AESA Radar

In December 2021, India developed AESA Radar. It is 95% indigenous. One of its sub system is indigenous. It was developed by LRDE.

AESA Radar in India

• India is to mount AESA Radar on Su – 30 MKI aircraft and MiG – 29K fighter jets.
• The HAL and LRDE have signed MoU to mount the radar on Tejas fighter jets. Under the MoU, the first 16 Tejas are to be fitted with Israeli AESA radars and the rest to be fitted with the ones developed indigenously.
• Very few countries in the world have developed AESA radar. They are China, US. Israel and European Union.
• The Indian made AESA is capable of tracking 50 targets in a sky range of 100 km. It can engage four of them simultaneously.

In comparison with Chinese defence

The indigenously developed AESA radar has a range of 120 km. With this India has nullified the air superiority of China. China gained its air superiority with J20 multi – role fighters.

What are the benefits of AESA Radar?

The AESA radar has low probability of intercept. This helps the AESA installed aircrafts to skip the beaming (waves to lock the aircraft or detect the aircraft to launch missiles or destroy) from enemies. It has high jamming resistance. AESA is much more reliable than PESA.

What are the key features of AESA radar?

It is a solid state active phase fire control radar. Also, It is a multimode radar that can be adapted for various types of fighter jets. The radar has wideband Radio Frequency front end, waveform agility, ultra – low antenna side lobes, non – cooperative recognition, jammer suppression.

What is Uttam AESA radar?

• The Uttam AESA radar is under development. It is being developed by LRDE of DRDO. It is a liquid cooled AESA radar. The Uttam radar was tested successfully on two Tejas fighter jets.
• During Aero India 2021, DRDO and HAL signed a technology transfer agreement to manufacture and integrate Uttam with Mark 1A. Mark 1A is a variant of Tejas.

It has three operational modes. They are air – to – air, air – to – ground and air – to – sea.