Have you heard of the “Kargil War”, “Tiger Hill” ? That should answer all your doubts. 🙂

As reported in other threads Raytheon seems to be pretty close with the GaN systems. However I believe that the F-35 will get the GaAs? Or am I wrong?

Raytheon has no stake in the APG81. Thats Northrop Grumman territory.

Raytheon is only responsible for the APG79 on the SuperHornet and partially-responsible for the APG77 on the F22.

GaN tech ready for integration into radars @ Raytheon IDS

After hearing about the debut of the F/A-18SH “International” at Farnborough I checked out if there were any further new technologies that could potentially revolutionize this aircraft further.

Going back to Raytheon’s companywide mandate to make its equipment forward- and backward-compatible, Smolko argued that new gallium nitride-based semiconductors will be able to be integrated into legacy radar systems, like those on the F-18 fighter jet. And Raytheon sees that the new compound’s time has come–Smolko said gallium nitride is ready now for system insertion. And as such, it is now producing large amounts of the material in its semiconductor foundry in Tewskbury.

Source

I donot know what impact this has on the MMRCA competition, but since the competition hasn’t yet reached the RFQ stage I think this is very relevant to the success of the Super Hornet/International in this competition.

According to IDS’ Joe Smolko, Raytheon sees gallium nitride offering five to 10 times the power density advantages–in size and cost–over what is available today. That means it could produce higher power and smaller chips with a smaller dollar per watt of power cost.

So for the same radar capabilities a GaN array would consume lesser power than a similar GaAs array. Combine this with increased engine thrust from the new EPE engine.

Essentially an F/A-18 E/F “International” with the EPE engine and a GaN APG79 could have significant increase in power at hand thereby boosting acceleration over the current model.

Loss of life is always sad. But yea, the C17 has an impressive safety record inspite of this. The closest the C17 came to a difficulty before, was in 2009 and it was attributed to pilot error.

C17 belly lands at Bagram

After more than two days of concentrated effort, the recovery crew managed to lift the aircraft high enough to extend its wheels and prepare it for removal from the runway.

Till the info is released, you may as well support all 6 contenders (sigh!). 😀

GaN tech ready for integration into radars @ Raytheon IDS

For a long time, silicon has been used for that base, but Raytheon wanted to find a better solution for phased-array radars, since it’s the job of the semiconductor to amplify a signal from a military-strength radar system from hundreds of megahertz to tens or hundreds of gigahertz.

At IDS, Raytheon already has a long history of producing semiconductors and even has its own foundry. And not long ago, the company began investigating whether a new compound, gallium nitride, might offer an order-of-magnitude improvement over silicon. Underlying that decision were some of the properties of gallium nitride: it has a high bond gap, meaning it is good at withstanding electricity; it pulls a lot of heat out; and it is as sensitive as possible on the receiving side, while being as powerful as possible on the transmitting side.

According to IDS’ Joe Smolko, Raytheon sees gallium nitride offering five to 10 times the power density advantages–in size and cost–over what is available today. That means it could produce higher power and smaller chips with a smaller dollar per watt of power cost.

Smolko said that gallium nitride’s sweet spot is that it is far more efficient than current phased-array semiconductor compounds like gallium arsenide, particularly when it comes to heat generation.

Going back to Raytheon’s companywide mandate to make its equipment forward- and backward-compatible, Smolko argued that new gallium nitride-based semiconductors will be able to be integrated into legacy radar systems, like those on the F-18 fighter jet. And Raytheon sees that the new compound’s time has come–Smolko said gallium nitride is ready now for system insertion. And as such, it is now producing large amounts of the material in its semiconductor foundry in Tewskbury.

Source

French union at Airbus declines to endorse the EADS bid saying that it understands the “Buy American” approach 🙂

Very true after Northrop Grumman’s withdrawal from the KC-X competition.