You are looking much healthier. Congratulations. My 87 year old father, who is blind, and I enjoy your content. He recently caught on to who Otis is and he got a good laugh once I described Otis and his function in your videos.
You are looking amazing brother, nothing put a smile on my face more than seeing you standing there and and looking happy and healthy. The AESA stuff that's just icing on the cake 😁
Nice touch on the four progress bars for cost/complexity, heat, processing requirements, and scan loss. Otis' choice of supporting graphics and video clips continue to just nail it. 👍 Another great job, well done, thanks!
I love your videos, they are very informative, I learn so much from them. I hope you are doing well, it's good to see you back making videos. Keep up the good work 🙂
The Gripen E would frequently employ its AESA GaA radar as a passive ISR antenna and the wingtip and tail GaN antennas as active radars in narrow beam mode. But, it may also be used as RWR, EW, and SIGINT, which is not only clever but also an efficient and effective method to employ radar.
@@Millennium7HistoryTech Hello sir, Americans, europeans and Israelis have achieved AESA radar technology. Can u tell us which radar be more advanced Israeli Elm 2052 or European Rbe2/ Captor E according to their capabilities of military industrial base. Jst general technical comparison.
Excellent details, learned a lot! My guesses before watching the video were going to be issues with integration into 4++ fighters (that are actually fourth gen's built in the '80s and '90s) as a new mission computer (and perhaps new data bus) would require installation, let alone new screens in the cockpit(s), as well as the often upward sloped antenna arrays on AESA systems that would limit their vertical scan range. Very surprised to learn all of this! We were missing the videos, M7* Nice to see you back!
Another brilliant video ! I always figured that there must be a cost to all that extra performance, I was right about the heat but I didn't count on the weight or the lack of off-boresight sensitivity. keep up the great work.
AESA stands for Active Electronically Scanned Array, which is a type of radar system that uses an array of small, solid-state transmit/receive modules to steer the radar beam electronically. This is different from traditional radar systems, which use a single antenna to scan the radar beam mechanically. AESA radars have several advantages over traditional radar systems. They are more reliable, have better performance in cluttered environments, and are harder to detect and jam. They also allow for multiple beams to be steered simultaneously, which can be used for advanced capabilities such as electronic warfare, surveillance, and target tracking. AESA radars are used in a variety of applications, including military aircraft, ground-based radar systems, and naval vessels. They are particularly well-suited for use in modern military applications, where they are used to detect and track targets with high precision and accuracy.
About the scan loss: it's the phenomenon of decreasing loss then the beam in an antenna array is pointed away from broadside (generally simply not perpendicular to the plane of the array). In case the array doesn't have any fancy beamforming (same amplitude, progressive phase shift between the elements), the scan loss follows cosine function -> in ideal case: broadside = 0 dB scan loss, 60 degree scan angle = ~ -3 dB scan loss, etc (depending on the array configuration). It's basically just about the geometry of the array in respect to the radiated direction. The maximum gain is a function of the projected surface area (electrical) of the array to a given angle.
It´s incredible how much the same problems and solutions applied to AESA radar also apply to professional audio engineering. At this point, the common ground is not just wave mechanics but all the technology of filters and analog vs. digital signal creation, sum, heat dissipation (Johnson noise), etc. It would be interesting to see if some of the most forward-looking solutions regarding the quantization of the wave signal (both in AD and DA) in audio, such as describing a waveform with a density distribution of a binary impulse, might be a solution also for other systems such as radars in the manipulation of complex signals, especially at high frequencies. There is no free lunch, of course, but both of these technologies are aiming for the same goal and are hitting the same wall from a physical perspective. Great video, you´re always getting better. One more speculation from my side: what if the use of optical circutry would improve signal loss and heat creation and also would help defeating the signal losses at high freq. due to induction in metallic conductors?
Optical circuitry as in optical processors, or optical interconnects? To my knowledge, the interconnects part is already widely used, and obviously can't be used in analogue radio domain.
You should look into civilian 5G MIMO basestations. They use the same principles as AESA radars, in a less complex use case (more constrained). But a lot of those civilian technologies could be scaled up to meet the expanded operations envelope of a military AESA radar.
For example - GaN and GaAs radio production. That is not a big issue for AESA today. Certainly not with GaAs radios, which have seen huge growth in the civilian sphere, transmitting economies of scale and R&D benefits over to military side. GaN is still a less mature radio technology in civilian sphere, but it has markets there. So it is not quite correct to say that military AESA requires exotic, custom production methods for its radios - it uses methods and materials that are either already widely used in civilian space, or ones that are being invested into for their civilian potential. Military AESA usage does require better yields, higher quality parts, sometimes larger die sizes to fit everything needed for the flexibility. But all those just mean decrease of end yield, in other words, instead of processing 10 wafers to get enough chips, they'd need 20, or even 40. But given military standards, 2x or even 4x that price of a part is actually very, very cheap.
@@KarbinCry I expect GaN-based T/R modules and amplifiers to completely replace GaAs technology in a little over a decade's time, as Arsenic is toxic and very complicated to recycle.
@@nooonanoonung6237 GaAs is not toxic, and is not a source of arsenic. GaAs powder is carcinogenic, but likely due to its mechanical properties - kinda like fibreglass, if you breathe it in, it cuts up your lungs and scars them. But GaAs in radios is a solid crystal. It's basically like a computer chip. It is not a health hazard. In fact, your phone likely has a small GaAs chip acting as the radio, especially if your phone has 5G, or WiFi 6E. The issue is efficiency and possibly cost, as GaN is still scaling down costs by economies of scale and new innovation, while GaAs is a much more mature technology, with less potential to get cheaper.
