Aircraft

Raytheon is reviving a programme to upgrade the US Air Force's Boeing F-15C fighters with active electronically scanned array radars, expanding on an initial phase performed on a single squadron of 18 Alaska-based aircraft in the late 1990s.

The emergency supplemental funding bill for fiscal year 2007, signed by President George Bush in late May, contains about $62 million to upgrade a small number of active duty F-15Cs with an enhancement of the "brick" array APG-63(V)2 radar previously integrated to now use a tile design, says Mike Henchey, Raytheon business development director. Raytheon has previously designated this as the APG-63(V)3, but it is likely to enter service under a new designation in the APG-series, he says. The (V)3 variant refers to the active array of transmitter/receiver modules, with this front-end to be mated with the APG-63(V)1 radar processor already installed on most of the USAF's active duty F-15Cs.

It is unclear how many USAF aircraft will be upgraded to the AESA standard, but with the Air National Guard also having an ongoing programme to order AESA upgrades for up to 48 F-15Cs and the previous batch of aircraft, Raytheon is likely to convert at least 70 aircraft to the new standard, with additional orders likely to follow.

The air force is also running a competition to upgrade the radars on its F-15E fleet to AESA systems. A winner is expected to be announced in October, with the APG-63 bidding against a version of the Northrop Grumman APG-77 installed on the Lockheed Martin F-22.

Meanwhile, the US Navy plans to deploy its first APG-79 AESA-equipped Boeing F/A-18E/F Block II Super Hornets in early 2008, following a delay of at least six months. The H4 software tape that fixes previous deficiencies remains in development test, with a follow-on test and evaluation period scheduled for "later this summer", says Raytheon business development director Dave Goold. The navy last month placed a $7.4 million contract to redesign five monolithic microwave integrated circuits used on the APG-79, with this to allow the microchip manufacturer to address obsolescence issues with the current hardware.

• USAF locks on to F-15 radar upgrade
• Raytheon AESA in key tests