Does anyone know if an MH-60S Seahawk would be capable of carrying a Searchwater 2000 radar or similar like the Royal Navy's Sea Kings do?
Also could an NH90 carry a paletized version like the one that was proposed for the Merlin?
For the two questions I suspect the answer to both is, "No."
Firstly, the MH-60S 'Sierra' has as its main roles VERTREP, CSAR, AMCM and lift. In short, a navalized lift and transport helicopter with some additional bits of kit added. For an AEW-type role, the MH-60R 'Romeo' would IMO be more what one is looking for, since that has the appropriate sort of console setup and radar, etc to allow operation as an AEW, using the Telephonics APS-147 radar.
In terms of plain weight, the Searchwater 2000 radar used aboard the Sea King AEW only weights ~200 kg, so weight itself should not be an issue. From my POV the problem is really going to be the size of the array. While this is a rough guess on my part based upon photos, it appears that the array has a diameter of 1 m - 1.5 m with the maximum height of the array being 1.5 m - 1.75 m. Even in the EH101 Merlin, the expectation is that the array would need to be lowered from within the aircraft after takeoff. Other smaller aircraft like the NH-90 or Seahawk would either need the array to be in some form of outrigger configurationm or not carried.
As for the NH-90, AFAIK a specific version, the Searchwater NH, is being developed for the NH-90.
-Cheers
