European, that’s an impossible question.
You can not build an AAW frigate with Heracles or Empar (alone!).
An AAW frigate is suppose to give aircoverage to a group of ships or area.

What you can build with them is a GP frigate with a reasonable self-defence capability.

To sumeet1981

To sumeet1981
(you are still young!)

Thanks for your link to the Elta’s MF-STAR radar. I have a brochure from that system somewhere, but I believe it’s like the PDF.
Need to do some more research on this active phased array radar, but in short: That looks good.
Is there any chance that you have a link to the EL/M-2238 3-D STAR Surveillance radar ? I had a chat with an Elta guy at Euronaval 2006 and he told me about their multibeam principle. It sounded like the story of the Thales guys around their SMART-L and SMART-S.
That could be potential a real good radar.
The only other multibeam volume search radar is the SeaGiraffe AMB, but they didn’t fully implement the concept. They splitted the volume in a low and high area and do a kind of time slicing: two turns low volume, one time high volume, or something like that.
That gives half frequency update for higher elevation, not so nice for incoming missile with a pop up manouvre. Just program the missile to jump at radar horizon to high elevation.

I will come back on Elta’s MF-STAR, but furst have to do some research.
Normaly I would charge for that, but in this case …

To Zajcev, (and others with an open mind)

Yes the concept of the lens is rather old. I did not took the time to research the AN/SPG-59 but a quick scan learned me that it was a huge beast.
The Lunenberg lens principle was ignored by most radar engineers but the Heracles is a reincarnated version of it with highly modern electronics.

As promised, some more photo material.
We have seen this CAD drawing, with in the front the lens, the red units are the solid state transmitters. Transmitting into open space (the green pyramid)

Attached, from a magazine from Thales, a picture of a phase shifter and the lens.
The lens is filled with 1761 of those phase shifters.
If I understand it correctly, one side is the internal receicer, that gets in-phase energy via air from the transmitter. Then independant phase shifting per unit and re-transmission out of the lens to the outside world. Thats why you see left and right the arrow shaped antenna dipool. Reception from the outside world comes on the dipool and is collected in the lens and connected to a processing complex.

Some interesting info that I found in JNI:
Housed inside a trapezoidal structure, the lens array incorporates 1,761 phase shifters mounted on multifunction carriers. A 16-element ‘retina’ behind the lens creates up to four beams that can operate concurrently (a coherent, solid-state transmitter provides for a peak power of 50 kW).

Those 4 beams are new to me! That means that you can split the energy and get 2 or 4 times the number of pencils!
But there is no free lunch: this will cost range!
If you have only a quarter of the power, you get less then half the range.
That’s why JNI writes: provide surveillance out to a range of 200 km and local air-defence coverage out to 80 km
That makes full application of Aster 30 questionable. In a high density environment you have to switch back a lot of your pencil budget to local air-defence coverage to win capacity and as such loose a lot of long range coverage.

Remember the swiss knife?

Janes has also a picture of a testsite.
Most people don’t realize that this shape is turning with 60 rpm, while you can see that the motor centerline is not in the centerline of the antenna shape.
That will give some comical and very strange rotation behavior.

Now a little about stealth.
I always smile when people on different boards can “see” which ship is more stealth than the other. Yes you can if you compare a ship from the 70’s with one of today.
Radar stealth of ships from today can only be compared with extreme complex radar reflection models and you will see that the big difference is only in the extreme details. On places where you didn’t expect it.

But stealth is also abouth InfraRed signature. If this antenna shape is kept at around 23 degrees (a nice temperature for electronics) and your environment is 7 degrees than you will see a “hot head” from long distance.

Stealth is also abouth noise, not only under water but also from rotating objects that are not silent. At sea, during night you can hear over very large distance.

And then stealth, I even can see: look at the antenna: sunlight glint.
If this antenna rotates with it’s comical pattern it wil glint to you from long distance on a sunny day. For that aspect a sphere would be much better.

To MConrads:

BTW is Empar a single beam radar as well? Is Sampson the only mutli beam radar of the Aster capable radars than?

Empar is a rotating passive array with a pencil beam as wel.

