Skywatcher
Captain
There might be other reasons for using a heavier radar (perhaps to do with ECM purposes, electronics was never my strong suit).
PLA AEW&C, SIGINT, EW and MPA thread
- Thread starter Sczepan
- Start date
Why bother reading KANWA? By the way, military electronics are generations behind the current capacity of fabs in both countries for miniaturized electronics. If one seeker is bigger than another, it has nothing to do with fab capability to make chips with smaller micron sizes. Electronics actually take up only a small part in the size of the seeker. Guess what does. The batteries, the antenna, the transformers and condensers needed to power the emitter. The bigger the more it means the seeker pumps out more emission power. Why are the Russian stuff so big? Because they pump out a lot of power.
one area I believe was monolith circuit design and reliability.
according to world air power daily, Russian A-50U LCU was much heavier than E-3A, was the russian rely on hybrid circuit.on the other hand E-3A to save weight and power use monolith circuit.
No. Circuits, even older ones, are neglible when it comes to weight. Take the motherboard out of a computer made in the nineties and compare one that is taken from a computer now. Size of the silicon doesn't matter when there are constants like the motherboard resin, condensers, capacitors, and chip packaging.
What makes a radar heavy are the mechanical arrays and the power systems powering the radar itself. The Russian stuff is heavier because the array is simply bigger, the emitters are more powerful, and so are the associative power supplies and transformers.
according to a back issue of AI, Russia is offering imporve version,electronic more compact,article pointed out one LRU weight more than 750 lbs.,reduce to to around 200 lbs.
You can reduce weight like that only if bulky electronics belonged to the vacuum tube and solid transistor era vs. the integrated IC era. Between circuits that are monolithic vs. discreet logic, the weight benefits are minimal. A PC today weighs just as much like a PC before. The main cause of weight isn't in the circuit themselves. If you reduce the power requirements on the circuits then you won't need as much heavier power supplies. But with radars the main cause of weight on power supplies isn't the back end electronics but rather powering the array itself. That's why powerful AESAs are heavy; its all the associative things needed to supply power to the array itself.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
Interesting !
Does anyone know the background-story of both aircraft ??? I've never seen this logo on the grey machine before
... and also what's up with the disassembled one.Very interesting.
Deino