Wed, Nov 19, 2008
System Designed To Replace Mechanical-Scan Radars In F-16s
Northrop Grumman announced this week
it recently conducted the first successful demonstration flight of
the company’s newest Active Electronically Scanned Array
(AESA) fighter sensor, the Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR). SABR
is being developed as a significant avionics enhancement for the
existing fleet of F-16s and other fighter aircraft worldwide.
"This first flight marks a major milestone in our effort to
develop an AESA radar designed specifically to meet current F-16
power, cooling, and interface requirements," said Arlene Camp,
director of Advanced F-16 Radar Programs at Northrop Grumman.
"Although designed specifically for the F-16, SABR is scalable and
adaptable to other platforms and missions."
SABR completed its first flight ahead of schedule on November
16, in the nose of (appropriately enough) a Rockwell Sabreliner.
Camp said the new radar system successfully detected and displayed
numerous aerial targets, exceeding first flight predictions.
"This demonstration flight is the first in a series scheduled
over the next few weeks as we transition SABR from a laboratory
environment to an operational flight environment," she said. "The
Sabreliner testbed aircraft has an actual F-16 radome and avionics.
We've used the Sabreliner for more than 20 years for developing and
testing F-16 mechanically scanned radar hardware and software. It's
as close as you're going to get to a real F-16 flight
demonstration."
"SABR is Northrop Grumman's investment toward enhancing and
sustaining the F-16's combat capability for decades to come," added
Camp. "We plan to demonstrate SABR on an F-16 next year."
Northrop says that compared to the mechanically-scanned array
radars it is designed to replace, SABR will provide the increased
performance, multi-functionality, and greater reliability inherent
in AESA radars. The improved situational awareness, greater
detection, high-resolution synthetic aperture radar, and
interleaved air-to-air and air-to-surface mode operations will
provide pilots true all-environment precision strike
capability.
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