New Radars Are Giving Old Air Force F-16s Capabilities Like Never Before
The Scalable Agile Beam Radar is now flying inside 72 Air National Guard F-16s and is already set to go into hundreds more Vipers.
BY
JOSEPH TREVITHICK, TYLER ROGOWAY
JUL 15, 2022 2:26 PM
TYLER ROGOWAY
Last month, the U.S. Air Force and Northrop Grumman announced the completion of an important modernization effort that saw 72 Air National Guard Block 30 F-16C Viper fighter jets get powerful new AN/APG-83 active electronically scanned array radars. Hundreds more Air Force F-16s and other Vipers around the world are now in line to get the same radars, which are also known as Scalable Agile Beam Radars or SABRs. The War Zone subsequently had the chance to talk with Northrop Grumman's Mark Rossi, the company's director of SABR programs, about this milestone, what these radars can do, and what the future might hold for this scalable and readily upgradable sensor.
Northrop Grumman first began the development of the AN/APG-83 more than a decade ago specifically with the F-16 in mind. The company had previously integrated another AESA radar, the AN/APG-80, onto F-16E/F variants for the United Arab Emirates (UAE). When developing SABR, it leveraged its previous work on the advanced AN/APG-77 and AN/APG-81 radars for the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter stealth fighters, respectively, when designing the SABR. The AN/APG-83's software code is around 95% "block common" with the code that runs the AN/APG-77, Northrop Grumman's Rossi told The War Zone in his interview with us on June 29.
"It’s the closest thing an F-16 can get to F-35 performance within the limitations of the jet,” Rossi added.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/new-radars-are-giving-old-air-force-f-16s-capabilities-like-never-before