Sampson is an active phased array with a pencil beam.
Sampson has two main advantages compared to Empar, Arabel, Heracles:
– it’s active phased array: so faster beam steering=more pencils per second, adaptive beamforming, less power loss, higher reliability, gracefull transmission degradation
– It’s a back to back antenna: so two times higher update rate to correct your missile if things tend to go wrong in a littoral environment, almost continious control of your missile, two times more pencils by hardware design, to do tracking, horizon search, uplink & kill assesment (S1850M takes care of the volume search)

To Maxona:

Do you know this:

It can do it all, not at the same time and not very well.

You all have to do the functions with Empar, Arabel and Heracles with one pencil!
You have around, say 1000 pencils per second.
Do you know the surface of a hemisphere (the half sphere) of 150+ Km.
The surface area of a half sphere of radius ‘r’ is given by = 4*pi*r power2 div 2
For 150Km that means more than 141.000 square Km.
Don’t need to go above 70 degrees so for sake of simplicety say 100.000 square Km.
With 1000 pencils, each pencil has to paint a 10km*10Km area.
So with 1000 pencils, you know with an accuracy of 10Km if there is an object on 150Km. That means at 75Km around 5*5Km, on 19Km around 1*1Km. Operational unacceptable! So you need even smaller pencils!

You have just used all your pencils for volume search, the result is dramatic and there was no time for all the other tasks that you mention (tracking, horizon search, uplink)
Even with two times as much pencils you only get an improvement to a 7Km*7Km area.

Yes … those radars do it all, but in time sliced matter. If you do tracking, there is not enough time to maintain volume search, if you do uplink again it eats your pencil budget.

Marketing, marketing, marketing … they don’t lie … but they also don’t tell the truth.

Herakles saga

To TinWing,
please re-read the JNI text where a DCN rep says: the mast allows for much better performance! The mast prevents interference !
By stacking, all sensors do have a unblocked 360 degrees view, without complicated blanking schemes to prevent one transmitter blowup a receiver due to same or harmonic frequencies. The HMS Sheffield sunk during the Falklands because it was using it’s satellite comm’s and ESM has to be switched off due to interference.

Topweight ?
A mast enclosure does not give so much topweight, it would be produced mostly from frequency selective material to enable transmission/receive in a certain frequency and to be closed for other frequencies. That’s a kind of foam enclosed by synthetic material.
Topweight is caused by the 6000Kg Heracles (it’s second disandvantage).
This is the reason that you see Heracles mounted so low.

That brings me to it’s first disadvantage: Heracles’s rotation speed. This is why:
– Navigation and selfdefence radars (like Goalkeeper) do have a 1 sec. update rate and generally use I-band (8-12Ghz). For high resolution and high update rate, but short range. Time on target is short.

– Surveillance radars (like TRS/3D, SeaGiraffe AMB, SMART-S, MRR) do have a 2-3 sec. update rate and generally use S-band (2-4Ghz). For medium resolution and medium update rate, for medium range. Time on target is medium for pencil-beam radars, better for multi-beam radars.

– Long range surveillance radars (like SMART-L, S1850M) do have 5-6 sec. update rate and generally use L-band (1-2Ghz). For medium resolution and lower update rate, for long range. Time on target can only be obtained with multi-beam, pencil-beam for the whole volume would take too long, that’s why there is only SMART-L and it’s derivate S1850M as 3D volume search rotators.

Now where does Heracles fits in ?
Heracles is a passive phased array radar according to the Lunenberg lens principle. That means the energy from the transmitter is transmitted with a feedhorn into the air inside the antenne and than picked up again by an array of (say 1000×1000) antennes on th back of the lens. Per antenne there is a phase shifter and the energy is given to an antenna at the front of the lens and re-transmitted. At receive time the antennes at the front receive like a normal antenne array.

This picture shows the front side of the lens (hashed blue), the transmitter feedhorn somewhere near the red area. The green construction holds air where energy resigns from feedhorn and comes in the back of the lens.
(I have a pic from the lens itself, but can’t find it at the moment. It was in a magazine that Thales sent to me. Will post it later)

Heracles is a passive phased array S-band pencil beam radar.
So one would expect that it rotates at 2-3 seconds to get range and time on target.

