Page 22 - ADT NOVEMBER - DECEMBER 2023 Online Magazine

AERIAL DUEL

Airborne radar upgrades provide new capabilities to
current generation fighter aircraft

By ATUL CHANDRA

adar upgrade efforts being undertaken The U.S. Air Force (USAF) is at the forefront of such upgrades
by many of the world’s militaries for their with modifications being undertaken on its F-16s giving the
combat aircraft fleets are providing dramatic fleet the same advanced radar equipment that is stan-
enhancements in their combat capabilities. dard for fifth generation F-22 Raptors and F-35A Lightning
R Modern airborne fighter class radars are a II aircraft. In May, this year, the USAF’s 20th Fighter Wing’s
far cry from their predecessors and ensure a substantial (FW) announced that in line with the USAF’s Service Life
capability upgrade of current generation fighter aircraft. Extension Programme (SLEP), Northrop Grumman APG-83
scalable agile beam radars had replaced the legacy
APG-68 radars on more than 70 F-16s.
Active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars are The installation of the multifunction, APG-83 AESA radar
delivering a quantum leap in capability as compared to has dramatically upgraded the combat capabilities of
mechanically-scan radars which have limited target han- these aircraft. The updated F-16 radars allow their pilots
dling capacity as their mechanical scanning methods are to use Synthetic Aperture Radar mapping to detect and
inherently slow and require large amounts of power in deploy weapons against air-to-air and air-to-ground
order to respond rapidly enough to deal with large num- threats at much longer ranges. The increased situational
bers of high-speed manoeuvring targets. awareness across the formation is going to be incredible,

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