Message posted by Smythers (Member since 01/10/2010) on March 12, 2023 at 7:32:00 PST:
Plenty of evidence out there, especially if you match names to patents and see where their internal company promotions took them to. Snippet below, rest at link. LOBSTAR is a five-year $12 million effort that is a major scale-up of research activity, starting with the ground test in September of the array produced under the S-CLAS programme. A flight test is scheduled for 2008 using Northrop’s BAC One-Eleven testbed aircraft, potentially against real ground targets. The low-band array is focused on detecting and tracking slow-moving targets hidden under foliage, which is not possible using conventional ground moving-target indicator (GMTI) radars. The sensor also can be used for air-to-air tracking. While LOBSTAR will continue to evolve over the next decade, the more recent X-Band programme has been put on the fast track. In April 2004, the AFRL sensors directorate awarded contracts to Raytheon and Northrop to compete for a new development programme called X-Band thin radar aperture (XTRA), which is focused on producing a synthetic-aperture radar and GMTI sensor for tactical aircraft. The AFRL downselected to the Raytheon proposal in December 2004. XTRA is another conformal, load-bearing antenna structure that would become part of SensorCraft, but there may be more immediate applications. Perdzock says XTRA “represents more of a transition opportunity”, compared with LOBSTAR, for interim upgrades J-UCAS and manned fighters for which a conventional SAR and GMTI sensors are deemed impractical. These could have access to the new technology after 2012, he says.
In Reply to: Conformal Load Bearing Antenna Programs posted by Smythers on March 12, 2023 at 5:53:24 PST:
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