Found this post at CMF. Anyone care to add/share more about this?
The airborne active phased array radar.
China is the 3rd country in the world to have successfully developed airborne active phased array radar, after Japan (Mitsubishi Electronics radar for F-2) & USA (APG-77/79/80 & 65(V)2). The performance of the radar has reached the lowest requirement of APG-77 for F-22 Raptor: 120km range against target w/ 1 squre meter radar cross section. One of the developer is the 14th directorate of the then Electronics ministry.
What needs to be noted here in this considerable achievement is that the radar is fully active, i.e. every element of the anntenna is a transmitting/receiving (T/R) module. Not only west has not completed the development of similar system, (The only phased array radar is the passive RBE2 passive radar by French), even for those so-called active phased array naval radars, they are not really fully active: for example, the APAR naval radar by German, Dutch & Canadian is really semi-active: some modules only transmitts, while other only receives. The other form of semi-active phased array would be that of Israeli Phalcon AEWAC: several modules shares one power source & TWT, and the antenna array is consisted of many such subgroups.
The problem for Chinese radar is the cost of the T/R module. According to the member of Chinese academy of science, Dr/Professor Gu4 Yong3-Fen1 said in early 2003, the unit cost of each T/R made in PRC in labs are over 100000 RMBY, (roughly 12500 US$), and in factory conditions, it still costs more than 80000 RMBY (10000 US$). It would take at least until 2010 to reduce the unit cost by 90%, and this is only the most optimistic outlook. This claim is confirmed later this yr at Defense Electronics Exhibition held in PRC by younger radar experts in PRC who did the reasearch & development on airborne phased array radars.
The problem of this is that even if the unit cost is reduced to 10% of what it is now by 2010, that is still 8000 RMBY, or around 1000 US$, and this was the price USA manufacturers had already achieved in the mid 1990’s, nearly 2 decades ago. Currently, the unit cost of T/R in USA is only 400US$, and it’s still decreasing, while the projected cost of Chinese T/R in 2010 is still 2 and half times more costly than the current price of similar USA systems. Obviously, the price in 2010 is still impossible for PLA to afford.
The sad thing is that the problem can be reduced greatly and much more quickly because a lot has to do w/ procedure, but not technology. The manufacturing procedures in this arena of microelectronics requires highly skilled workers, which in turn, needs to be highly trained. PRC already have the technology & tool to make the T/R, eventhough they r not the best in the world, but they are good enough, but PRC lacks the highly trained and skilled workers to operate these tools effectively and efficiently.
One can argue that lack of such highly skilled and trained labor is universal in China, for example, in the hi-tech microelectronics industry in Shenzhen, Canton province, an annual salary of RMBY 160000 (starting point!) could not find a qualified technical worker, but the problem, at least for the active phased array radar, has much deeper root — corruption.
Just like US companies that covers the cost of education for its employees, the PRC government also grant $ for enterprises to train its
worker, this comes either in the form of direct $, or tax write-off, (Note: NOT tax deduction, which only reduce a percentage, but peny for peny pre-tax deduction).
However, such efforts r rarely used, because when workers completed such training and education, their certificate means they also earns the appropriate title, which means workers know their value, which means they could rightfully ask for more $. In most SOE, this is viewed as a challenge to authority, greed, and rip-off from the enterprise, and thus is deeply hated by the management (Chinese government’s own word, in critisizing the situation). In fact, in the last national competition, out of 160 technical workers from Yunnan province who r qualified for the title/cert., only 2 had the appropriate titles/cert., the rest 158 had none. Management doesn’t encourage further education/training cuz it’s so short sighted.
Of course, the problem of corruption is the biggest factor: due to the lack of transparency and supervision, the $ government intended for workers’ education/training ended up either in the corrupted cadres pockets, or as the expense for them to travel abroad to the gambling casino and whore houses, under the disguise of traveling expenses. As a result, workers who r willing to learn lose their opportunity, and the industry suffers, and products cannot be satisfactory even when there is adquate technology and tools.
Democracy might be debatable for Chinese politics, but certainly is needed in factories.
Sign In
November 12, 2003 at 10:02 am