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Thales To Deliver AESA Radars Soon By PIERRE TRAN Published: 6 Jul 2010 16:42
PARIS - Thales will begin deliveries in August of the first production batch of active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars for the fourth tranche of Rafale strike fighters, Pierre-Yves Chaltiel, head of electronic combat systems, said July 6. [...]
Joined: Sun May 17, 2009 12:49 pm Posts: 416 Location: Near Paris (France)
This news shows us that on Rafale, EW and radar are closely linked, because of the antennas.
Quote:
New horizons for AESA radars Air&Cosmos 2226, page 26, july 9
Thales prepares the future in thinking over future radar technologies
Thales intends to maintain its position as a European pioneer in Aesa radar technology. This place, gained thanks to the development of AESA version of the Rafale front tip radar , will materialize in August, with deliveries of the first RBE2-AESA in standard production. [...] Program: If its RBE2-AESA enters in industrial phase, Thales intends to maintain its lead in providing some technological bricks considered crucial to broaden the scope of active antennas. This new roadmap is built around two key technologies: gallium nitride (GaN), a broadband semiconductor called to prevail for future emission-reception modules of radars with active antenna, and silicon-germanium (SiGe), a low power semiconductor, whose use in the control floors of the beam of active antennas will significantly reduce their size. Compared to the current gallium arsenide (GaAs), GaN offers much more power and works with very large bandwidth. This power, coupled with a sharp reduction in heat loss, lets consider very compact antennas since it will be possible to obtain the same power with smaller modules. The SiGe, itself, allows to regroup on a same low-power component several functions of phase control and amplitude control, reducing the overall size of the antenna. Potential applications are diverse: In the medium term, it is expected that Rafale’s RBE2 and SPECTRA share the same antennas. In the longer term, one considers the application of conform antennas to the fuselage and their use as a single “entity” which would act as radar and electronic warfare, 360 degrees around the aircraft. [...]
Joined: Sun May 17, 2009 12:49 pm Posts: 416 Location: Near Paris (France)
Source : A&C published on October the 8th of 2010 :
The first pre-serie AESA flew on board the Rafale on mid-September 2010. This is the first RBE-2 AA which is totally fused to the system, contrary to the 4 prototypes foreign pilots have seen so far.
Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2009 3:20 pm Posts: 10 Location: England
TMor wrote:
No picture of the production AESA yet, to my knowledge.
Are you preparing to count the modules ?
No I wasn't, I can only count to 10 in French, but that should be sufficient right?
The reason I would like to see it is that I'm interested to see the tilt angle of the array, as stealthier aircraft tend to have a radar with a tilted face. Whilst the radomes are frequency selective to an extent, if radar from the other aircraft were to penetrate, and the radar face were at the 90 degree angle, it would likely provide a very nice radar return. A suitably tilted array would reflect this away from the source, reducing the RCS in much the same way as airframe RCS reduction methods use, though some airframes may also use Jaumann absorbers or the like rather than shaping alone.
If we take a look at the APG-77 on the F22
and the APG-81 on the F35
and the CAPTOR AESA on the Typhoon
We can see they are all tilted, hence my interest in whether Rafale's RBE2-AA has the same feature!
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