Now why does it turn every second ?
For the uplink of the Aster missile! It needs every 1 second an update.
About missile uplink, that’s rather simple, the missile is willing to listen to you and the energy has to go only one way.
Compare that to the main function of a radar: to detect non-cooperative targets that try to hide themself by flying low, mask themself by other objects or by stealth shapes. The little energy that is reflected by that small stealth object, has to come all the way down to your antenne again.

The best way to detect those small, fast, stealth object is:
1- sit as high as possible
2- pump a lot of energy towards the object
3- use a large antenna
4- use smart processing
5- fuse multiple sensors

Rule 1
Sit as high as possible
see: http://members.home.nl/7seas/radcalc.htm
A mast of 2 meter higher moves your radar horizon 1 km away (f.i. for a 15m mast, target at 5 meter), that means 5% more reaction time.

Rule 2:
Pump a lot of energy towards the object.
That means two components: power & time. The more power the better, the more time on target the better. Attenuation of power is caused by waveguides, rotary joints, media change (from electrical to air and vice versa), freespace attenuation (for L-Band less than S-band, for S less than I band). Time on target is defined by ratation speed and pencil beam versus multibeam. A pencil needs to touch a slice of the hemisphere while a multibeam covers the whole slice with multiple fingers

Rule 3:
Use a large antenna.
Size is gain, everything you do not receive, can not be processed.
But also at transmission: beamforming is better and sidelobs are smaller.

Rule 4:
Use smart processing.
Advanced processing can offer additional gain. No info found for Heracles.

Rule 5:
Fuse multiple sensors.
Remember that a specific radar only samples a very small part of the total spectrum (f.i. the S-band) the more samples you take, the wider separated, the better the fused result will be. Think of the combination of L-band, S-band, I band, IR, TV. all those samples do have their own advantages and own limitation. The combination offers more than the parts alone!

Now FREMM with Heracles has:
a heavy and therfore too low mounted, single, to fast rotating radarconcept.
(ahhhggg …. any friends left?).
The last dinosaur under the rotating passive phased array radars.

It’s just stupid to sacrifice a good volume search capability for the dominance of the missile and that’s what Heracles does.
So you are looking at a radar that is 99.99% of it’s time is not optimal, to do 00.01% of it’s time a rather simple job: uplink some updated target data to a missile.

Now the multi-missile uplink can be done by a simple device, shaped like this wreath:

This is the UPX-29 IFF operating in L-band, but such a shape of a set of antenna’s with a 360 degrees cover could handle the uplink of Aster easely.
Aster listens to X, C and S band uplink, that means that such a wreath could be even smaller.

The advantage of the Aster multi-missile wreath is that you can combine it with any single or dual radar you like.

Back to MConrads & TinWing:

Will Herakles replace EMPAR in follow on French AAW ships?

As far as I know, no Aster is fired in combination with Heracles.
Heracles was first sold to Singapore, positioned as Aster 15 solution. Don’t know if Aster 30 is possible. Range claims for this missile vary from 30NM (where the 30 comes from) up to 120Km, probabli in a ballistic free fall.

If they cut half the mast of the Forbin frigates, then a probably fit.

Can Herakles be integrated with Smart-L/S1850M?

Yep, can’t see why not. That would give a good long range capability & a TBM early warning capability. It would unload the volume search function of Heracles. As mentioned above, that’s not easy with a pencil beam.
A joke I heard from a Thales rep.: How do you paint your house? With a pencil or with a roller? That made the advantages of multibeam clear to me.

Has Herakles replaced Arabel in the export market?

Arabel is still on the Thales website. But have not seen any sales last years.
Naughty question: whats inside the bulb of the new Chineese frigates ?
Does anyone know ? Please help.

Has Herakles supplanted APAR?

No way! Active phased array is the way to go. It’s a new, young, bright technology. Recently selected by Denmark. On the long run all radars will stop turning, because it’s the only way to get more time on target. Needed in littorals and detection of extreme small asymetric threats (mines, uav’s go-fasts)

Why is Herakles mounted so low in the Formidible class? Why do the French FREMM models depict Herakles mounted so much lower than EMPAR in the Italian FREMM models? Is the Herakles antenna array heavier than EMPAR?

