Page 23 - ADT NOVEMBER - DECEMBER 2023 Online Magazine

making us a total lethal force, said U.S. Air Force Capt. Matthew Northrop Grumman announced in January, this
“Cash” Croghan, 79th Fighter Squadron chief of weapons. year, that it was developing the advanced AN/
APG-85 AESA radar for the F-35 Lightning II.
Northrop Grumman currently manufactures the
In September 2022, the USAF’s 480th Fighter Squadron became the AN/APG-81 AESA fire control radar, for the F-35.
USAF’s first active-duty F-16CM fighter squadron to complete their The AN/APG-85 will be compatible with all vari-
AESA radar upgrades. “This is an upgrade to modernize the F-16, ants of the F-35 aircraft.
primarily with its sensors, starting with its radar,” said Lt. Col. Shaun
Loomis, 480th Fighter Squadron commander. “The radar in and of The F-35’s existing AN/APG-81 radar has
itself is a game-changer. Going from a mechanically-scanned radar long-range active and passive air-to-air and
to AESA is night and day.” air-to-ground modes, which are complemented
by an array of stealth features as well as elec-
AESA’s upgraded radars carry more transmitters, as compared to tronic warfare and intelligence, surveillance and
their predecessors, allowing more-precise, longer-ranged and more reconnaissance functions.
jamming-resistant scanning of airspace. “The F-16 radar has been
around since the late ‘80s, and while that radar has been get- Typhoon Upgrade
ting updates every so often, there hasn’t been a specific hardware
update in about 20 years,” Loomis said. “Actually, swapping out In July, this year, the UK Ministry of Defence
and putting a whole new radar in there is revolutionary for the F-16. (MOD) awarded BAE Systems a £870million con-
Along with that is modernizing our displays in the cockpit. It’s an tract to deliver a new radar for the Royal Air
improvement to the capability of the radar, but also an improvement Force’s Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jet fleet. This
to the interoperability with the pilot.” will result in the further development of tech-
nology and integration work on the European
While the USAF’s legacy F-16 radar, systems have received numerous common radar system (ECRS) Mk2 radar by BAE
software updates and upgrades since they were first installed into Systems and Leonardo UK.
the aircraft, the new project provided an entirely new set of hardware
with a wide range of benefits over its predecessor. It has also laid The funding will to lead to initial flight testing in
the foundation for the aircraft targeting pod to stream high-defi- 2024 and the overall objective of project to turn
nition video into the cockpit, an improvement from the smaller and the ECRS Mk2 prototype into something that’s
lower-resolution monitors from before. operationally capable over the next five years,

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