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Red Steer: the Vulcan’s tail warning radar

Radar · defensive sensors · ~10 min read

Bombers are attacked from behind. The Vulcan’s answer was a rear-facing radar in the tail cone, known by its rainbow code Red Steer. Later aircraft carried Red Steer Mk 2 under the equipment identity ARI 18228. The AEO watched the picture. The pilots flew the escape. The ECM suite tried to make the fighter’s own radar less useful.

What a tail warning set does

A mapping radar looks at the earth. A tail warning radar looks at the sky you just left. It is a relatively short-range, wide-coverage set whose job is to say: something is there, on that bearing, closing or not. It is not an air-to-air interception radar in the fighter sense. It is a burglar alarm with a cathode-ray tube.

On the Vulcan the installation occupied the extreme tail, which is why photographs of the rear fuselage show a blunt dielectric cone rather than a pointed fairing. Modifications over the years changed the exact shape as Mk 2 and associated ECM aerials were added. Identifying a particular modification standard from a museum photograph is a specialist sport; the archive note is simpler: if you are looking at a B.2 tail, you are looking at the house that Red Steer built.

How it sat with the rest of the fit

Red Steer was part of the defensive electronic environment run by the Air Electronics Officer, alongside warning receivers and jammers described in the ECM essay. A contact on the tail set could mean a fighter, a wingman, or clutter. Doctrine and training taught the crew what to do next: manoeuvre, jam, or both. The details of those procedures remain in the realm of historic classified tactics; the public fact is that the Vulcan was not expected to out-turn a fighter. It was expected to notice one.

Why the name matters in search

People looking for “Vulcan radar” sometimes mean H2S, sometimes TFR, and sometimes this tail set. They are three different radars in three different places. Red Steer is the one that points aft. If you only remember one defensive box, remember the one that watched the six o’clock.