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A Russian fighter jet made multiple, close-range passes near an American warship in the Black Sea for more than 90 minutes Saturday amid escalating tensions in the region, U.S. military officials said Monday.

In the first public account of the incident, the officials said the Russian Fencer made 12 passes, and flew within 1,000 yards of the USS Donald Cook, a Navy destroyer, at about 500 feet above sea level.

The U.S. warship issued several radio queries and warnings using international emergency circuits, but the Russian aircraft did not respond.

"This provocative and unprofessional Russian action is inconsistent with international protocols and previous agreements on the professional interaction between our militaries," said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman.

peak power: 4 to 6 megawatts
average power: 58 kilowatts

The Aegis system operates in S-band, from about 3.1 to 3.5 GHz (λ = 8.6 to 9.7 cm). Early descriptions indicated that the system reportedly had a “sustained coherent bandwidth” of 10 MHz and instantaneous bandwidth of 40 MHz.[5] An early paper on the SPY-1 radar discusses three sub-bands, FL, FC, and FH, each 40 MHz wide, in the context of measuring antenna gain. However, data was also collected over much wider bands than the defined ones — 160 MHz at broadside, and 120 MHz at a 60 degrees scan angle.[6]

The Aegis system’s bandwidth was apparently subsequently increased, perhaps up to its maximum frequency extent of 400 MHz. The 4.0.1 version of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system, which is now entering service, added an adjunct BMD Signal Processor that, among other things, allows the formation of two-dimensional inverse synthetic aperture images with better resolution than had previously been possible, which implies a wideband capability.[7] A 1999 Lincoln Laboratory briefing slide shows a “Wideband Waveform Concept for AN/SPY-1 Radar” using a 400 MHz wideband waveform constructed from ten 40 MHz bandwidth pulses frequency jumping from 3.1 to 3.5 GHz.[8] A 2002 paper cites a bandwidth of 300 MHz for Aegis.[9] Such a bandwidth would likely permit a range resolution of about 0.5-1.0 meters.