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Citat:The EL/M-2032 radar provides the FA-50 with detection capability which is similar to that of the original KF-16 fighter’s APG-68v5/v7 system, but with far better integration to enable able the FA-50 to carry GPS-guided weapons, AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles, and other new equipment, should it be fitted. (these weapons are on the development roadmap for the aircraft.)
Everyone is lamenting the fact that the radar isn’t AESA, so let’s talk a bit about radars. The EL/M-2032 was initially chosen over Lockheed Martin's preferred AN/APG-67(V)4. Why? The AN/APG-67 is a multi-mode all-digital X band coherent pulse doppler radar originally developed by General Electric for the Northrop F-20 Tigershark program of the early 1980s. It offers a variety of air-to-air, air-to-ground, sea-search and mapping modes, and compatibility with most weapons used by the US Air Force in the 1980s. However, it has never been “combat tested”, nor is it “qualified’ for use with the latest GPS and “next gen” BVR or LOAL weapons. The EL/M-2032 is an advanced Multi-mode Airborne Fire Control Radar designed for MRFs, oriented for both air-to-air and strike missions. Modular hardware design, software control and flexible avionic interfaces ensure that the radar can be installed in fighter aircraft (such as F-16, F-5, Mirage, Harrier variants, F-4, MiG 21, etc.) and can be customized to meet specific user requirements. The EL/M-2032 radar integrates ELTA's experience with real operational feedback from Israeli Air Force combat pilots. In the air-to-air mode the radar delivers long-range target detection and tracking capability. In the air-to-surface mode, the radar generates high resolution ground imagery using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology for smart weapons guidance. Air-to-Sea mode provides long-range detection and tracking as well as target identification capability. The EL/M-2032 air-to-air mode has a detection and tracking range of up to 150 km (depending on size of the aircraft it’s detecting, and the size of the antenna of the radar), the air-to-ground mode generates high resolution radar imagery of locations at up to 150 km, and air-to-sea mode can detect and classify naval targets at ranges of up to 300 km. The radar system weighs between 72 and 100 kg, depending on the size of the antenna. To date, Elta Systems has integrated this radar system into F-4, F-5, F-16, Mirage and Mig-21, all of which are combat aircraft.
Let’s consider another reason the EL/M 2032 was chosen. Since the sale of the aircraft to foreign governments comes with a “rider” clause from Lockheed Martin which dictates what US weapons can be integrated and supplied to the end user, it offers an easy option of fitting “other” weapons from “other” than US suppliers to these aircraft. So let’s look at what that means.
The EL/M2032 is pre-qualified to work with the Israeli Derby AAM. The Derby is a beyond visual range (BVR) air-to-air missile (AAM) developed by Israeli defence company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems to work with a variety of fighter aircraft such as F-5, F-16 Fighting Falcon, Gripen E and Mirage. The I-Derby ER advanced active radar missile was unveiled at the Paris Air Show in 2015. It features a solid-state active radar seeker and a dual pulse rocket motor, which provides an operational range of up to 100km, when fed mid-course correction data by the El/M2032 radar by the FA-50’s data link system. The missile can operate in lock-on before launch (LOBL) and lock-on after launch (LOAL) modes. In LOAL mode of operation, it receives target information after being deployed from its launch platform, while in LOBL mode, which is enabled in tight dogfights, the seeker is locked onto the target before the missile is launched. Rafael has already spoken to the PAF about offering this weapon for integration to the FA-50, along with the Python 5. The Python 5 is currently the most capable air-to-air missile in Israel's inventory and one of the most advanced AAMs in the world. As a beyond-visual-range missile, it is capable of "lock-on after launch" (LOAL), and has full-sphere/all-direction (including rearward) attack ability. The missile features an advanced electro-optical infrared homing seeker which scans the target area for hostile aircraft, then locks-on for terminal chase.
So let’s get more specific to the radar itself, and what it can do and what it is comparable to:
The EL/M-2032 pulse-Doppler radar is comparable to the AN/APG 65/73 radar in the FA-18A/B/C/D. Very comparable in range to the AN/APG65 (V)2, developed for the AV-8B+ Harrier II Plus. The AN/APG-65 is a multi-mode, digital I-J band (8 to 12 GHz) radar developed late 1970s by Hughes for the US Navy's F/A-18 Hornet strike fighter. It can be used with the AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles and the 20-mm gun for air-to-air combat as well as a variety of conventional and guided weapons for ground attack. The system consists of five line-replaceable units (LRU) each of which can be removed and replaced in as little as 7 to12 minutes. Faults are identified by the radar's built-in test (BIT) which also runs pre-flight and in-flight diagnostics. The specified mean time between failures (MBTF) is 106 hours. The elliptical, flat-plate, planar array antenna has low sidelobes for better electronic countermeasures (ECM) resistance. It is electrically driven. The gridded traveling wave tube (TWT) transmitter is located behind the antenna and under the other LRU. It is liquid-cooled, which Hughes claims reduces stress on the components and increases reliability and software programmability. Immediately behind the antenna mount is the receiver-exciter U, which houses the analog-to-digital converter and uses field-effect transistors (FET). Behind the receiver-exciter is the general-purpose radar data processor (RDP) which has a 250,000-word 16-bit bulk storage memory . Behind the RDP is the digital, fully software-programmable (as opposed to "hard-wired") instructions. The programmable signal processor (PSP) operates at 7.2 million operations per second (MOPS). For air-to-air operations they incorporate a variety of search, track and track-while-scan modes to give the pilot a complete look-down/shoot-down capability. Air-to-surface modes include Doppler beam sharpened sector and patch mapping, medium range synthetic aperture radar, fixed and moving ground target track and sea surface search. The radar includes a velocity search (to provide maximum detection range capability against nose aspect targets), range-while-search (to detect all-aspect targets), track-while-scan (which, when combined with an autonomous missile such as AIM-120 AMRAAM, or Derby, gives the aircraft a launch-and-leave capability), single target track, gun director and raid assessment (which enables the operator to expand the region centered on a single tracked target, permitting radar separation of closely spaced targets) operating modes. The AN/APG-73 is a late 1980s upgrade of the AN/APG-65 for higher processor throughput, greater memory capacity, bandwidth, frequency agility, higher analogue/digital sampling rates, synthetic aperture modes, improved reliability and easier maintenance. The PSP's speed jumps from 7.1 million complex operations per second (MCOPS) to 60 million. Since 1992 the APG-73 has been operational in U.S. Navy and Marine Corps F/A-18C and D aircraft; early models of the U.S. Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornet; and in the air forces of Finland, Switzerland, Malaysia, Canada, and Australia. A total of 932 APG-73 systems were delivered, with the final delivery in 2006.
The EL/M2032 is even more advanced. In actuality, the antenna might be mechanically steered, but the back-end hardware and software is similar to the EL/M2052 AESA radar. It’s small, lightweight, and has solid state circuitry and modern processors. It has great room for expansion via excess data storage and software programmability. Because of this, the MTBF is in the hundreds of hours and the PSP is over 600 Million (MCOPS), a tenfold increase in computing power. All communications with the cockpit are handled using the MIL-STD-1553 data bus; the data bus allows the data from any of the aircraft's sensors to be shown on any of the in-cockpit displays, or sent to other aircraft using a data link.
http://pitzdefanalysis.blogspot.rs/2016/12/the-confusing-role-of-fa-50ph.html
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