Excellent video , M7! This explain also because either the Hybrid PESA is so diffuse: they have most of the Cons of AESA for what they came to signal processing (compared to old PESA, whose phase shifters just steered the wave) but having a centralized RF emitter they could retain a much more lighter and above all leaner antenna so that it could be steered without problems to reach a +/-100° of scan sector while they also need a lot less cooling and avoid to became too nose-heavy. So, for a 4++gen planes and above all an air superiority fighter like the Su-355 they were a no-issue component while it took a very long time to get a steerable AESA antenna on the Gripen-E and Tiphoon. And naturally it explain also because they have installed instead a L-band AESA on the wings of the same Su-35 or because the Su-57 has both L- and X-band antenna all around.
I would imagine that you have to look at the total life cycle costs for the AESA radar to get an accurate picture. Beyond slower refresh rates and predictable scan patterns legacy, gimbaled antennas tended to be high failure after being exposed to prolonged high g maneuvers. AESA systems are usually designed as an integral part of the airframe with a life expectancy on the same order as the air frame. That seems to be the goal; as to what’s real I don’t know. What I do believe would be a cost-driver would be for the service’s repair depots to develop the organic capability to repair these arrays for when Murphy has an influence in their reliability. Contractor depot support gets super expensive over time. Nevertheless, modern AESA radars are a thing of beauty.
It appears that your area ruling has been improved. Acceleration will be much better. AESA is complex but the benefits are many. It's mandatory at this point. Another good video.
Now I can see why drone/loyal wingman are essential to the future of Air Combat. The deflection disadvantage can be alleviated by having more "eyes" in the sky.
Even within an "all-digital" AESA there are important differences in whether the beamforming is implemented as a preprocess (for example in a separate FPGA/CPU/whatever) or integrated with doppler and monopulse processing. The latest edition of Skolnick's Radar Handbook has a chapter that explores this in some depth, written by a Northrop-Grumman engineer who worked on the APY-9.
You did not mention the operating frequencies of AESA radar. Older radars had one T/R module and therefore operated on one frequency. If there are 100 T/R modules, can the radar use 100 different frequencies simultaneously? This shall make it impossible to jam or do countermeasures, which is a huge advantage.
Sir, can you do the difference between flat AESA radar and notch AESA radar. What is advantages and disadvantages both of the AESA radar with different parttern size on it such as flat and notch. What is the difference and performance of this AESA which has notch and flat radar.
The General Electric XA100 is an American adaptive cycle engine designed to provide more energy and better cooling for the F-35. It will combine well with the new radar. It's all on schedule.
I'm not sure if I get this right, but heat is induced by the array-elements sending signals for the most part, is that correct? If so, would it be an idea to put passive arrays around an air frame and have cheaper, unmanned UAVs packed with emitters act as the off board emitter elements of the AESA system, a bit similar like Hensholdt's passive coherent locator system? ua-cam.com/video/RfqdLKFhGnQ/v-deo.html&ab_channel=HENSOLDT I was also imagining these off board emitters could act as decoys/jammers or spoofing aids. I realize things may get overly complicated in a different way... For instance can such a system accurately target a hostile aircraft, make SAR images or do powerful jamming in specific bandwidths or frequencies? And what kind of processing power (and relating cooling issues) may bring that to the original fighter aircraft? Probably a bad idea. Sorry, just had a brain fart.
What you described here AESA can already do today. But, to do this you have to exactly control emitters and receivers in an precision oy nanoseconds or even picoseconds. You will not achieve that by remote emitters. Some of the effects (if not most) you can only achieve by controlling the emitters differently so that they superimpose their wave signals so that you get the beam steering. Normally also you can't transmit and receive at the same time and you also have to control receiver and emitter very precisely to work alternating. They even scramble the emitted signals, so only the right receiver (knowing the key) can decode the signal and so can't be jammmed easyly. And with beam steering of nearly 2000 pieces of 5 watt transmitters on one point you can do very precise jamming without being noticed because of very low side lobes. Beam steering, beam splitting and beam forming is the key feature of AESA I think.
@@muctop17 Thank you kindly for the elaborate (and patient) answer. I was already afraid the idea was worse than the original. If I understand what you say correctly, the computing power required of my idea would be a multitude of that required on a normal AESA array. Which - I realized later - can be switched to passive mode as it is today. One could probably even connect multiple arrays in a flight together to listen in and triangulate the location of a single emitter without ever transmitting, provided there are enough ambient signals around. One just has to adapt the ER-modules to a specific frequency/bandwidth to the ones most common in the ether, correct? Anyway, I really appreciate you explaining the thing. Means a lot to me as a lay/infantry by origin. Cheers!
1. @4:25 "but is still very present" - acute ? Especially in nimble-planes like Gripen, which thus may-not be SEAD/DEAD capable? 2. What about the obsolescence of large radom-aircraft thanks to GaN radars in Gripen, F-35, Mig-35 (Zhuk)? 3. Integrated side-looking radars in Su-57.
Actually F35 radar is a notch AESA radar with GaAs, while the SU57 radar is flat AESA radar with GaNs on it, not 1 but 4 AESA radar on it. Quite unique isn't it.
@@radonsider9692 The current AN/APG-81 uses GaAs but the APG-85 is at least suspected to use GaN for its cooling and power benefits in tandem with the F135 core upgrade for increased cooling. If they actually managed to squeeze out more performance before switching materials that'd be something, but afaik GaN is more robust/durable and cheaper in general so I doubt they'd overlook it.
