Italian multinational defense company Leonardo is testing the new European Common Radar System (ECRS) Mk2 technology at its World War II-era facility in the UK as part of a $2.8 billion (£2.35) upgrade program for the Eurofighter Typhoons British.
In July, the Ministry of Defense of the United Kingdom announced a $2.8 billion investment package in new capabilities for its Typhoon aircraft from the Royal Air Force (RAF)including the delivery of the latest generation ECRS Mk2 radar.
The ECRS Mk2 radar is expected to transform Eurofighter Typhoon air control by equipping the fighter aircraft with a world-leading electronic warfare capability that will allow it to simultaneously detect, identify and track multiple targets in the air and on the ground.
Radar is intended to support operations in the most challenging situationsequipping pilots with the ability to suppress enemy air defenses through high-power jamming and engage targets from outside the range of threats.
This new state-of-the-art radar system is being tested at Leonardo’s facility in Edinburg, UK.
The test facility is the size of a university classroom, enclosed with 30-foot-high metal doors and walls lined with foam spikes to ensure the accuracy of tests performed with the new radar system.
The site was built by the British engineering company Ferranti in 1943 to manufacture gun sights for the Supermarine Spitfire fighter plane, one of the iconic planes of World War II, which was used by the RAF and many allied countries against Nazi Germany.
Today, after a series of mergers in the defense sector, the plant is owned by the Italian contractor Leonardo.
The ECRS Mk2 radar for typhoons
The ECRS Mk2 is an all-new active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar to give Typhoons increased electronic warfare capabilities.
It does not share any hardware with the original Typhoon Captor radar, nor with the other AESA-equipped Captor-E variants, such as the ECRS Mk0 for Kuwait and Qatar or the ECRS Mk1 for Germany and Spain. However, the new radar will have a common man-machine interface.
In addition to the RAF Typhoon, the ECRS Mk2 will also lay the groundwork for the next generation of radars to be installed in the nose of the future fifth generation Tempest fighter.
A notable feature of this radar is that it uses a “repositioner” mounted on a single swivel joint, as opposed to the dual swashplate arrangement of the Captor-E.
As the EurAsian Times has already commented, the use of a repositioner allows the radar to be tilted to both sides, offering a much wider “observing” angle than the 90 degrees from the center line of the plane.
This can have significant tactical advantages in certain scenarios, for example if the fighter has to perform a beaming maneuver to avoid detection by an enemy fighter.
The maneuver “beaming” consists of the fighter moving 90 degrees (perpendicularly) away from the enemy pulse doppler radar, which uses a doppler shift to measure the target’s relative speed. Filters out low relative speed objects such as ground clutter and “walking fighter” that are neither moving toward nor away from the enemy radar.
This is a beneficial tactic when the radar is positioned at a higher altitude than the sending aircraft and is trying to lock onto its target in a look-down-shoot scenario where terrain clutter prevails.
In contrast, in the case of a fixed AESA radar or mechanical scanning array, performing a transmit maneuver would mean that the fighter jet would lose its radar image of the enemy it is trying to evade.
In the absence of third-party sensors transmitting this data to the transport fighter over a data link, its pilot loses sight of the tactical situation when it matters most.
And what’s worse, any radar-guided missiles fired from the fighter jet being carried won’t be able to receive mid-course updates. The kill chances of these missiles will be reduced, especially if they are initially fired at long range.
This is where a repositioner comes into play, which can orient the radar antenna to either side, providing a much larger sensor field of view, and allowing for less detectability due to improved pilot situational awareness in the event of maneuvering. beaming
Flight tests of the ECRS Mk2 on board a Eurofighter test aircraft are planned for the last quarter of 2023with a plan to realize Initial Operating Capability (IOC) by 2030.
The selected testbed, the Typhoon ZK355, is now at BAE Systems’ Wharton facility for preparation.
The ECRS Mk2 radar prototype is expected to be delivered to Wharton in late 2022, and a critical system design review for the production radar will be completed.