Worked on Gallium Nitride for solid state laser as an intern under a prof. Pain in the ass to etch.
J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread V
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Worked on Gallium Nitride for solid state laser as an intern under a prof. Pain in the ass to etch.
SinoSoldier
Colonel
"Yellow Peril":
GaN AESAs are an emerging technology but are being fielded. F-35's APG-81 uses GaN, the Burke III's AMDR will also use GaN. Some other AESAs also use GaN technology. I think the Patriot missile system's new radar will be the first system to field a GaN based AESA in a major operational manner.
China probably isn't too far behind the curve, for instance as I posted in the radar thread there is at least one major company (institute) offering GaN products related to radar applications.
From what few Chinese research articles I've managed to find and combined with the occasional indicators (such as the 13th institute/CETC brochures in the radar thread) that we get, I'd say the Chinese semiconductor and radar industry are probably in the late stages of research and development of the wide radar applications for GaN technology, and have probably produced a few examples of certain radar types with GaN and begun testing them.
Assuming that J-20's radar is nearing the latter stage of its development cycle, it is potentially conceivable that it could use GaN rather than older GaA... but it's possible that it's also GaA. It depends on when the J-20's radar began development and how far along GaN R&D was at the time.
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antiterror13
Brigadier
well, GaN and GaA would perform similarly. The only difference is the cost, GaA is much more expensive than GaN
Brumby
Major
Do you have a reference source that APG-81 is GaN based? AMDR is still under development and Patriot is ready to field but they are not aerial based platforms. The problem I understand with GaN is that thermal management is much more challenging unlike with GaA. To my knowledge no one (incl the US) has a ready GaN based aerial AESA available for deployment.
Hmm actually that's a mistake on my part -- APG-81 doesn't seem to be GaN, or at least it doesn't seem like there's any open sources clearly specifying whether it's GaN or GaA. Over on CDF there's been a long intermittent discussion where a person has mentioned F-35 as having a GaN radar as if it were fact and I must've gotten it mixed up.
Doing a bit of quick search it seems like the only airborne GaN AESA in publicized advanced stages of development is a Saab project.
So it could be quite likely that airborne GaN AESAs are still a number of years away.
that said, the NGJ pod will use GaN AESAs, so technically it does fit the bill even if the array itself doesn't fill traditional radar roles.
Not exactly -- the big difference is that GaN can sustain much higher peak powers than GaA
Very interesting, it seems like all of these photos are new but all of these photos were taken when 2016 and 2017 still had mock up EO IRSTs rather than functional ones that we've been seeing for the last few weeks.
So these are probably releases of photos deliberately kept for the occasion.
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