OSINT Investigation - Tracking Venezuelas new Chinese radar
In early September a tweet by CODAI (Venezuelan Air Defense) caught everyone by surprise. They were tweeting to show off their new Chinese radars, that no one had seen before.
The first thing to do was find out what radars Venezuela had actually acquired from China, the problem is that 2 months later we still don’t know exactly what radars they are and they are still unnamed. Despite some saying that the radar looks similar to the Chinese JY 27 radar, there are some obvious differences that prevent it from being identified as the same radar.
After contacting some sources inside CODAI it’s likely that the radars are a new long range VHF radar given its size and shape and it’s likely have a range of 300 NM or more.
The radars were officially unveiled at BAEL (Base Area El Libertador) in Maracay. I quickly set out to gather as many photos of the new radar as possible, including from a quickly deleted tweet by CODAI.
The images show the radar screens inside the command and control vehicles as well as some clear photos of the radars themselves.
The radars were announced to still be in testing, which was all but confirmed by the fact that grupo 13 Sukhoi Su-30 squadron were deployed to BAEL that week, they were likely involved in the testing of the new radars.
Grupo 13 Sukhoi squadron at BAEL with the radars in the background
Additional photos were also discovered on social media showing a group of Chinese technicians posing in front of the radars.
Chinese technicians with CODAI
These radars were an unexpected announcement, but if we had been paying attention to the CODAI twitter account we would have noticed the same radars were in storage under a shelter at BAEL in September 2018. The first 2 photos show the new Chinese radars
Now that all the available photos of the radars had been found in Venezuela, it was time to take a look at China and look at their origin.
Thanks to @pir34 for the help with this part.
The radars were found to be at a CETC (China Electronic Technology Group) test site north of Hefei, China in February 2018, meaning the radars were transferred to Venezuela at some point between February and September 2018
The Venezuelan radars seen at the CETC test site - 13th February 2018
Surprisingly, these radars were seen again in China on Google Earth Imagery not far away from the CETC test site. These images from May 2016 show the radars also being tested in Hefei, China.
Venezuelas new VHF radars in China in 2016
After all this investigation we still don’t know much about these radars, the unveiling of these radars was a surprise to everyone monitoring the Venezuelan military, I’m even told it was a slight surprise to those at SOUTCHOM. These radars are yet to be officially deployed yet and are still reportedly in the development stage. I will update this post with any new updates.
Thanks to @pir34 (https://twitter.com/pir34) for finding the radars in China.