Elec Tricks: Turning AESA Radars Into Broadband Comlinks

Back in October 2005, DID's Supersonic SIGINT: Will F-35, F-22 Also Play EW Role? offered in-depth coverage of the F/A-22 and F-35's advanced radars and electronics, and the potential to leverage that built-in hardware by turning these planes into electronic warfare aircraft. A September 2005 DID article, meanwhile, noted some of the key trends in military I/O as the increasing need for high-bandwidth links made itself felt. That need is biting with equal or greater force between aircraft, or between aircraft and other platforms, as the increasingly rich array of combat data available finds itself constricted by older protocols and low-bandwidth linkages.

As it turns out, the solution may have been sitting right under their noses.

Aviation Week & Space Technology reports that Northrop Grumman and L-3 Communications came up with an interesting finding while doing private research in this area: active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars can also be modified to send and receive large amounts of information at high data rates.

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