Raytheon's APG-79 AESA radar gets "additional capability"

St. Louis, USA: Boeing subsidiary, McDonnell Douglas Corp, has received a $90 million modification to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract for "the procurement of a newly developed, additional capability for the AN/APG-79 Active Electronically Scanned Array radar," from the United States Naval Air Systems Command.

According to the company, work will be performed in El Segundo and St. Louis and is expected to be complete in September 2011. Though there is no clarification on the "new capability," defence experts surmise that this may be the "big SAR" wide area synthetic aperture radars scans that will now be part of the production F-35 Lightning, or limited electronic warfare capabilities.

Raytheon's APG-79 AESA radar will equip the new F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet Block II aircraft and the derivative EA-18G "Growler" electronic warfare aircraft. The AESA design offers a number of new possibilities including simultaneous air/ground scans, wide-angle ground scans, electronic jamming functions, high-bandwidth communications, as well as others that are not part of public knowledge.