?WTF? 11 hrs? Are the Russians on crack when they design and build their stuff? I was looking more and more favorably at the Mig-29M2 for the IAF's MRCA but this bit of news about the Kopyo brought me back to reality about the nature of Russian eqpt... glossy brochures, political arm-twising, and heavy lobbying by retired officers, nothing more.Harry wrote:It's also true that Phaz delivered Kopyos with an MTBF of 11 hrs to the IAF. The IAF forced them to spend more until they got it upto 110 hrs, still not quite up to the advertised 150 hrs.
India is reviving the development of an indigenous Airborne Early Warning And Control System (AEWACS), which it had abandoned in 1999. “We have submitted a proposal to build an AEWACS with a next-generation active phased-array radar installed on a smaller aircraft, unlike the rotating antenna in the earlier Airborne Surveillance Platform (ASP),” said K.U. Limaye, director, Centre for Air Borne Systems (CABS). Limaye, who is also Director of the Electronics and Radar Development Establishment (LRDE) of the state-owned Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), added that the airborne radar could be integrated on a Brazilian Embraer 145 aircraft.
The new AEWACS' mission avionics and sensors will be integrated via a dual MIL-STD 1533 B digital databus, with software programmes providing tactical aids, cues and alerts. The mission system will provide automatic radar control, automatic detection and track initiation, reduced false alarms, improved track continuity, sensor and databus fusion and modern communications management. It will also provide adaptive tracking performance, fast track update rate, reliable local situation display and computer-assisted decisions.
The LRDE-developed roof-mounted radar will be an active phased-array, pulse compression, Doppler radar operating in the S-band. The fixed antenna, with extremely low sidelobe levels, will comprise 200 transmitter/receiver modules mounted on top of the aircraft's fuselage. The best range performance will be achieved in a 150 degree sector sideways, with the performance reduced in forward and aft directions outside of this sector. The instrumented range will be 243nm and the typical detection range for a combat aircraft-sized contact will be 190nm. The radar's electronically scanning beam will be controlled by an automatic and intelligent energy management system which will optimise the beam position and compared to conventional, rotodome solutions, will provide quicker detection verification, increased tracking range, and improved tracking performance even for highly manoeuvring targets.
Work on the ASP's Technology Demonstrator (TD) began in earnest and the first flight of the TD, an Avro HS-748 twin-turboprop aircraft equipped with a rotodome fabricated by BAE Systems, took place in November 1991 at the ASTE's Bangalore facility. By 1994, the LRDE and state-owned Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) had completed development and fabrication of the ASP's radar and related electronics and a fresh round of technology evaluation and flight testing got underway, following a funding of Rs 250 million from the DRDO. By mid-1996, work on most aspects of the ASWAC project had been completed, and the LRDE radar demonstrated an effective range of 300km when called upon to detect a low-flying target cruising at Mach 1.5 speed. However, the sole ASP TD perished in a fatal crash at Arrakonam near Chennai in January 1999, killing eight personnel, and the ASWAC project was consequently put on hold.
Within two months of signing the $1.1-billion Phalcon Airborne Early Warning and Control Systems contract, India is looking to revive its own $400-million AWACS project.
To be called the Mini-AWACS system, the project harkens back to the indigenous airborne surveillance platform (ASP) effort shelved by India's Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) in 1999 after a modified Avro HS-748 crashed, killing four scientists and four air force officers on board. The accident was blamed on a rotodome that blew off, indicating a failure in the modification process.
However, this time DRDO is expected to mount the Mini-AWACS' phased-array radar on an in-production executive jet, according to K.U. Limaye, director of the Electronics and Radar Development Establishment and head of CABS. An experimental radar is already in testing, he added.
India has begun talks with Israel about joint production of the Mini-AWACS, according to DRDO chief V.K. Atre. After Russia, Israel is India's second-largest weapons system supplier and the two countries are looking into jointly funding reasearch and development in electronic warfare systems, as well as in major undertakings to build Searcher II and Heron unmanned aerial vehicles.
Erm Singhaji,Singha wrote:er, I doubt we will manage such a huge AESA for AEW considering we onlee were toying around with a 64 cell toy kit in AI03.
methinks it will be a PESA and later on upg to AESA when we master the
tech via a smaller project like MMR-upg. As of now I dont think we have the
tech to manufacture the modules in volume and cheaply, france had been asked but they arent the greatest at that game themselves and will demand a huge pound of flesh like price padded scorpenes.
what kind of system is the Ereyie ?
