birdofprey said:
ok can some body shed some light on AESA radar.. all i know is that it only recives the signel, but lets say the other plane has its radar turned off so how will the AESA detect? FA-18 super hornet vs another how will they detect each other??
Instead of having a plate or dish shaped antenna which you would need to steer up and down or left and right to point towards a target to 'catch' a return, an AESA has dozens of steerable transmit/receive modules, each of which scans different areas of the sky individually, or can be focussed to 'stare' at a particular point.
Scan times are much faster with an AESA (almost instantaneous compared to up to 30 seconds for a ground to heaven scan using an APG-70 type radar as used by early F-15s), and there are no hydraulics and gymbal type hinges. AESA antennae can also be faceted for lower observability, and have low probability of intercept (LPI) modes. The ability of an AESA to stare at a target can actually be powerful enough to burn out circuitry and in the future we will see AESA radars used as electronic attack weapons (e.g. against SAM system radars or UAVs).
Magoo
