Red Steer scanned a cone 45 degrees across behind the aircraft and presented any returns on a display at the electronic warfare station.

This led to the upgraded Mark 2 version with a greatly improved display and increased range to 25 nautical miles (46 km; 29 mi).

During the initial work that led to the English Electric Lightning, Ferranti proposed an entirely new aircraft interception (AI) radar system.

Further, the system presented this data not on a dimly lit cathode ray tube (CRT), but projected right on the pilot's gunsight.

EKCO had developed a medium-range limited-angle radar for that role, but it could be easily adapted to provide longer range and greater angles.

These aircraft were equipped with a simple tail warning radar known as "Orange Putter", originally built for the English Electric Canberra.

In early V-bomber use it was found to be almost useless in its intended role of warning the bomber of an approaching interceptor aircraft with enough time to take evasive action.

The only concern was that the 30 kV supply line now had to run not just a few feet from the nose to the cockpit, but from the rear of a very large aircraft to the front, through the fuselage.

[8] From 1960, these aircraft were modified with larger tail cone sections to carry both Red Steer and a much-enlarged suite of electronic countermeasures.

[4] The display unit, developed when available phosphors were dim, required very high voltages to allow it to be visible in a sunlight fighter cockpit.

[4] The beam-width of the scanner was about 5.5 degrees, which meant that a target at long range would "paint" a short arc on the CRT display as it moved during scanning.

The blip on the display was produced by sending the output from the radar receiver amplifier to the CRT's brightness control, causing the normally invisible beam to brighten to visibility.

This had the undesirable side-effect that the return tended to disappear at close range because the centre of the display was often showing a continual bright dot due to it constantly being drawn over even at normally invisible intensity.

[6] For the ARI 5952 version, the scanner and display were replaced, keeping the rest of the radar electronics including the transmitter and receiver systems.

The entire system was stabilized to the line of sight, so the image did not move as the aircraft manoeuvred, another major advantage over the original model.

It used a more modern yellow phosphor and no longer required the high voltage feed in order to be visible in direct sunlight.