audio sample of “Nostradamus” can be found in the audio database of DARC Intruder Monitoring: https://www.darc.de/fileadmin/filemounts/referate/intruder-monitoring/Audiofiles/french-oth.wav.
A general presentation (in English) about the OTH radar NOSTRADAMUS can be found here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jp-Molinie/publication/4242754_A_general_presentation_about_the_OTH-Radar_NOSTRADAMUS/links/00b49526aedda98125000000/A-general-presentation-about-the-OTH-Radar-NOSTRADAMUS.pdf?_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIiwicGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIn19
73 Tom DF5JL | DARC HF Manager”
