By Geoff Fein
Raytheon [RTN] has developed a way to offer its active electronically scanned array (AESA) to legacy aircraft such as F-18 Hornets and F-16s with minimal intrusion into the aircraft, a company official said.
The Raytheon Advanced Combat Radar (RACR) brings the company’s most advanced aviation radar system to older airplanes, thus enabling commonality with more advanced platforms such as Boeing‘s [BA] F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, Mike Henchey, Raytheon’s director of Strategy and Business Development for Tactical Airborne Systems, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
Henchey said the company was approached by the services looking for a way to have the technology and capability of AESA and make it work on existing airplanes with existing power and cooling systems.
Taking its existing effort with the Raytheon Advanced Next Generation Radar (RANGR), the company worked on developing a system that could go into legacy aircraft without having to build up or add more power and cooling, he said.
“RANGR allowed full active array AESA to go into other airplanes, but it was still full liquid cooled so you needed a unit to provide power and cooling,” Henchey said.
RACR is a drop-in system using the airplanes existing power and cooling.
“[It’s] still an active array radar. [It has] all the benefits but minimal intrusion into an airplane,” he added. “So if it’s older Hornets, a F-16 platform, or something else, you can drop it right in. That’s generating a lot of interest.”
RACR is essentially air cooled, Henchey said. It has a unit on the side of the radar and the front of the airplane. “So you still are circulating some liquid there but you then have a liquid-to-air heat exchanger that blows all of that heat out via air, vice liquid, from a straight plumbing standpoint.”
Raytheon introduced RACR at last week’s Farnborough Air Show.
Henchey sees a great global opportunity for Raytheon with RACR. The worldwide market for F-18 Hornets, for example, is easily 1,000 aircraft or more, he said. And with the desire of countries to keep those legacy Hornets and F-16s flying, it only makes sense that countries would look to add RACR as they upgrade their planes.
Raytheon has been actively engaged with the Navy, Henchey said. “Operators and acquisition people, they are now aware this is an option. They really like that option.”
But the challenge for the Navy, he pointed out, will be to determine how many Super Hornets they will buy, how many Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35 Joint Strike Fighters they will acquire and how many F-18 A through D model Hornets the service will upgrade to extend their service life.
“Clearly as they look to extend the service life [of the Hornets] and are going to have those airplanes to 2020, 2030, who knows how long, they will want to upgrade the sensor suite and capability package on that airplane,” Henchey said. “They are really excited about the opportunity to take a fifth generation sensor suite, a la AESA radar…digital EW (electronic warfare) advanced processor with secure data transfer and secure being a key word. In other words you have the crypto built in so that you can be sure that what you share outboard or inboard is secure.”
The Navy is also interested in RACR because of the commonality it will enable, not just between legacy Hornets and the more advanced Super Hornets, but with coalition partners too, Henchey added.
Being able to offer RACR to allies is a great advantage for U.S. forces because not only would it facilitate coalition interoperability, Henchey said, but as the industrial base expands…as the overall economies of scale kick in, U.S. forces would then get an ever better price as they continue with their path of upgrades and modernization.
RACR also presents opportunities for new markets, Henchey added. One example is unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).
“There is some interest in the unmanned world. We have worked derivatives of the technology to go there,” he said. “And as you make it into a smaller size, lighter weight, it will have a number of applications. One that comes to mind would be the helicopter world. We are working on that. You could logically have an application for helicopters, logically have a UAV application into smaller sizes as it gets lighter, so all of that is something to be worked on for the future from a spiral development standpoint.”
And, Henchey, pointed out, RACR will fit into other platforms unique to our international partners.
“There are new markets…other airplanes internationally that could benefit. As countries negotiate with the U.S. for the capability, it will fit in other platforms,” he said. “The same capability could be put in and the technology is there. Offering RACR with its capability to drop in without big adjustments to the airplane will provide that same opportunity for those markets.”
While RACR was being showcased for use on aircraft, Henchey said Raytheon is looking for other uses beyond aviation assets.
“There is already interest in putting [it] aboard ship as you might anticipate. You even could put it on a Humvee or some sort of a ground vehicle and provide a great capability. Because when you go [to a] digital array, it provides reliability and it has the ability to see all of these things in various environments. So there is a lot of interest in expanding this to land, sea, and air,” he said. “We are talking to the [Navy] and we are looking at [RACR] for that.”