"Almost two years ago Northrop Grumman said that air forces of the future will necessarily gravitate toward using AESA technology “especially through scalableretrofit technology. Our team has worked diligently to make thatpossible and today we've made it a reality. This officially marks thefirst time a retrofit AESA has ever flown in a legacy F-16," saidArlene Camp, director of Advanced F-16 Radar Programs at NorthropGrumman's Electronic Systems sector.
"This demonstration validated our goal of developing an AESA that can be easily installed on the flight lineand integrated with existing power and cooling provisions of currentlyfielded F-16s," Camp added. "With regard to installed performance,SABR's air-to-air and air-to-ground detection and tracking andSynthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mapping performance met or exceeded ourpredictions."
SABR is an affordable and scalable AESA radar designed for retrofit in current F-16s and other legacy fighter, attack, and trainingaircraft. Compared to mechanically-scanned array radars, SABR willprovide the increased performance, multi-functionality, and greaterreliability inherent in AESA radars. In terms of combat capability,SABR provides improved situational awareness, greater detection,high-resolution SAR maps, interleaved air-to-air and air-to-surfacemode operations, and an all-environment precision strike capability.
Northrop Grumman has been the sole provider of radars for the F-16and for over 30 years has continually improved the F-16 radar'sperformance and reliability. More than 5,000 F-16 radars have beenproduced for the U.S. Air Force and 24 nations worldwide.
Because of this extensive foundation and rich F-16 heritage andplatform intimacy, Northrop Grumman is the first to design, develop,integrate, test and successfully demonstrate retrofit AESA capabilityin flight on a legacy F-16. SABR is part of Northrop Grumman's robustproduct family of multi-function sensors and capabilities.
Northrop Grumman Corporation is a leading global security companywhose 120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, andsolutions in aerospace, electronics, information systems, shipbuildingand technical services to government and commercial customersworldwide.
