Bistatic radar cross section

So imagine you're playing hide and seek with your friends, but instead of just one person looking for you, there are two people! One person is standing on one side of the house with their eyes closed, and the other person is standing on the other side of the house looking for you.

Now, let's say you have a special toy that makes noise whenever someone gets close to it. If only one person was looking for you, you would only hear the noise when that person got close to it. But now, because there are two people looking for you from different directions, you might be able to hear the noise twice - once when the person on one side of the house gets close, and again when the person on the other side of the house gets close.

Bistatic radar cross section is kind of like that game of hide and seek. Instead of people looking for you, though, it's radar waves that are bouncing off of things like airplanes or cars or even just trees and buildings. When there is just one radar system sending out those waves and then detecting them bouncing back, it's called monostatic radar.

But when there are two different radar systems - one sending out the waves and one detecting them - then it's called bistatic radar. And the bistatic radar cross section is basically how easy it is for those waves to bounce back to the second radar system - kind of like how easy it is for you to hear the noise from your special toy because there are two people looking for you.

So, basically, bistatic radar cross section is a measure of how easy it is for radar waves to bounce back to a second radar system when there are two different radar systems involved instead of just one.