Lockheed Welcomes Retrofit Radars for F-16sBy tom kington
Published: 15 Jul 13:21 EDT (17:21 GMT)
FARNBOROUGH, England - As the world's air forces continue to fly thousands of F-16s 30 years after the launch of the aircraft, an official at manufacturer Lockheed Martin has welcomed the unveiling this year of two active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars for retrofitting in the fighter.
"Anything that adds value is a great thing," said John Larson, F-16 vice president at Lockheed. "We would love to see both of them become options," he added.
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Larson said that F-16s as old as Block 25 aircraft, albeit after a midlife upgrade, would likely be able to be retrofitted with AESA radar.
Larson was speaking at the Farnborough Airshow a day after Raytheon launched its Raytheon Advanced Combat Radar (RACR). In February, Northrop Grumman showed its Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR). Both are designed to be fitted into F-16s by air forces that might have sought to buy new fighters in order to obtain AESA radar, which is faster and more capable than mechanically scanned radar.
Apart from retrofitting F-16s, Larson did not rule out the possibility of customers buying new F-16s being able to choose one of the two radars, "although we need to see where future developments end up," he added.
Currently, only the United Arab Emirates has purchased F-16s with AESA radar onboard, the APG-80. Larson said that the APG-80 had also been proposed for India, should it buy the aircraft.
Otherwise, customers who have recently ordered the aircraft, or are now taking delivery, have all ordered the mechanically scanned APG-68(V)9. They include Greece, Israel, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland and Turkey.
Northrop Grumman has said that its new AESA retrofit radar will be cheaper and less capable than the APG-80, but the same price as the APG-68(v)9.
Source
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=3627601&c=EUR&s=TOP
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