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| UTTAM AESA Radar |
Finally, LRDE’s UttamAESA for TejasLCA starts getting the eye of Indian AirForce. a much bigger version with quite thousand TRMs being asked by users for giant boys, especially Su-30MKI.
“Development of AESA radar for Tejas variants has progressed well. It shall be in production within the near future. The core components of Uttam AESA prototypes are coming from the private sector”. Deputy CAS sky marshal Sandeep Singh.
IAF expects that Uttam AESA are going to be scaled up for other IAF fighters, particularly Su-30MKI. Stated by Deputy CAS, sky marshal Sandeep Singh. the primary official confirmation that IAF wants to use scaled up Uttam AESA for the Su-30MKI upgrade program.
The Uttam is a complicated active phased array radar (APAR) system being developed by Electronics and Radar Development Establishment (LRDE) for the HAL Tejas and other combat aircraft of Indian Air Force. Development of Uttam started in 2008 and it had been first unveiled at Aero India 2009. Uttam is slated to be a successor to hybrid passive electronically scanned array radar EL/M-2032 currently equipping LCA Tejas. Radar is currently being integrated with an LCA.
UTTAM has capabilities like, Identification friend or foe (IFF), electronic and communication support measures, C-band line-of-sight and Ku-band SATCOM datalinks, etc., almost like those on the AWACS and Conformal Airborne Early Warning & Control Systems (CAEW) systems.
The important modes of operation of the UTTAM radar system are the surface surveillance and therefore the air surveillance. The sensor has the skills to look , track-while-scan, priority tracking, high performance tracking, etc. In priority tracking, the targets are going to be placed fully track mode albeit these cross the first surveillance area. In high performance tracking, additional measurements are made to enhance the tracking accuracy. Utilizing active aperture technology, the radar provides a fast-beam agile system which will operate in several modes concurrently.
Uttam features a lively phased array (APAR) which provides it superior scanning performance over legacy passive phased array radar. Unlike most contemporary radars, Uttam features Quad TRM i.e. one plank consists of 4 TRMs. It allows the array to be more densely packed. Each TRM is provided with low noise power amplifier, built-in test facility, digital phase-gain, and side lobe control elements. The inert model displayed at Aero India 2015 had ~184 QTRMs i.e. 736 TRMs. The array temperature is controlled by a liquid coolant circulation system. The QTRM configuration makes Uttam maintenance friendly. The radar are often scaled up or down counting on antenna size requirement.
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