The fact that much of the data is thrown out was obvious a long time ago by one of the competitors for the radar data processing contract back in the early 70's. Goodyear Aerospace, one of three companies vying for the contract, had developed a parallel processing computer, termed the Staran. It purportedly utilized all the data, from all the radar sites, all the time, (even the primary radar returns!) and "fused" all the data. Obviously Goodyear Aerospace didn't win the contract, as we utilize serial processors in ATC, not parallel processors. Willard C. Meilander, one of the original designers of the Associative Processor, has written many papers about the importance of utilizing all the data, all the time, from all the radar sites. I made reference to two papers he authored in my "Real Targets - Unreal Displays" paper.
2006-03-23: Read Will Meilander's "Quick Look" note about the state of radar data processing, and his solution.
Update to link [2005-07-29]: Professor Meilander is working towards making his papers available via the web. You can view some of them at http://www.cs.kent.edu/~parallel/papers/
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