Fighters face the Aesa revolution: since 2000, a small number of fighter aircraft have been flying with Active Electronically Scanned Array (Aesa) radars. To date, these have all been American, but design teams around the world are working to develop their own Aesa fighter radars.

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Fighters face the Aesa revolution: since 2000, a small number of fighter aircraft have been flying with Active Electronically Scanned Array (Aesa) radars. To date, these have all been American, but design teams around the world are working to develop their own Aesa fighter radars.

In the traditional architecture for a fighter radar, the radio-frequency power is generated in a transmitter. The antenna is either a parabolic dish or a flat-plate array, and is steered mechanically. In the first electronically scanned radars to enter service, the radio-frequency power was still generated in a transmitter, the output power of which was passed via a power-dividing network to an antenna consisting of an array of phase shifters (usually based on ferrite).

Passive electronically scanned array (Pesa) technology was used in the first electronically scanned fighter radar to enter service--the N007 Zaslon ('Flash Dance') developed by V Tikhomirov NIIP for the Mikoyan MiG-31 Foxhound. First deployed in 1983, this 450-kg I/J-band radar had been improved by the addition of a new data processor which enhanced the range and ECCM performa...

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