Dear gentleman, thank you for your interesting videos. Is it possible you produce a video describing differences between Link 11, Link 16 and Link 22 Tactical Data Links? Thank you very much indeed.
Speaking to a engineer from BAE systems at the 2023 Avalon airshow , mentioned any thing greater than 500Mhz sample rate and 16 bit depth is classified hardware has vendor export control, go figure what software defined radios the military can play with
Not only is scan loss a problem, but so are side lobes. As soon as you start steering phased arrays, the side lobes get very nasty, both in their amplitude and their phase behaviour. The amount of digital processing power required to mitigate this behaviour is extremely large; other solutions typically involve analogue filters on each array element, which has negative implications for size, weight and power consumption. The solutions in the naval world work quite well because of the large size of the array, but with airborne radars the quality is quite severely impacted.
Would not AESAR be able to listen to all directions constantly and simultaneously given unlimited processing? That would be a great advantage if combined with a powerful transmitter positioned behind the receiver. The receiver would not need as much cooling and power while the transmitter could have a much bigger aperture and cooling surface than fits into the nose cone.
In addition to what was mentioned, AESA will always have worse sensitivity than mechanically scanned antenna of the same size. In fact, a pure digital beamforming system will always be worse than analog beamforming system in terms of achievable sensitivity. Finally, any array antenna suffers reduction in beam quality when scanning far off axis. For that reason, hybrid systems where some beamforming is done in analog domain or via mechanical steering are used for long-range RADAR applications, and will often outperform a pure digital system.
As an AESA is in fact a collection of several radars, would it be possible to place the modules distributed along the fuselage and wings instead of clustering all together?
yes, but it will only effect azimuth not the elevation, it will also enhance SNR since the antenna is larger. It is a matter of time till this will be implemented.
The Erieye AESA surveillance radar produces so much heat in operation that it has a ram scoop to collect air to cool it in flight and AFAIK it cannot be operated on the ground without supplemental cooling.
The Massive MIMO in modern wireless communication has pretty much the same challenges: expensive, high power consumption and high processing complexity. A hybrid digital-analog architecture is therefore a more practical choice.
Think about this carefully: What are the possible applications for a very high performance, very high bandwidth transmitter/receiver system that has a very wide range of operating frequencies and can operate on hundreds of discrete frequencies at the same time, and which is under full digital control with very advanced, highly capable signal processors? The applications are limited only by the absolute hardware frequency and bandwidth limits and the imagination and ingenuity of the engineering team. It's SO much more than just a radar now. It's a broadband receiver, and a broadband transmitter, or more accurately, hundreds of them all working at the same time.
Not related to this video, but you're my only hope to answer a question that has been bothering me for years. What effect, if any, does ground effect have on a supersonic aircraft?
i see an achilles heel to the evolution of sensors through software advancement rather than that of the hardware,. and that is, that it is likely that this approach will freeze the evolution of the hardware, because "lazy", because "bean counter", because "problem solved" mentalities. The advancement of actual hardware however, is at the core of paradigm shifts. I think a much superior strategy is to promote and insure the capability to rapidly evolve hardware itself through the use of software. the danger with "the new thinking", is that hardware dev atrophies because of the unwise reliance on software-only to advance a sensor system. we of course know that both are absolutely necessary.
radar tech should shift from radio WAVE to specially charged particles. and that can be ACCELERATED particles. do note particles and wave differences is merely in the amount of energy/mass(convertible). but charged particles that are smaller than an atom could pass through atom structures, and could leave "marking" in certain pulses that can be READ by the auxillary scanner. the particle based "radar" system will be able to detect MATERIALS even buried deep inside a bunker. for example, nuclear fuels inside nuclear reactors and warheads inside a submarine 1 kilometer below the ocean surface. nobody can hide from it.
Nice overview, but you have to know that any advancement of substance comes with its own issues. These are not a disadvantage but the cost of having the advanced system.
I don´t quite agree on the cost part. PESA radar is a really complicated device with a lot of physical modules. A AESA radar is a integrated electronic system. This means that it will ride the cost benefit scale of electronic integration and production. This is also true for power modules. Power modules also get cheaper over time, while not as fast as integration. Also we see telecommunication arrays using the same kind of technology like for example SpaceX that us multiple arays on each satellite. And they are really not even that expensive any more. If not yet, AESA going to be cheaper than a PESA very soon, at least for a radar with on par performance.. Heat is a problem, but i figure they would do class E/F or T type transmitters eventually. For the processing, well that will be more and more efficient over time. But this is really more of a issue that the military us hunting for more and more performance, hence increasing the power at the same time there is efficiency gains. Working in telecom we start at class A transmitter and pretty much gone whole the way throu the alphabet. The electronics just get smaller and smaller but the total power just increased, with transmitter coax cable as thick as an arm before we swiched to having the transmitter in the antenna. We going from a world where fighters was weapon platforms where its really more of a radar platform. The Air forces just want more and more radar power. In telecom sector we use something called mixing to have a lower frequency digital signal work as a higher frequency one. The patch antennas used in telecom are virtually identical to that of a AESA radar (while the ground based one have considerably wider lobs). The signal is made in a base bad frequency. When we started this in the 90s we talking frequency of 1-10Mhz or so. Now its in the multiple of GHz range. This is how most cellphones work. The nice feature of this is that it can be mixed up to any freqvency. People who are a bit older may remember back in the day when you have to buy different phones depending on what carrier you had or what country you lived in. With mixing this is gone. Every phone have a baseband then a variable freqvence mixer that can mix to pretty much any frequency. Also modern phones typically have a number of antennas not just one. Ground station (that is what i use to work with) work very similar but the base frequency is much higher to allow for wider mixing. I have no evidence that AESA radar use this technology, but i can see no reason why they should not. Its a simple well known technology that been used on the civilian market for over 20 years and we also used it with phase shift for base stations. (modern phones probobly also have phase shift now, but it been a while since i was in the business so i´m a bit out of date). A AESA radar also can do something (well really quite a few things) PESA can´t. But one very important thing. It can defocus the radar. This allows it to scan faster for close or high speed moving object, or just a general higher speed of scan. Something most radar system can´t do what so ever. Specially impotent for system that have 2D of scanning. While a mechanically scanned radar would not have this problem, it need the repositioner just to scan what so ever. In the case of Gripen E its quite cleverly done on a rotating plate, making the system both simpler and more flexible. Also a AESA can be made with wider scan lobes if you want to make it cheaper or less power intensive.
