The original concepts for the AN/ TPQ-36 and AN/TPQ-37 "Fire-finder" radar systems emerged from a Cold War environment that envisioned the Q-36 providing data on shorter-range, high-angle mortar-type trajectories as a complement to the longer-range enemy rocket and cannon data provided by the Q-37. By the mid-1980s, however, a growing threat of counterfire from hostile fire-support systems prompted service planners to look for ways to improve system mobility to support the "lighter" forces then being developed. In the case of the Q-36, many of the early improvements focused on shrinking crew size and improving system mobility. For example, the original Q-36 antenna transceiver group was mounted on a 11/4-ton trailer with S-250 shelter (housing the operations control group) mounted on a 21/2-ton truck; the Army's "Block IIB" upgrade, which began in the early 1990s and would later become designated as "Version 7" [AN/TPQ-36(V)7], reconfigured the system shelter onto an M1097 series Humvee with the antenna on a 3/4-ton trailer.
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