Many facilities across America are concerned

Many facilities across America are concerned with the threat of airborne intruders. Many of these sites are near enough to airports to be covered by the FAA radar serving that airport. The radar airspace monitoring system (RAMS) provides the means of attaching to that radar, extracting needed information from it, and sending that information over an ordinary telephone line to the concerned site. At the site, the data are received, processed, and displayed by a computer. The system is designed so that an operator is not required to constantly watch the display. If the computer detects a threat, an alarm sounds. The RAMS consists of two subsystems. One subsystem attaches to the secondary beacon radar, which operates with the transponder installed in most aircraft. The second subsystem attaches to the primary radar, which depends on radio waves reflected from the aircraft. Either subsystem can operate independently, but the combined subsystems create a more powerful system. With this system the site gains access to a multimillion dollar radar, its maintenance staff, administration, and the buildings required to house them for a modest $15,000 in hardware.