Raytheon to supply new AN/APG-79(V)4 AESA airborne radar systems for Marine Corps F/A-18C/D combat jet

 

F/A-18C/D 

Radar experts at Raytheon Technologies Corp. will provide the U.S. Marine Corps with 16 AN/APG-79(V)4 active electronically scanned array (AESA) airborne radar systems under terms of a $53.4

million contract announced last week.

Officials of the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., are asking the Raytheon Intelligence & Space segment in El Segundo, Calif., for replacement AESA radar systems for the Marine Corps F/A-18C/D Hornet carrier-based jet fighter-bomber.

The AN/APG-79(V)4 is a scaled version of the AN/APG-79 AESA radar for the U.S. Navy Boeing F/A-18E/F fighter-bomber and EA-18G Growler carrier-based electronic warfare jet. It provides aircrew situational awareness, near-instantaneous track updates, and multi-target tracking capability.

The order includes software, obsolescence management, engineering support, and technical, financial, and administrative data necessary for retrofit integration into the Marine Corps F/A-18C/D aircraft.

AN/APG-79(V)4 radar is 90 percent compatible with the larger AN/APG-79 radar, and is designed to fit into the F/A-18C/D combat jet as part of a modernization program. It provides extended detection range, simultaneous air-to-air and air-to-ground mode capabilities, high resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mapping, and high reliability.

The APG-79 radar has an open-systems architecture and rugged commercial-off-the-shelf (R-COTS) parts. Its array has solid-state transmit and receive modules for enhanced reliability, as well as an advanced receiver/exciter, ruggedized R-COTS processor, and power supplies.

The APG-79 AESA radar uses transmit/receive (TR) modules populated with gallium arsenide (GaAs) monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs). Presumable these are some of the electronic modules that Boeing experts will modify with updated electronics to mitigate obsolescence issues.

The radar's active electronic beam scanning helps steer the radar beam at nearly the speed of light to optimize situational awareness and air-to-air and air-to-surface capability, Raytheon officials say. The agile beam enables the multimode radar to interleave in near-real time, so that pilot and crew can use both modes simultaneously.

The first flight of a C/D Hornet fitted with this AESA radar was in January 2015, and the Marine Corps chose the AN/APG-79(V)4 radar in January 2019 to upgrade its legacy F/A-18C/D aircraft fleet. The radar enables the Hornet jet to fire several missiles at once and guide them to different targets that are widely spaced in azimuth, elevation, or range.

On this order Raytheon will do the work in Forest, Miss.; El Segundo, Calif.; Andover, Mass.; and Dallas, and should be finished by June 2022.