I can think of turning drones into self-guided missiles, obviously intercepting from the front since they are slow, but you can track planes visually too.
And if this is to prevent foreign states, I'm sure in a couple years you'll be able to buy this stuff on AliExpress.
The saying the mil guys have about using active radar is "he who lights up first gets smoked". As in you turn on your radar, and it'll be a beacon seen in milliseconds, located in a few more milliseconds, and then receiving an incoming missile. Radar has to be passive, using ambient RF frequency 'noise', in any modern military operating theater to survive.
So, yes, keeping passive radar technology as maximally secret as possible among the world's democracies retains an advantage over the expansionist autocracies, which are increasingly belligerent, from Russia attacking in Europe, China making louder noises about attacking Taiwan (sending fighter jets to the shore today), NK launching missiles near Japan... yeah, we need to keep an edge.
Wouldn't it work to put some cheap drones or other hardware that "light up" and send nice pulses out for you to get info from that are far enough away from your real position, or am I missing something?
If they're cheap enough, it wouldn't be very worthwhile to destroy them I'd think. I mean it'd probably be in your interest to let them waste million dollar missiles on hundred dollar drones if you could get them to do so.
Or does something like this exist that I'm just unaware of?
I never heard anything further on that subject.
To this day, it is one of two things I don't talk about.
What's the other thing?
Most radar systems have already (for decades, AFAIK) separated the emitter from the control panel with at least a long cable, so when the emitter gets smoked, at least the operators are more likely to survive.
The USAF & DARPA are already publicly working on aerially deployed drone swarms, and it would not surprise me in the slightest if a swarm of theater emitters was among the goals (but I've got no inside info to share).
Modern low-probability of intercept radar obviates a lot of those concerns. Technology has advanced way beyond transmitting a steady sine wave on a constant frequency that is easy to detect and track.
Keeping passive radar technology secret from potential adversaries is certainly worth doing. Just don't make the mistake of thinking it's some magical technology. In the real world it has only very limited value.
Which appear to be the future weapon du jour for degrading integrated AA systems from outside A2/AD bubbles.
They are easy to pick up in the UHF and lower band, although at these lower frequencies much accuracy is lost.
This is how NATO lost an F-119 in Yugoslavia. The old Russian system used ~0.9GHz frequencies and a very large explosive warhead. That combined with operator skill and NATO being overconfident resulted in a loss of the aircraft, although not the pilot.
Drones for instance can be guided with off-the-shelf technology against slow moving targets.
I'm definitely not absolutely against arms control, the extreme case of course is nuclear proliferation. I think it's best to keep nuclear secrecy and try to break nuclear proliferation and even disarm countries as much as possible. It's just too dangerous, hopefully an unnecessary risk and unnecessary technology for a peaceful world.