let me start by saying awesome video, and I know next to nothing about radar other than playing a little DCS, but why haven't the manufactures of these radars tought of making them like a half globe instead of flat panels, could that help the deflection issues that 7 mentioned?
Ottimo video, come sempre. Ti lascio due pensieri: 1) Apprezzo l'idea di posizionare una barra che indichi la durata del segmento che tratta un singolo argomento, ma in un tentativo di provare a semplificarti la vita (non sono un content creator e non so se questa cosa semplifichi davvero la vita), credo che esista già una funzione in youtube per rappresentare i diversi segmenti nella barra di scorrimento del video, così puoi suddividerlo "nativamente" senza aggiungere nessun overlay. Prova a vedere se può fare al caso tuo. 2) Sai, ogni volta che ti sento parlare di AESA rimango con una domanda. Il radar (o meglio I radar) dell'Eurofighter. Ne sento parlare da sempre. CAPTOR-E, CAESAR, mk1, mk2... non si capisce niente. Ogni cinque/dieci anni sembra che parta lo sviluppo di un nuovo sensore senza mai realmente finalizzare nulla. E' solo politica? Mancanza di armonizzazione dei requisiti? Mancanza di budget? Mancanza di competenze? Ho come l'idea che sotto ci sia una bella storia da raccontare, almeno per capire come mai l'aereo che dovrebbe rappresentare la punta di diamante delle forze aeronautiche di diverse potenze europee monti ancora dei radar "del secolo scorso".
I kind of disagree on the criticism of analog components. One of main things done with those in most cases is just moving from passband signals to baseband signals. Moving passband signals to baseband digitally is a huge waste of resources; and once signals are in baseband we can do pretty much whatever we want digitally with most existing processors. Beamforming is also fine to do analog for transmit, since it's dependent only on the geometry of the array and can therefore be assumed to be fixed.
I discern from this video that you have reduced your personal radar cross section. Congratulations on your success!
I see what you did there 😀
Congrats on the reduced MTOW!
Brilliant play of words. I tip my hat off to you good Sir.
Millenium taking the next step and BECOMING stealth
RCS is more dependant on shape rather than size!
It looks like you have slimmed down. I hope you're feeling better. This is the best military aircraft channel on UA-cam
I don't know if it's a good sign exactly. Could be an adverse effect of some issue. Kind of scary to think about, pray to God it isn't.
You are looking much healthier. Congratulations. My 87 year old father, who is blind, and I enjoy your content. He recently caught on to who Otis is and he got a good laugh once I described Otis and his function in your videos.
Omggg ❤❤❤ wish u guys great days
Thats kinda based.
Great you still find ways to spend time with your father, its 100% priceless to him as well as you.
You are looking amazing brother, nothing put a smile on my face more than seeing you standing there and and looking happy and healthy. The AESA stuff that's just icing on the cake 😁
OTIS intro is still killing it.
Yeah, I was hoping the human would step aside and let the real star shine😂
@@lycossurfer8851 🤣
Glad I saw this comment I was about ready to click off this video.
@@Mike5Brown I'm glad that it helped ;)
Nice touch on the four progress bars for cost/complexity, heat, processing requirements, and scan loss. Otis' choice of supporting graphics and video clips continue to just nail it. 👍 Another great job, well done, thanks!
I love your videos, they are very informative, I learn so much from them. I hope you are doing well, it's good to see you back making videos. Keep up the good work 🙂
The Gripen E would frequently employ its AESA GaA radar as a passive ISR antenna and the wingtip and tail GaN antennas as active radars in narrow beam mode. But, it may also be used as RWR, EW, and SIGINT, which is not only clever but also an efficient and effective method to employ radar.
Any source for this?
@@Millennium7HistoryTech it is common knowledge.
@@psyamok3735 it is assuredly not common knowledge lol
@@psyamok3735 aka he pulled it out of his a**
@@Millennium7HistoryTech Hello sir,
Americans, europeans and Israelis have achieved AESA radar technology.
Can u tell us which radar be more advanced Israeli Elm 2052 or European Rbe2/ Captor E according to their capabilities of military industrial base. Jst general technical comparison.
I learn a lot each time I watch. Thank you.
Regarding your last point, off-boresight deflection affecting the lobe pattern is an issue for any type of phased array not just active/AESA arrays.
True
OTIS intro got me, thanks for the video boss
Also seems like you got your RCS lower. Good to see you healthier boss
Excellent details, learned a lot!
My guesses before watching the video were going to be issues with integration into 4++ fighters (that are actually fourth gen's built in the '80s and '90s) as a new mission computer (and perhaps new data bus) would require installation, let alone new screens in the cockpit(s), as well as the often upward sloped antenna arrays on AESA systems that would limit their vertical scan range.