Guys... if you click on the RC 400 pdf from the link mentioned above... it shows a picture of the LCA as a potential user of the RC 400 radar...Himanshu wrote: v3.thalesgroup.com/airbornesystems/activities/systems/airborne_radars/1_186_207_73.html
on the lines of MESA?JCage wrote:[quote"Singha"]The CABS design is AESA from the word go. PESA is not planned.
Northrop Grumman Corp., Baltimore, Md., is being awarded a $43,017,332 (not-to-exceed) firm-fixed-price contract to provide for twenty AN/APG-68(V)7 fire control radar systems to the F-16 aircraft.
Phazotron has developed the ZHUK-MFE radar, which has phased array antenna free from the above said drawbacks. It was possible to achieve, using new principles of PAR design and UHF technological solutions. ZHUK-MFE weight and tactical characteristics are close to ZHUK-ME characteristics. It allows installing this radar onboard upgraded MiG-29 aircraft without changing its design. Now ZHUK-MFE radar undergoes laboratory tests. At Customer’s request Phazotron is ready to place this radar on MiG-29 or other type of aircraft and begin its series production.
In India Kopyo-21I radar is well known. It is installed on MiG-21 Bis UPG aircraft. Kopyo-21I is the first radar in a number of unified radars: Kopyo-M, Kopyo-25 and Kopyo-A, designed on a new element basis.
Phazotron has developed Kopyo-25, a podded version of Kopyo-21I. It has undergone flight tests on Su-39 aircraft. The container version of the radar allows to equip the aircraft, which was not equipped with the radar earlier, with an advanced radar without essential adaptations of an aircraft. It expands tactical capabilities of an air complex. Kopyo-25 may be offered for HAL produced MiG-27L upgrade.
Kopyo-М is similar to Kopyo-21I, however due to transition to a new element base and new signal processor, it has 25 % increase in range of air target detection, Time of a radar map generation in synthesized aperture mapping mode has become twice as less. The radar is much more reliable, has smaller weight and overall dimensions. Its characteristics allow considering Kopyo-М as the radar for further modernization of MiG-21 Bis aircraft or similar class of aircraft. It is expedient to consider jointly with the Indian experts the feasibility of fitting this radar on IAF light aircraft like LCA. At present Kopyo-М undergoes flight test.
EADS Defence Electronics predicts a significant growth in business over the coming years for its radar transmit/receive (T/R) modules, to reflect the increasing military interest in shifting from the use of mechanical arrays to more capable active electronically scanned systems.
The company has identified the business area as a top priority for the next five years, and has already made a heavy investment in supporting manufacturing techniques using gallium arsenide.
Each T/R module is roughly 7cm (2.8in) long, 1cm wide and 0.5cm deep, and has a power output of about 10W. Future arrays will be scaled according to the size and requirements of the host platform, totalling from several hundred modules to around 10,000 for ground-based air defence applications, says EADS.
Planned uses for the company's T/Rmodules include their integration with the Captor multi-mode radar now under development for the Tranche 3 standard of the Eurofighter Typhoon, NATO's planned Alliance Ground Surveillance battlefield-reconnaissance system, and the TerraSAR-X radar mapping satellite, to be launched for the German research organisation DLR and Astrium next year.
(Source: Boeing Co.; issued Apr. 21, 2005)
ST. LOUIS --- Boeing will debut the F/A-18E/F Block II Super Hornet equipped with the revolutionary APG-79 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar system at a ceremony at Boeing's St. Louis facilities today.
Featuring a fixed array with an agile beam that scans near the speed of light, the AESA will, for the first time, enable aircrews to conduct simultaneous air-to-air and air-to-surface operations with independent dual-cockpit operation. In air-to-air mode, the radar allows targets to be engaged at very long ranges, permitting weapons launch at maximum range and enhancing warfighter survivability and lethality. The system also offers high-resolution ground mapping at long standoff ranges for air-to-surface tracking.
The aircraft will be used as part of the AESA radar flight test program prior to entering Operational Evaluation (OPEVAL) in 2006.
On next update.Marcos wrote:Harry,
any specs for the Bars29??
Phazotron's excuse was that mandatory Soviet-era quality checks and inspections of PCBs and processors was no longer the practice. The MTBF (Failure, not Overhaul) was increased to 110 hrs, still less than the advertised 150 hrs.BTW, how come the Kopoyo with 11hrs MTBO came in??... wasn't there any quality checks in the first place and whats the case with all the upgraded MiG-21s??
Also hope to see someone post the MTBO of other rarars ....