Discussing the benefits of the swashplate approach, Bob Mason, Selex Galileos executive vice president for marketing and sales, says fixed-array AESA technology suffers performance losses at wide-scan angles. Its just a fact of life, he notes. Canting the antenna to address radar cross-section issues can exacerbate the performance dropoff.
One means of addressing this problem would be to use side arrays. Mason notes that a side array was planned for the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, but so far none has not been fitted because of the associated expense. The swashplate design, he contends, addresses the same main issues at less cost.
The swashplate employs a repositioner driven by electric motors to negate this problem, along with providing other benefits. What still must determined is whether, and the extent to which, the reintroduction of moving components begins to erode the advantages in terms of mean time between failures of mechanically scanned and AESA radars.