Way to heavy antenna. Same problem as SPY1. Low mounting for ship stability. A regular S-band surveillance radar weights around 2000Kg, Heracles 3 times more.

I wonder if Thales promoted an entire line of integrated masts, with Herakles at the high end (FREMM), the Smart-S Mk2 in the middle (Schelde Combatant 12717) and MRR at the bottom end of the market (GoWind 200)?

Don’t think so. FREMM will not have an integrated mast. If you read the story in JDI (see above), I don’t see how DCN will solve the problem for GoWind with MRR.
As stated, it was prefered but to expensive for FREMM, than it will be sure for GoWind.
FREMM is an employment program for DCN (like LaFayette was). In that case the choice is not optimal towards operational capabilities as needed for the Navy.

For SMART-S, I’m not sure:

this is a part of a picture from their website.
Plans for the patrol ship and logistic support ship for the RNLN show both an integrated mast. What will be inside ? A rotator of fixed arrays? Who knows?

Conclusion:
From an operational point of view, what do I need:
– all weather performance -> sorry, does not fit in one sensor
– push the horizon away -> high in the mast
– best possible early warning detection -> X-band radar
– best possible small object detection -> X-band radar
– reliable detection under clutter conditions -> X-band
– long range -> L-band
– detect if it’s there, not if it’s not there (sounds obvious, but it isn’t!) No false alarms -> power, time on target, high update rate, high sensitivity, advanced processing.
– low operational manning -> ease of operation, not A*B*C possible operation modes
– low maintainers manning -> gracefull degradation, mission accomplishment, no rotating parts

From an operational point of view, Heracles does it all, a litle.

Mconrads,
a small correction.
Inside the mast there was no Heracles projected but a kind of fixed phased array.

Joris Janssen Lok writes in JDI:
Portier (project manager FREMM) says: one innovative item that was planned for FREMM but is not selected was a single integrated mast module. Portier says: “This concept allows for much better performance in terms of electromagnetic compatibility – a critical issue as sensors become more sensitive and transmitters more and transmitters more powerfull. The integration of all sensors and transmitters on the topside of a frigate can be quite a nightmare. we believe that the best way to handle this is to integrate all sensors and transmitters in a single mast module.
However for the time being it was decided that this technology is not yet mature. For example, the staring array sensors that you would ideally want to place in an integrated mast module are still more expensive than conventional rotatng sensors that offer the same performance. So we elected, together with Thales, to go forward with a design featuring two mast modules. The technology is being developed as we speak, and is certainly possible for the next batch of the FREMM programme the single integrated mast module will be selected”

Some comment on this:
“integrated mast…this technologie is not yet mature ..”
“staring sensors are still more expensive”

Is new technology mature when it’s not more expensive?

So my conclusion: Heracles is the second choice.

Now the real benchmark w.r.t. maturity will be: what will the RNLN choose for their new patrol ship ?
Will they choose an Integrated Mast like shown here:
http://www.thales-naval.com/naval/activities/int-top-des/integrated-top-design.htm
With or without a rotating radar?
The RNLN is well known for their preference for advanced radar equipment.

Has the Singapore navy ever done firing trails with the Heracles/Aster combination ?
Has someone ever see photos of the Singapore Formidable class where Heracles was rotating and not in the fixed forward position ?

What’s involved ?

Have not find detailed results of the negotiations, but it will be around this:

DCN CAPITAL OPENED TO THALES
Thales buys a 25% share in DCN by transferring assets to DCN:
– Thales Naval France businesses excl. radars (prime contracting, CS/CMS, services)
– its 50% interest in Armaris (incl. subsidiaries)
– its 35% interest in MOPA2
– its 24% interest in the Eurotorp partnership
plus paying an additional cash contribution.

Source: a presentation for shareholders (end of 2005)

To say it again:
The Naval activities of:
– the Netherlands
– UK
– Germany
– Canada
– Australia
– South Korea
– South Africa
– US
to name a few, are NOT involved.

Hope this helps