I have a suggestion somewhere here on the forums to make it a deploy option for flash, sunderer and (landed) galaxy with 70,150 and 200m range respectively. Might have been in beta, but I'm reasonable sure I've suggested it before.
It worked as I said at least since Nov 2013 and probably long before (I was not playing that much earlier). And it used to work that way (spotting static enemies) until the "description" got fixed.
You're thinking of scout radar. 2 different things. Prox radar is Sunderer, MBT, Lightning, Harasser. Scout radar is Flash and ESF.
I'd like a scout radar refund, both for my ESF and Flash. its just no longer an attractive choice at the expense of other choices like stealth, smoke/flares, suppression, wraith.