Very surprised to learn all of this! We were missing the videos, M7*
Nice to see you back!
Thanks
Thank you so much!
Great vid. Always love the long form deep dives you do 😋
Another brilliant video ! I always figured that there must be a cost to all that extra performance, I was right about the heat but I didn't count on the weight or the lack of off-boresight sensitivity.
keep up the great work.
Looking good man, hope your health is improving. Excellent content as always
Great video as always. You seem to be recovering really well!
I hope that you are healing well and on your way to healthy town. I enjoy your insights on military matters
AESA stands for Active Electronically Scanned Array, which is a type of radar system that uses an array of small, solid-state transmit/receive modules to steer the radar beam electronically. This is different from traditional radar systems, which use a single antenna to scan the radar beam mechanically.
AESA radars have several advantages over traditional radar systems. They are more reliable, have better performance in cluttered environments, and are harder to detect and jam. They also allow for multiple beams to be steered simultaneously, which can be used for advanced capabilities such as electronic warfare, surveillance, and target tracking.
AESA radars are used in a variety of applications, including military aircraft, ground-based radar systems, and naval vessels. They are particularly well-suited for use in modern military applications, where they are used to detect and track targets with high precision and accuracy.
Another excellent video. It makes learning about aeronautics fun and simple.
You’re looking great, glad to see you up and about again.
Well, that was all very nice and informative, thanks meat man. Now, may we have the video that Otis made or was going to make? 🤖
About the scan loss: it's the phenomenon of decreasing loss then the beam in an antenna array is pointed away from broadside (generally simply not perpendicular to the plane of the array). In case the array doesn't have any fancy beamforming (same amplitude, progressive phase shift between the elements), the scan loss follows cosine function -> in ideal case: broadside = 0 dB scan loss, 60 degree scan angle = ~ -3 dB scan loss, etc (depending on the array configuration). It's basically just about the geometry of the array in respect to the radiated direction. The maximum gain is a function of the projected surface area (electrical) of the array to a given angle.
गहन शोध , स्पष्ट अवलोकन , प्रज्ञावान विश्लेषण , उपकरणों का सुन्दर चित्रण और बहुत सुन्दर प्रस्तुति।👏👏👏
LOL. Saying lots of interesting content is a massive understatement! You do great stuff.
its also a great deal less sensitive to the aircraft's nose-cone creating null areas
Great to see you again Sir. You are looking well.
high five for doing the hard work to look like you do now. you look great!
It´s incredible how much the same problems and solutions applied to AESA radar also apply to professional audio engineering. At this point, the common ground is not just wave mechanics but all the technology of filters and analog vs. digital signal creation, sum, heat dissipation (Johnson noise), etc. It would be interesting to see if some of the most forward-looking solutions regarding the quantization of the wave signal (both in AD and DA) in audio, such as describing a waveform with a density distribution of a binary impulse, might be a solution also for other systems such as radars in the manipulation of complex signals, especially at high frequencies. There is no free lunch, of course, but both of these technologies are aiming for the same goal and are hitting the same wall from a physical perspective. Great video, you´re always getting better.
One more speculation from my side: what if the use of optical circutry would improve signal loss and heat creation and also would help defeating the signal losses at high freq. due to induction in metallic conductors?
Optical circuitry as in optical processors, or optical interconnects? To my knowledge, the interconnects part is already widely used, and obviously can't be used in analogue radio domain.
@@pinocleen I meant interconnections , good to hear I didn’t know that.
Man you got in shape. Great job , you look amazing.
As always Quality content
"Otis, I'm still here"... Happily YES
Great job mate. One of the most informative channels on UA-cam.
You look great man glad to see it.😊
You should look into civilian 5G MIMO basestations. They use the same principles as AESA radars, in a less complex use case (more constrained). But a lot of those civilian technologies could be scaled up to meet the expanded operations envelope of a military AESA radar.
For example - GaN and GaAs radio production.
That is not a big issue for AESA today. Certainly not with GaAs radios, which have seen huge growth in the civilian sphere, transmitting economies of scale and R&D benefits over to military side.
GaN is still a less mature radio technology in civilian sphere, but it has markets there.
So it is not quite correct to say that military AESA requires exotic, custom production methods for its radios - it uses methods and materials that are either already widely used in civilian space, or ones that are being invested into for their civilian potential.
Military AESA usage does require better yields, higher quality parts, sometimes larger die sizes to fit everything needed for the flexibility.
But all those just mean decrease of end yield, in other words, instead of processing 10 wafers to get enough chips, they'd need 20, or even 40.
But given military standards, 2x or even 4x that price of a part is actually very, very cheap.
@@KarbinCry I expect GaN-based T/R modules and amplifiers to completely replace GaAs technology in a little over a decade's time, as Arsenic is toxic and very complicated to recycle.
@@nooonanoonung6237 GaAs is not toxic, and is not a source of arsenic. GaAs powder is carcinogenic, but likely due to its mechanical properties - kinda like fibreglass, if you breathe it in, it cuts up your lungs and scars them.
But GaAs in radios is a solid crystal. It's basically like a computer chip. It is not a health hazard.
In fact, your phone likely has a small GaAs chip acting as the radio, especially if your phone has 5G, or WiFi 6E.
The issue is efficiency and possibly cost, as GaN is still scaling down costs by economies of scale and new innovation, while GaAs is a much more mature technology, with less potential to get cheaper.
Beam forming was already implemented in some LTE-A active antenna's.
@@ghostindamachine yes, I was simplifying a bit.
Looking great dude!
I have to watch all your videos more than once. You teach me so much.
Excellent video , M7!
