LINTHICUM, Md., 26 Jan. 2010. Northrop Grumman Corp. (NYSE:NOC), in conjunction with the U.S. Air Force, completed a series of demonstration flights of its Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR) installed in an F-16 fighter aircraft at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The demonstration was in support of a U.S. Air Force F-16 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) feasibility study.
SABR is an affordable and scalable AESA radar designed for retrofit in current F-16s and other legacy fighter, attack, and training aircraft. Compared to mechanically-scanned array radars, SABR will provide the increased performance, multi-functionality, and greater reliability inherent in AESA radars. In terms of combat capability, SABR provides improved situational awareness, greater detection, high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) maps, interleaved air-to-air and air-to-surface mode operations, and an all-environment precision strike capability.
"Almost two years ago Northrop Grumman said that air forces of the future will necessarily gravitate toward using AESA technology -- especially through scalable retrofit technology. Our team has worked diligently to make that possible and today we've made it a reality. This officially marks the first time a retrofit AESA has ever flown in a legacy F-16," says Arlene Camp, director of Advanced F-16 Radar Programs at Northrop Grumman's Electronic Systems sector.
"This demonstration validated our goal of developing an AESA that can be easily installed on the flight line and integrated with existing power and cooling provisions of currently fielded F-16s," Camp adds. "With regard to installed performance, SABR's air-to-air and air-to-ground detection and tracking and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mapping performance met or exceeded our predictions."
For more information on SABR, visit http://www.es.northropgr.
