"matt weber" wrote in message
...

That rather depends on what the intent of the intercepting aircraft
is. The cubans had little problem shooting down a couple of Cessna's
in 1996 as I recall. They had been detected on both Cuban and US
radar systems.
And both had their transponders turned on... It is easy when the
transponder is turned on. It is a cooperating target.

You do realise that Secondary Surveillance Radar and Primary Radar are
different things right?

A transponder will not make your primary return show up one little bit
brighter. The SSR image at the time I
was in SY was literally superimposed on the same display as the primary
radar, but came
from a different antenna/rx combination. The SSR antenna was visible as
a long narrow rectangle
underneath (or on top of, can't remember now) the primary radar dish.
Newer systems probably
combine the two, but you can have a primary target without the secondary
and vice versa and/or
both together.

BTW, I can assure you from personal observation that single engine all
metal lighties
painted very well on both the Terminal Area and Route Surveillance
Radars at
Sydney KSA in the 80's. The SSR target (when they were squawking) was
obviously
visible a lot further out/lower down than the primary target, but to
suggest they are too
small to show up is simply not so.

The CO
(Ex CAA)