Major Shaitan Singh
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The MiG-35 Zhuk AE AESA designed by Phazotron is the first Russian AESA design and is expected to spawn upgrade packages for Flanker variants, as Phazotron have been trying for over ten years to break NIIP's defacto monopoly on Flanker radars. Its most likely competitor will be a derivative of NIIP's AESA design developed for the PAK-FA.
Russian industry crossed an important milestone with the 2007 unveiling of Phazotron's Zhuk AE AESA radar for the MiG-35. In August, 2009, Tikhomirov NIIP were cleared to publicly display the new AESA developed for the PAK-FA, and also a clear candidate for Flanker retrofits.
Until recently, the principal impediment to the introduction of AESAs has been the unavailability of good Gallium Arsenide technology power transistors for use in AESA Transmit Receive modules. While global commercial GaAs production is of the order of 100 times greater in volume compared to military production in the West, there has been only modest non-military demand for this class of transistor to date. That is changing now with the US breakthrough earlier this decade in Gallium Nitride transistors, now appearing in second generation US AESAs, as these have been identified as an enabling technology for WiMax broadband networking.
As result the coming decade will see such devices mass produced for commercial users, making their export to Russian defence industry impossible to control. We are already observing Japanese manufacturers producing GaN transistors rated at 50 Watts in the X-band. The commodification of high performance 32-bit and 64-bit microprocessor chips is the applicable case study, since these are now appearing in a wide range of Russian military equipment designs.
The principal challenges Western designers have faced in AESAs have fallen into both antenna design, and integration. AESAs typically use A-class amplifiers to provide bandwidth and frequency agility, and the high linearity and low distortion required for sophisticated waveforms. The result is considerable power dissipation in the antenna, which is typically dealt with by liquid cooling using Poly-Alpha-Olefin (PAO) coolant. Some designs, such as the F-22A and F-16/B60, dump heat into the aircraft's fuel as a thermal buffer, and then dissipate it. Some designs will directly dump the heat into a heat exchanger.
Integration of an AESA into the Flanker airframe will not present difficulties, as there is considerable internal volume, large internal fuel capacity with potentially large cooling capacity, and electrical power to spare with the newer engine designs.
The large 0.9-1.1 metre diameter aperture provided by the nose and radome design will be especially attractive to an AESA designer. This aperture size permits around twice as many AESA modules of similar size to most current Western designs, apart from the F-22A Raptor APG-77 and F-15C APG-63(V)3/4, to be packed into the antenna.
The implications of this are sobering, insofar as with modules rated at half the peak power of the current state-of-the-art, such a radar could provide about the same peak power rating as current top end US AESAs. The Power Aperture Product would thus be higher due to the aperture area being so much larger. With COTS derived modules of much higher peak power rating than current US military GaN HEMT technology, a future Flanker AESA could have a very much higher Power Aperture Product figure, with significant counter-stealth potential.
In 2009 there were two principal candidate AESAs for installation in new build Flankers, or retrofit into existing service Flankers. These radars are NIIR Phazotron's intended Zhuk-AS/ASE, scaled up from the MiG-35 Zhuk AE AESA, and a derivative of Tikhomirov NIIP's new PAK-FA AESA, displayed publicly at MAKS 2009.
Both radar designs are based on the quad channel TR module technology first disclosed during the public release of the Zhuk AE. These X-band modules are now being mass produced on an automated line by NPP Istok, who are also planning S-band module production. Mostly Russian produced GaAs components are employed. Cited capacity is sufficient for 50 AESA radars annually.
Other than a stated intent by NIIR Phazotron to scale up the Zhuk AE, there are no technical details of this design available at this time. In a sense it is an analogue of the Raytheon scaling of the APG-79 AESA for the APG-63(V)3/4 upgrade (refer below).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK2d0LRWrbY&feature=player_embedded
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