F-16 SABR

Northrop Grumman image

26 January 2010

Northrop Grumman confirmed that it has successfully completed a series of test flights of its Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR).
 

January 26: US aerospace company Northrop Grumman confirmed that it has successfully completed a series of test flights of its Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR) installed in a US Air Force Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter.

Flying from Edwards Air Force Base in California, the tests are to prove the viability of installing an Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar system into existing F-16s.

"Air forces will necessarily gravitate toward using AESA technology – especially through scalable retrofit technology,” said Arlene Camp, Director of Advanced F-16 Radar Programs at Northrop Grumman's Electronic Systems sector. “This marks the first time a retrofit AESA has ever flown in a legacy F-16 and validates 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.”

AESA radar improves on traditional passive electronically scanned radars by spreading its broadcast across a band of frequencies, making it very difficult to detect over background noise.

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