The scorecard for active electronically scanned arrays (AESAs) in development for Lockheed Martin F-16s now reads: 2 candidates, 0 customers.
This blog reported about the first candidate last summer. The Raytheon Active Next-Generation Radar (RANGR) first came to light in a marketing brochure. Its existence means Raytheon is challenging Northrop Grumman's near-monopoly grip on F-16 radars. For this reason, I rechristened RANGR the "Raytheon's Anti-Northrop Grumman Radar".
But I also knew Northrop could hardly stand on the sidelines, and in November I reported in Flight International that Northrop would indeed develop a thin-array AESA for the F-16. (Northrop already makes an "agile-beam radar" for the United Arab Emeriates F-16 Block 60.)
Read this more background on the emerging AESA radar war.
Northrop's product has now been unveiled and christened the Scaleable Agile Beam Array (SABR), but I will always know it as the Stop AESAs By Raytheon (SABR) radar.
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