This explain also because either the Hybrid PESA is so diffuse: they have most of the Cons of AESA for what they came to signal processing (compared to old PESA, whose phase shifters just steered the wave) but having a centralized RF emitter they could retain a much more lighter and above all leaner antenna so that it could be steered without problems to reach a +/-100° of scan sector while they also need a lot less cooling and avoid to became too nose-heavy.
So, for a 4++gen planes and above all an air superiority fighter like the Su-355 they were a no-issue component while it took a very long time to get a steerable AESA antenna on the Gripen-E and Tiphoon.
And naturally it explain also because they have installed instead a L-band AESA on the wings of the same Su-35 or because the Su-57 has both L- and X-band antenna all around.
Some of the extra costs are recouped by lower maintenance costs compared to a mech-scan radar.
Awesome video! I saw a video of the Gripen-E with the mechanical pivot for the AESA radar and thought, oh that's a good idea. 🤔😂
I would imagine that you have to look at the total life cycle costs for the AESA radar to get an accurate picture. Beyond slower refresh rates and predictable scan patterns legacy, gimbaled antennas tended to be high failure after being exposed to prolonged high g maneuvers. AESA systems are usually designed as an integral part of the airframe with a life expectancy on the same order as the air frame. That seems to be the goal; as to what’s real I don’t know. What I do believe would be a cost-driver would be for the service’s repair depots to develop the organic capability to repair these arrays for when Murphy has an influence in their reliability. Contractor depot support gets super expensive over time. Nevertheless, modern AESA radars are a thing of beauty.
It appears that your area ruling has been improved. Acceleration will be much better.
AESA is complex but the benefits are many. It's mandatory at this point.
Another good video.
Looking good Millennium 7.
Another great video! 🎉🎉
I work in Linthicum Heights and enjoy your videos 😁
Get well soon!!
Every episode is just top notch!!
Question: Given this is a "Multifunction Array", when will it be able to emit an energy shield from it so we can finally call it the main deflector?
Now I can see why drone/loyal wingman are essential to the future of Air Combat. The deflection disadvantage can be alleviated by having more "eyes" in the sky.
Looking good I pray your feeling better and GOD will heal your issues. Thanks for the videos
Very nice video as always, Can you do video on airborne early warning ?
Even within an "all-digital" AESA there are important differences in whether the beamforming is implemented as a preprocess (for example in a separate FPGA/CPU/whatever) or integrated with doppler and monopulse processing. The latest edition of Skolnick's Radar Handbook has a chapter that explores this in some depth, written by a Northrop-Grumman engineer who worked on the APY-9.
You did not mention the operating frequencies of AESA radar. Older radars had one T/R module and therefore operated on one frequency. If there are 100 T/R modules, can the radar use 100 different frequencies simultaneously? This shall make it impossible to jam or do countermeasures, which is a huge advantage.
In principle yes but it is never used like that because you have to create a beam.
@@Millennium7HistoryTech It is used like that when operating in LPI modes.
Happy you are still alive.
You look great, well done.
Sir, can you do the difference between flat AESA radar and notch AESA radar. What is advantages and disadvantages both of the AESA radar with different parttern size on it such as flat and notch. What is the difference and performance of this AESA which has notch and flat radar.
The General Electric XA100 is an American adaptive cycle engine designed to provide more energy and better cooling for the F-35. It will combine well with the new radar. It's all on schedule.
XA100 was canceled for the F-35 (this week)
Nice. An FPGA should be able to address the latency/bandwidth problem of software DSP while remaining field programmable.
Looking great!
Woah you look thinner!!!!
I'm not sure if I get this right, but heat is induced by the array-elements sending signals for the most part, is that correct?
If so, would it be an idea to put passive arrays around an air frame and have cheaper, unmanned UAVs packed with emitters act as the off board emitter elements of the AESA system, a bit similar like Hensholdt's passive coherent locator system? ua-cam.com/video/RfqdLKFhGnQ/v-deo.html&ab_channel=HENSOLDT
I was also imagining these off board emitters could act as decoys/jammers or spoofing aids.
I realize things may get overly complicated in a different way... For instance can such a system accurately target a hostile aircraft, make SAR images or do powerful jamming in specific bandwidths or frequencies? And what kind of processing power (and relating cooling issues) may bring that to the original fighter aircraft? Probably a bad idea.
Sorry, just had a brain fart.
What you described here AESA can already do today. But, to do this you have to exactly control emitters and receivers in an precision oy nanoseconds or even picoseconds. You will not achieve that by remote emitters. Some of the effects (if not most) you can only achieve by controlling the emitters differently so that they superimpose their wave signals so that you get the beam steering. Normally also you can't transmit and receive at the same time and you also have to control receiver and emitter very precisely to work alternating. They even scramble the emitted signals, so only the right receiver (knowing the key) can decode the signal and so can't be jammmed easyly. And with beam steering of nearly 2000 pieces of 5 watt transmitters on one point you can do very precise jamming without being noticed because of very low side lobes. Beam steering, beam splitting and beam forming is the key feature of AESA I think.
@@muctop17 Thank you kindly for the elaborate (and patient) answer. I was already afraid the idea was worse than the original. If I understand what you say correctly, the computing power required of my idea would be a multitude of that required on a normal AESA array. Which - I realized later - can be switched to passive mode as it is today.
One could probably even connect multiple arrays in a flight together to listen in and triangulate the location of a single emitter without ever transmitting, provided there are enough ambient signals around. One just has to adapt the ER-modules to a specific frequency/bandwidth to the ones most common in the ether, correct?
Anyway, I really appreciate you explaining the thing. Means a lot to me as a lay/infantry by origin. Cheers!
