Toward common radar & EW multifunction active arrays

Military Air platforms are fitted with Fire Control or Surveillance Radars, usually operating in X-band, Electronic Warfare Systems (EWS), and some radio links. Each of these systems is dedicated to a particular task and the cooperation is reduced to a minimal exchange of information between them mainly for avoiding mutual disturbances. Major system performance enhancements are to be expected thanks to close co-operations of one sensor to each others and thanks to the sharing of resources, especially in the field of multifunction AESA antenna sharing. The future co-operations can be ordered in four levels. The levels one to three lead progressively to a multi-functions sensor. The last one is the deployment, on a single or multiple platforms, of compact multi-functions sensors on a network basis. Another area of co-operation is the realization of R.F. functions such as “ad-hoc” communication functions using the Radar or the EWS multifunction R.F. and antennas.