EXCLUSIVE: India’s LCA AESA Radar Programme Detailed


The images above, seen here for the first time, are from official material on the Indian AESA radar project for the LCA Tejas, shared with LiveFist. Indian state-owned radar developer Electronics R&D Establishment (LRDE) is in the process of identifying a development partner (DP) for an indigenous AESA radar for future tranches of the Tejas and the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) and is likely to make a final decision shortly. The radar has begun development in the country. According to official updated material made available to LiveFist, the fully solid-state X-band radar is being developed with the following modes:

Air-to-Air: Multi-target detection and tracking / Multi target ACM (Air-to-Air combat mode) / High resolution raid assessment

Air-to-Ground: High Resolution mapping (SAR mode) / AGR – Air to Ground Ranging / RBM – Real Beam Mapping / DBS – Doppler Beam Sharpening / Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI) / Ground Moving Target Tracking (GMTT) / Terrain Avoidance (TA)

Air-to-Sea: Sea search and multi target tracking / Range Signature (RS) / Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR)

As I’ve reported here before, the development partner that LRDE identifies will be responsible for “detailed design, development and realisation” of (a) antenna panel constisting of main antenna, guard antenna and sidelobe cancellation antenna, (b) transmit/receive modules/groups, (c) RF distribution network consisting of RF manifold/combiners, RF interface, (d) antenna/beam control chain consisting of T/R control and T/R group control, and (e) array calibration/BITE among other areas.

20 thoughts on “EXCLUSIVE: India’s LCA AESA Radar Programme Detailed”

  1. Nice, thanks Shiv.

    Have they shortlisted the contenders yet? Based on the RFI, it looks like they want the partner to develop the antenna, while LRDE will do the signal processing software. Is that right? What is the state of the project currently? Is it at defining phase still?

    BTW, I hope you respond to the comments. You never respond to any comment on your blogs. is there any reason why?

  2. SURELY !!!!!!!!! I CAN SAY TEJAS WILL FLY ABOUT 2014 , THATS FOR SURE , AFTERR SEEING THE PACE OF WORK BY DRDO , ON MANY STUFFS LIKE – AESA (WHICH WILL TAKE THEM MANY YEARS) , ENGINE

  3. Is there always so much space left in the nose cone? You'd think there would be a more efficient way to cram everything. Wondering?

  4. the terminator

    As usual with Indian Defence establishments, they come up with ideas that are found in foreign defence brochures. They call for RFI and joint collobration partners and mull on it for a few years without doing any real R&D on their own.

    Why can't they kick start the AESA project on their own and only call for partners when they need expertise and consultation which is not readily available in the country?

    At the rate the AESA is being evolved, it might be another decade that we see a workable radar and by that time period the west would have come up with another more advanced cutting edge radar.

    Have we got to be followers always?

  5. The process of identifying a partner, detailed design, development can take over a decade for a technology as complex as AESA. I hope they get a partner who already has the AESA tech/product which can be adapted to LCA and called a 'joint development'.

  6. It seems that LRDE is looking for outsourcing the development of the radar while they sit back and eat their tiffin. Good for them.

  7. We can not make an AESA without foreign help ?
    Call all IIT students, call all ENGINEERS, call whatever required. Why not like US, we start some student competition to explore talent and ideas in INDIA ?

  8. guys dont you think the navy needs a carrier based trainer like the T-45 Goshawk for the future pilots since the future carriers from IAC 2 will be using catapault or EMALS .

  9. The god news is that lca got ioc but the bad news is that israel bars aesa radars to india under us pressure acording to flight global news again the lca radar programme has come to scratch hope we will see lca be rolled out in 2025

  10. LRDE must get its own radar and not beg or borrow technology from Elta or other countries.

    I want the ban to intensify and push us to the corner to realize this spoon feeding habbit our institutions have become.

    Jee.. we have tremendous talent and money, and it is all wasted into bad management and handling of right resources.

    The horse has to drink the water, the more private partnership happens the better our back bone becomes.

  11. The AESA we produce should be state of art and FOURTH GENERATION. the AESA by France is still under trials on the Rafale for Navy. We definitely need a global partner, to support us in Joint Development of a basic AESA and then we can leap frog in technology.

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