@@Pincer88 ua-cam.com/video/7jGCEN6PiIc/v-deo.html
Here you are
Have said this before, we need more Ottis screentime!!! Ps, can have a video narrated by Ottis on April 1st?
Could an AAM with AESA be used in passive mode as an ARM?
1. @4:25 "but is still very present" - acute ?
Especially in nimble-planes like Gripen, which thus may-not be SEAD/DEAD capable?
2. What about the obsolescence of large radom-aircraft thanks to GaN radars in Gripen, F-35, Mig-35 (Zhuk)?
3. Integrated side-looking radars in Su-57.
You can have bigger radome+ GaN to end up with better performance. Also F-35 doesn't use GaN rn, it uses GaAs
Actually F35 radar is a notch AESA radar with GaAs, while the SU57 radar is flat AESA radar with GaNs on it, not 1 but 4 AESA radar on it. Quite unique isn't it.
@@heatblast876 iirc Su-57 also uses GaAs
@@radonsider9692 The current AN/APG-81 uses GaAs but the APG-85 is at least suspected to use GaN for its cooling and power benefits in tandem with the F135 core upgrade for increased cooling. If they actually managed to squeeze out more performance before switching materials that'd be something, but afaik GaN is more robust/durable and cheaper in general so I doubt they'd overlook it.
@@forzaelite1248 I thought GaN was more expensive
Dear gentleman, thank you for your interesting videos. Is it possible you produce a video describing differences between Link 11, Link 16 and Link 22 Tactical Data Links? Thank you very much indeed.
Speaking to a engineer from BAE systems at the 2023 Avalon airshow , mentioned any thing greater than 500Mhz sample rate and 16 bit depth is classified hardware has vendor export control, go figure what software defined radios the military can play with
The deflection angle of the main lobe is limited by how close the modules can be packed.
Nice video.
You looking good sir keep up the good work hoping you got rid of the dairy products
Not only is scan loss a problem, but so are side lobes. As soon as you start steering phased arrays, the side lobes get very nasty, both in their amplitude and their phase behaviour. The amount of digital processing power required to mitigate this behaviour is extremely large; other solutions typically involve analogue filters on each array element, which has negative implications for size, weight and power consumption. The solutions in the naval world work quite well because of the large size of the array, but with airborne radars the quality is quite severely impacted.
Would not AESAR be able to listen to all directions constantly and simultaneously given unlimited processing?
That would be a great advantage if combined with a powerful transmitter positioned behind the receiver.
The receiver would not need as much cooling and power while the transmitter could have a much bigger aperture and cooling surface than fits into the nose cone.
In addition to what was mentioned, AESA will always have worse sensitivity than mechanically scanned antenna of the same size. In fact, a pure digital beamforming system will always be worse than analog beamforming system in terms of achievable sensitivity. Finally, any array antenna suffers reduction in beam quality when scanning far off axis. For that reason, hybrid systems where some beamforming is done in analog domain or via mechanical steering are used for long-range RADAR applications, and will often outperform a pure digital system.
As an AESA is in fact a collection of several radars, would it be possible to place the modules distributed along the fuselage and wings instead of clustering all together?
yes, but it will only effect azimuth not the elevation, it will also enhance SNR since the antenna is larger. It is a matter of time till this will be implemented.
The Erieye AESA surveillance radar produces so much heat in operation that it has a ram scoop to collect air to cool it in flight and AFAIK it cannot be operated on the ground without supplemental cooling.
I would expect that high tech military equipment that uses AESA would have ASICs specifically made for the computations that are required.
An overview of the analysis by differential equations required for the thermal management of modern combat aircraft would be interesting.
Way beyond me, I'm afraid.
@@Millennium7HistoryTech NOT CHINA SPY I SWEAR
What is EQ and what is M in the Digital Beamforming block
The Massive MIMO in modern wireless communication has pretty much the same challenges: expensive, high power consumption and high processing complexity. A hybrid digital-analog architecture is therefore a more practical choice.
Think about this carefully: What are the possible applications for a very high performance, very high bandwidth transmitter/receiver system that has a very wide range of operating frequencies and can operate on hundreds of discrete frequencies at the same time, and which is under full digital control with very advanced, highly capable signal processors? The applications are limited only by the absolute hardware frequency and bandwidth limits and the imagination and ingenuity of the engineering team. It's SO much more than just a radar now. It's a broadband receiver, and a broadband transmitter, or more accurately, hundreds of them all working at the same time.
and the make of your tablet you're sporting throughout the video pls?
It is an old iPad.
@@Millennium7HistoryTech i mistook it for a microsoft surface..
Not related to this video, but you're my only hope to answer a question that has been bothering me for years.
What effect, if any, does ground effect have on a supersonic aircraft?
wondering if the AA10 alamo IR is effective against stealth planes?
What about cryogenically cooled signal processors?
Helping the Algorithm...!😊
i see an achilles heel to the evolution of sensors through software advancement rather than that of the hardware,. and that is, that it is likely that this approach will freeze the evolution of the hardware, because "lazy", because "bean counter", because "problem solved" mentalities. The advancement of actual hardware however, is at the core of paradigm shifts. I think a much superior strategy is to promote and insure the capability to rapidly evolve hardware itself through the use of software. the danger with "the new thinking", is that hardware dev atrophies because of the unwise reliance on software-only to advance a sensor system. we of course know that both are absolutely necessary.
