Eurofighter Typhoon's New AESA Radar Starts System Integration.

The new AESA radar for the Eurofighter Typhoon is entering the system integration phase. During a 4-national program review at Cassidian's Ulm site the test and integration results of the "Captor-E" Antenna subsystem were successfully presented to the representatives of the 4 Eurofighter core nations UK, Italy, Spain and Germany.

The test results achieved during the campaign were fully in line with the theoretical design and comply with the internationally agreed system specification by the four nations. The achieved results demonstrate the state-of-the-art performance and the high production standard of the Captor-E AESA antenna, the Repositioner and the corresponding Antenna Power Supply and Control Unit.

In a next step, the antenna sub-system will go to Selex Edinburgh for integration and test with receiver and processor. Final integration of the Captor-E radar into the industrial production aircraft (IPA5) is planned in springtime 2014.

The new radar for Eurofighter Typhoon named "Captor-E" ('E' for electronic scan) is able to fulfil several tasks simultaneously. The radar beam is scanning electronically which makes the radar extremely versatile. Contrary to conventional radars the emitting power is generated not in one central emitter but by several thousand transmit- and receive modules. Cassidian capitalizes on the biggest production line of these transmit/teceive modules in Europe.

The radar as a whole is being developed by the Euroradar consortium comprising Cassidian, Selex ES (UK and Italy) and Indra (Spain). The consortium already has developed and produced more than 400 mechanically scanning "Captor" Radars.