Lockheed Martin has competitively chosen Northrop Grumman Corporation's Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR) against the Raytheon's ...
Lockheed Martin has competitively chosen Northrop Grumman Corporation's Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR) against the Raytheon's RACR AESA radar for the U.S. Air Force and Taiwan F-16 radar modernization and upgrade programs.
Lockheed Martin was awarded a $1.85 billion contract by the U.S. government to begin retrofitting Taiwan’s remaining F-16A/B Block 20 fighter aircraft. The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency released the retrofit deal under the Foreign Military Sales program in September 2011.
Taiwan has 145 F-16s remaining from the 150 it procured from the U.S. during the 1990s.
In terms of combat capability, SABR provides improved situational awareness, greater detection, high-resolution SAR maps,interleaved air-to-air and air-to-surface mode operations, and an all-environment precision strike capability.
SABR has successfully demonstrated several advanced radar capabilities for the F-16, including Big SAR maps with automatic target cueing. The SABR Big SAR offers an unprecedented level of situational awareness and target identification for F-16 pilots.
Big SAR (synthetic aperture radar) mapping for the SABR delivers the largest, sharpest radar images ever available in an F-16.
SABR is an multifunction AESA radar designed for low risk retrofit in current F-16s and is scalable for integration in other aircraft.
SABR began flying in 2008 and has build an unmatched record of successful "firsts" with flight demonstrations now including proven performance in advanced combat-relevant tests.
Other AESA radars developed by the company are currently flying on the Block 60 F-16, F-22 and F-35 Lightning II.
Source: www.northropgrumman.com