Otis has left the building.... ;)
Apg 77 vs irbis e hum who do you think wins....
radar tech should shift from radio WAVE to specially charged particles. and that can be ACCELERATED particles. do note particles and wave differences is merely in the amount of energy/mass(convertible). but charged particles that are smaller than an atom could pass through atom structures, and could leave "marking" in certain pulses that can be READ by the auxillary scanner. the particle based "radar" system will be able to detect MATERIALS even buried deep inside a bunker. for example, nuclear fuels inside nuclear reactors and warheads inside a submarine 1 kilometer below the ocean surface. nobody can hide from it.
Nice overview, but you have to know that any advancement of substance comes with its own issues. These are not a disadvantage but the cost of having the advanced system.
Looking trim bud.
I don´t quite agree on the cost part. PESA radar is a really complicated device with a lot of physical modules. A AESA radar is a integrated electronic system. This means that it will ride the cost benefit scale of electronic integration and production. This is also true for power modules. Power modules also get cheaper over time, while not as fast as integration.
Also we see telecommunication arrays using the same kind of technology like for example SpaceX that us multiple arays on each satellite. And they are really not even that expensive any more. If not yet, AESA going to be cheaper than a PESA very soon, at least for a radar with on par performance..
Heat is a problem, but i figure they would do class E/F or T type transmitters eventually. For the processing, well that will be more and more efficient over time.
But this is really more of a issue that the military us hunting for more and more performance, hence increasing the power at the same time there is efficiency gains.
Working in telecom we start at class A transmitter and pretty much gone whole the way throu the alphabet. The electronics just get smaller and smaller but the total power just increased, with transmitter coax cable as thick as an arm before we swiched to having the transmitter in the antenna.
We going from a world where fighters was weapon platforms where its really more of a radar platform. The Air forces just want more and more radar power.
In telecom sector we use something called mixing to have a lower frequency digital signal work as a higher frequency one. The patch antennas used in telecom are virtually identical to that of a AESA radar (while the ground based one have considerably wider lobs). The signal is made in a base bad frequency. When we started this in the 90s we talking frequency of 1-10Mhz or so. Now its in the multiple of GHz range.
This is how most cellphones work. The nice feature of this is that it can be mixed up to any freqvency. People who are a bit older may remember back in the day when you have to buy different phones depending on what carrier you had or what country you lived in. With mixing this is gone. Every phone have a baseband then a variable freqvence mixer that can mix to pretty much any frequency. Also modern phones typically have a number of antennas not just one.
Ground station (that is what i use to work with) work very similar but the base frequency is much higher to allow for wider mixing. I have no evidence that AESA radar use this technology, but i can see no reason why they should not. Its a simple well known technology that been used on the civilian market for over 20 years and we also used it with phase shift for base stations. (modern phones probobly also have phase shift now, but it been a while since i was in the business so i´m a bit out of date).
A AESA radar also can do something (well really quite a few things) PESA can´t. But one very important thing. It can defocus the radar. This allows it to scan faster for close or high speed moving object, or just a general higher speed of scan. Something most radar system can´t do what so ever. Specially impotent for system that have 2D of scanning.
While a mechanically scanned radar would not have this problem, it need the repositioner just to scan what so ever. In the case of Gripen E its quite cleverly done on a rotating plate, making the system both simpler and more flexible.
Also a AESA can be made with wider scan lobes if you want to make it cheaper or less power intensive.
Thanks for the contribution
Man thats knowledge
Please make more content about the Eurofighter!
There will be an entire series. No worries.
@@Millennium7HistoryTech Thank you!
Thanks youtube for literally recommending this 8 times in my notification tab. I will not watch this video
Wasn't there a Russian mechanical radar which could traverse more than 200 degrees? I think the purpose was to maintain missile command while evading.
Otis os now a GTP5 TRANDUCER?
let me start by saying awesome video, and I know next to nothing about radar other than playing a little DCS, but why haven't the manufactures of these radars tought of making them like a half globe instead of flat panels, could that help the deflection issues that 7 mentioned?
Stuff over my head. However, thank you and good to see you. You have lost weight and look fitter and trimmer.
Ottimo video, come sempre. Ti lascio due pensieri:
1) Apprezzo l'idea di posizionare una barra che indichi la durata del segmento che tratta un singolo argomento, ma in un tentativo di provare a semplificarti la vita (non sono un content creator e non so se questa cosa semplifichi davvero la vita), credo che esista già una funzione in youtube per rappresentare i diversi segmenti nella barra di scorrimento del video, così puoi suddividerlo "nativamente" senza aggiungere nessun overlay. Prova a vedere se può fare al caso tuo.
2) Sai, ogni volta che ti sento parlare di AESA rimango con una domanda. Il radar (o meglio I radar) dell'Eurofighter. Ne sento parlare da sempre. CAPTOR-E, CAESAR, mk1, mk2... non si capisce niente. Ogni cinque/dieci anni sembra che parta lo sviluppo di un nuovo sensore senza mai realmente finalizzare nulla. E' solo politica? Mancanza di armonizzazione dei requisiti? Mancanza di budget? Mancanza di competenze? Ho come l'idea che sotto ci sia una bella storia da raccontare, almeno per capire come mai l'aereo che dovrebbe rappresentare la punta di diamante delle forze aeronautiche di diverse potenze europee monti ancora dei radar "del secolo scorso".
Looks like the 6th gen. M7 has been deployed!
I kind of disagree on the criticism of analog components. One of main things done with those in most cases is just moving from passband signals to baseband signals. Moving passband signals to baseband digitally is a huge waste of resources; and once signals are in baseband we can do pretty much whatever we want digitally with most existing processors. Beamforming is also fine to do analog for transmit, since it's dependent only on the geometry of the array and can therefore be assumed to be fixed.