When a radar application is innovation or implementation

The distinction here separates the invention of radar technology from applying it to jobs that navies already performed by other means. British aircraft had carried visual observers for airborne warning and search as far back as the Blackburn Blackburn, so miniaturized radar replaced the observer's eyes with a new sensor. In this framework, that is implementation when the operational function remains the same, while a genuinely new use can still count as innovation. Proximity fuzes make the boundary harder to draw because navies already used magnetic and other sensing systems in torpedoes. Judging wartime novelty therefore requires attention to both the underlying device and the task it performs.