Chinese AESA development
- Thread starter Maggern
- Start date
I actually need more corroboration of that figure. It seems unreasonable for Chinese AESA to be of the same generation as American AESA, especially since the Chinese AESA in the J-11B is considered first-generation. But afaik it's vs 0 dBsm, detection range with tracking being half that number. Others suggest it's closer to 500 km. Considering the generation difference in AESA, it's reasonable, unless you want to be one of those PakDef folks arguing that Chinese AESA is now better than American AESA.
Why? America's technology advantage isn't guaranteed to last in perpetuity, China isn't particularly deficient in electronics, and you're talking about a comparison with a radar that's now over twenty years old.
Quickie
Colonel
The type and performance of the TR modules is good place to start. The max output power of an AESA radar of a certain size is a very much in direct correlation to the performance of the type of TR modules that is used.
Do we have official confirmation that they started putting AESAs on J-11Bs?
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Inst you haven't got rid of your bias when it come to China progress in electronic. Instead do your homework and google the net Here is to start mind you this is old from 2010 But even then China already exceed Russia when it come to T/R module. Imagine now in 2017 with astronomical investment in semi conductor etc
It is a long article but here is the passaged
2) Chinese Defence Products Today: State-of-the Art
Chinese defence products were once thought of as being moderately capable copies of previous-generation hardware that contained attributes of Russian, European and Israeli designs. Some of those bloodlines can still be seen in their designs, but the products now being seen at an expo like CIDEX show that Chinese firms have capabilities that approach first world industrial, state-of-the-art levels of sophistication.
In the 1990s, when the Russian defence was in danger of drying up and closing its doors due to an almost complete collapse in any funding from their own government, it was China that saved the day. China bought billions in military hardware from Russia, but it also sent its engineers, designers and technicians to study inside of Russian industry to learn how the weapons it was purchasing had been developed in the first place.
This transfer of technological know-how, plus some enormous investments by the Chinese military into its state-owned industries (what more than one Russian has referred to as “uncontrolled and rampant modernisation”) has produced a defence electronics industry that far outstrips the size and capacity of that which existed in Russia when Chinese industry first began their cooperation with Moscow in the early 1990s.
Today the former students (the Chinese) have become the masters. Chinese industry now has the ability to produce components that the Russian electronics industry (after almost two decades of no investment by their government) is no longer capable of either designing or manufacturing. The initial failure rates on the production of transmit/receive (T/R) modules for the Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars being designed for the Mikoyan MiG-35 and the Sukhoi T-50/PAK-FA 5th-generation fighter, for example, were so high that it would have bankrupted any western firm involved in a similar programme.
Not surprisingly, this year’s CIDEX show saw groups of Russian specialists going through the halls and looking for components that they could source out of China to be utilised in Russian-designed weapon systems. Russian specialists will point out that they are now at a huge disadvantage to the Chinese in two very significant respects.
One is that the commitment by the central government in resources to the defence electronics sector is both sustained and serious. “They can take a field where there is nothing but flat land and wild grass,” said one Russian company representative, “and the next thing you know there is a full-blown factory or design centre there turning out a world-class product.”
Chinese firms are now producing components that far surpass that of the Russian firms they learned their skills from in the early 1990s.
The other advantage to China is the unfortunate reality of actuarial tables. Younger scientists and engineers who are needed in Russia to form the next-generation of weapons designers are leaving the nation in droves. A few years ago the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) estimated that 70,000 scientists and specialists from Russian defence institutes and military-industrial complex enterprises had left the country.
A documentary on the subject produced by Moscow’s NTV stated “the nuclear physicists, experts in electronic equipment, virologists and biotechnologists did not leave Russia empty-handed. They took secrets with them and presented their former foes with the weapons they had themselves developed.”
The documentary went on to claim “according to CIA data, in the first half of the 1990s thousands of Soviet specialists in the field of nuclear and missile technology left for the Middle East. They worked there in violation of the treaty on non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the MTCR. From the Arzamas-16 centre several people went to work in Iraq. Russian scientists worked in Iran and Libya. Forty nuclear scientists immigrated to Israel. Thousands of Russian specialists in the field of nuclear and missile technologies developed programmes to improve armaments in China. Our scientists are willing to work anywhere they are paid.”
The consequence is that whereas the age of the average defence industrial scientist or engineer in China is about 30 and around 40 in the US – it is 50 years or more in Russia. China’s industry is growing and advancing, while Russia’s will effectively be dying off before too long.
that's a comparison between china and russia. I think it's quite reasonable to deduce that China has surpassed Russia in AESA radar by this point. In terms of what the radar is capable of however, we have to look at more than just the range of radar is xyz. What does that mean? In what conditions and what altitude and what sized target. Realistically, even if they can spot stealth fighter within 70 km when getting jammed and such, it would be quite impressive and allow them to use advanced AAM at an effective range.
I don't believe there is a widely accepted definition for aesa radar generations.
When Northrop talks about their 4th gen AESA does it mean they had 3 big leaps in performance like when we talk about fighters. I think it could just as well be their marketing term for consecutive iterations of their product. Think intel's prosessors over the last couple of years. They have marketed each year's new chips as a new generation even if the performance increase has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
Now how do generations between different companies rack up? Does a second generation AESA from Leonardo correspond to a 2nd generation NG radar? Again, there is a lack of commonly accepted criteria, at least that I know of. Maybe since other companies are playing catch up they could have increased their performance more per generation than the pioneers, or had different technological breakthroughs alltogether, invalidating the logic that gen 4 of company A must be better than gen 2 of company B.
No matter what the tech level used the physics doesn't change. Detection range scales iirc roughly linearly with antenna diameter, but only with the fourth root of transmit power. So even if the F-22 will soon get GaN tr-modules, the much bigger nosed J-11/16 with a competitive aesa would have a head start. Lets not forget this and be fixated on what are essentially IMO marketing terms.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
You also need to consider that radar size matters.
Both the Su27/J11 and J10 have much bigger noses capable of holding a bigger radar with more TR modules than American fighters of a similar weight range.
Even if we accept your assuming of American AESA technology being more advanced, Chinese AESA radars can still have greater range owing to having more modules.
SamuraiBlue
Captain
For ASEA?
I don't think so. Basically ASEA is conformed with many miniature radar antennas to create one big one.
They usually act separately scanning the field independently, that is why they do not require any mechanical moving parts. What it does is scan the field in a overlapping pattern so to cross check for faint signals that would have been considered as a false positive and discarded in conventional radars. It does not boost overall range just picks up more faint signals that may have been overlooked. Range can be boosted more easily with the amount of power output from the antennas but this results in another problem, heat disorder. That is why they are going for GaN chips so to reduce energy requirements.