Chinese Radar Developments - KLJ series and others

latenlazy

Brigadier
Yes, like fighter radars. The US, for example has a TPS-77 radar with GaN since 2018 or so, israeli ELTA has some similar GaN radar. Those are both mobile tactical air surveillance radars for the air defense network. Yet, in these years since then, no one came out with even mentioning that they're working on a GaN based fighter radar. Could it be it still requires a lot of additonal effort, on top of getting GaN to work on larger arrays? Maybe the cooling requirements are still not solved for the crowded space in fighter noses?
 

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
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Yes, like fighter radars. The US, for example has a TPS-77 radar with GaN since 2018 or so, israeli ELTA has some similar GaN radar. Those are both mobile tactical air surveillance radars for the air defense network. Yet, in these years since then, no one came out with even mentioning that they're working on a GaN based fighter radar. Could it be it still requires a lot of additonal effort, on top of getting GaN to work on larger arrays? Maybe the cooling requirements are still not solved for the crowded space in fighter noses?

AN/APG-79V4 is a GaN AESA which is a radar upgrade for *legacy* F-18 hornets, that the USMC have already ordered.

Saab also offers a GaN AESA for Gripen that they're well underway in development for.

I think the only reason why it "seems" like there aren't many recent GaN fighter radars is probably because many fighters are already in production or in advanced stages of development with GaA, and going with GaN means its own developmental path needing time and money and setting timelines back further -- I suspect many customers just want an AESA equipped fighter fast

But as we can see, some GaN fighter AESAs already exist in the west, and I wouldn't be surprised for more to emerge in the next few years as developmental cycles for projects begun in the recent past yield more radars.
I also wouldn't be surprised if the new AN/APG-85 for F-35 Block 4 is GaN.

And similarly for the PLA, I would expect radars that started development in the last 2-3 years to be GaN, including for fighters such as J-35/XY, J-20B/J-20S etc. But obviously for the PLA they're probably not going to tell us if they're GaN or not.
 
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tphuang

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AN/APG-79V4 is a GaN AESA which is a radar upgrade for *legacy* F-18 hornets, that the USMC have already ordered.

Saab also offers a GaN AESA for Gripen that they're well underway in development for.

I think the only reason why it "seems" like there aren't many recent GaN fighter radars is probably because many fighters are already in production or in advanced stages of development with GaA, and going with GaN means its own developmental path needing time and money and setting timelines back further -- I suspect many customers just want an AESA equipped fighter fast

But as we can see, some GaN fighter AESAs already exist in the west, and I wouldn't be surprised for more to emerge in the next few years as developmental cycles for projects begun in the recent past yield more radars.
I also wouldn't be surprised if the new AN/APG-85 for F-35 Block 4 is GaN.

And similarly for the PLA, I would expect radars that started development in the last 2-3 years to be GaN, including for fighters such as J-35/XY, J-20B/J-20S etc. But obviously for the PLA they're probably not going to tell us if they're GaN or not.

The production level for gan power modules are ramping up significantly in china in the couple of years. It's actually pretty inefficient for them to still be producing gaa radar.
 

by78

General
A LCQ-776 radar being deployed.

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taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
Well GaN is different when it is used in military and civilian
You can say that to anything and everything, but going by the history of technology development, vast civilian application is accompanied with military application.

It is also very wrong to believe that military application is inherently more advanced and challenging than civilian application. Military usage demands robustness and EM resistance than civilian usage. The two demands are less challenging than performance demand that civilian usage focuses on.

Robustness means for example, high G force shock. Military application is to strengthening the soldering, mounting and packing. EM resistance can be addressed in military usage by decreasing the performance in exchange of stronger signal, thicker connection both in the chip and on the PCB, and adding a radio shielding case. Very often military usage has lower performance than civilian. The military measures are different, but non of them are more demanding.

Just a hint, there are many 5G radio modules made of GaN today which works over a broad range of radio frequency in high power. Military usage is a subset of civilian usage.
 
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Viperzero

New Member
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Post in thread 'plaaf radars'
plaaf radars
Does anyone know where this came from of where to get the brochure of the Domestic airborne multi-target fire control system at 98's Zhuhai air show? I think this is the KLJ-3.
 

siegecrossbow

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Post in thread 'plaaf radars'
plaaf radars
Does anyone know where this came from of where to get the brochure of the Domestic airborne multi-target fire control system at 98's Zhuhai air show? I think this is the KLJ-3.

Don't know about the specific stats but China never fitted this radar onto the Su-27/Su-30 series.
 

Viperzero

New Member
Registered Member
Don't know about the specific stats but China never fitted this radar onto the Su-27/Su-30 series.
I think it’s actually two radars being described, the first is a version of Zhuk, the second might be an early version of the KLJ-3/Type 1473 on the J-10.
 
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