Chinese Phased-array radar on J-10B

Deino

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Can anyone with more knowledge than me help me out on how to say AESA or PESA ??

Deino
 

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Deino,

The images in you post at « Reply #234 on: Yesterday at 01:41:22 pm » are those CGI, actual A/C or a scale model?
Cheers!
 
utahbob said:
Deino,

The images in you post at « Reply #234 on: Yesterday at 01:41:22 pm » are those CGI, actual A/C or a scale model?
Cheers!

Those are photos of a 1/48 scale model from Trumpeter built by Bai Wei, a friend of mine in China.

Here's the link:
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5f6ff8c90100t105.html


Besides that: AESA or PESA ??

Deino
 

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Its hard to say. The last pic posted looks like the radar on the J-10B, and looks like a PESA at first glance. The dipoles down the centre are IFF interrogators.
 
It looks like each radiating element is irreplaceably embedded in a block of plastic. That would suggest a PESA.
 
The antenna photo does match what is seen on the J-10B very well, but I don't think you can reliably tell apart a PESA and AESA radar just by looking at the antenna. Ok, if it has tapered slot radiating elements it's probably an AESA, but other solutions are not unheard of with non-Western AESAs (EL/M-2052, Zhuk-MAE, NIIP radar for the T-50). More importantly, Tikhomirov and Phazotron have used the same external element design on both their PESAs and first-generation AESAs (apart from the helical, non-equidistant distribution on the Zhuk-MSF and Kopyo-F). Compare a stripped down Bars or Irbis antenna to the PAK-FA AESA, there is very little difference superficially (on a related note, the J-10B array looks remarkably similar to these!). Having IFF-dipoles would definitely be unusual for an AESA (the Zaslon PESA is the only ESA example I can think of), but there is in principle no reason why it couldn't be done, so that's not a reliable indicator either.
 
Trident said:
The antenna photo does match what is seen on the J-10B very well, but I don't think you can reliably tell apart a PESA and AESA radar just by looking at the antenna. Ok, if it has tapered slot radiating elements it's probably an AESA, but other solutions are not unheard of with non-Western AESAs (EL/M-2052, Zhuk-MAE, NIIP radar for the T-50). More importantly, Tikhomirov and Phazotron have used the same external element design on both their PESAs and first-generation AESAs (apart from the helical, non-equidistant distribution on the Zhuk-MSF and Kopyo-F). Compare a stripped down Bars or Irbis antenna to the PAK-FA AESA, there is very little difference superficially (on a related note, the J-10B array looks remarkably similar to these!). Having IFF-dipoles would definitely be unusual for an AESA (the Zaslon PESA is the only ESA example I can think of), but there is in principle no reason why it couldn't be done, so that's not a reliable indicator either.


Thanks a lot !

IT's always nice here to meet some-one with a technical understanding and knowing ... and the ability to explain !

Deino
 
EL/M-5052, Epaulet-A for comparison. AESA.
 

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OSA, Barsik (PESA, NIIP)
 

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To continue with the photo comparison approach, here are some typical US/European AESAs. Note how every single one of them (including the APG-63V2, CAPTOR-E and ES-05 Raven, not shown because I could not find decent images) uses the tapered slot elements which I referred to above, in the shape of a whole forest of tiny PCBs sticking out. I've never seen them on a PESA design, probably because they don't have the transmitter bandwidth to take advantage of tapered slot elements anyway.
 

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While tapered slot radiating elements may be the default approach taken by Western designers, this is by no means the only possible solution for active arrays. More to the point, they can end up looking very similar to a PESA design, so much so that you could not distinguish what kind of radar it is based only on a photograph such as the one Deino posted. Consider the Irbis (PESA) and the PAK-FA system (AESA) by NIIP, not much of a difference at all (as mentioned before, the J-10B array looks very similar to these):
 

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Slightly OT, but note how similar this Phazotron AESA concept from 2001 looks to Paul's EL/M-2052 picture, other than the colour:
 

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Hilarious that some people thought the IFF dipoles were chinese characters on those blurry shots :)

The radar on the J-10B looks exactly like the clearer picture - 8 IFF dipoles, in red. Feed at bottom is identical.
 

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KLJ-7 radar. Note red IFF dipoles. If the dipoles are the same size, you could do a quick sanity check on size, given the known size of the KLJ-7 antenna.
 

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Another picture. The paper above mentions old style brick T/R modules. So maybe J-10B radar is an older style while J-10C uses more modern tile T/R modules?
 

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That link to the article is dead so I’m including the pages

Interesting read.

It's not directly related to J-10 tho. But rather a generalized overview on architecture of AESA. One interesting thing i see in that paper is the relationship between the weight of the module vs number of channels. The paper seems to imply 1 channel TRM like say one produced by Hensoldt could actually be heavier in group than multi channel TRM's like say US and Russian "quad" brick modules.
 

Interesting article

@Deino

According to this the J-10B radar is an AESA. As a first generation AESA it’s actually very heavy, similar to APG-63(V)2 which required 600 pounds of ballast to counter the radars weight. For the J-10 this lead to the development of the DSI inlet on later series J-10B and on (saves 200kg in weight from what I’ve read). Performance suffers from the weight gain.

So this gives some very interesting insight on both what kind of radar the J-10B has but also why the B had a limited run.

J-10B has an AESA but it’s very heavy, J-10C possibly has a more modern radar the doesn’t effect performance in the same way.

This is actually almost identical to the F-15
18 aircraft got the heavy APG-63(v)2 and tasked with cruise missile defense and the APG-63(v)3 saw much more widespread use and didn’t seem to require extensive modifications.

Not sure why those radar were so heavy, not all early AESA were heavy but it seems to have been a common issue.
 

Interesting article

@Deino

According to this the J-10B radar is an AESA. As a first generation AESA it’s actually very heavy, similar to APG-63(V)2 which required 600 pounds of ballast to counter the radars weight. For the J-10 this lead to the development of the DSI inlet on later series J-10B and on (saves 200kg in weight from what I’ve read). Performance suffers from the weight gain.

So this gives some very interesting insight on both what kind of radar the J-10B has but also why the B had a limited run.

J-10B has an AESA but it’s very heavy, J-10C possibly has a more modern radar the doesn’t effect performance in the same way.

This is actually almost identical to the F-15
18 aircraft got the heavy APG-63(v)2 and tasked with cruise missile defense and the APG-63(v)3 saw much more widespread use and didn’t seem to require extensive modifications.

Not sure why those radar were so heavy, not all early AESA were heavy but it seems to have been a common issue.
From 2016, just rumour in my opinion. Some of the comments on the article are very critical.
 
Not sure why those radar were so heavy, not all early AESA were heavy but it seems to have been a common issue.

Probably because of the TRM construction which, might be conservative and use of cooling plate which are relatively thick. Also the TRM numbers. TRM alone is relatively light maybe 10 Grams but the mounting cooling plate might add some 50. 1500 TRM like one in APG-63V2 thus can weighs some 90 Kg.

And the AESA antenna can have additional structure to mount those TRM's and form the "skeleton" of the antenna Plus additional Plumbing for cooling and cabling for electrical power and data, also there might be some waveguide radar's main feed network (yeah current AESA does not have master oscillator and receiver in each TRM), things can easily pass 100-150 Kg.

That's kinda like 10-100 times heavier than conventional slotted array like APG-63V1 or APG-66.

There might even be relationship between weight of the cooling plate and maybe the TRM itself with power. Higher duty cycle TRM could be heavier than one which only need to emit, say 1-2 Watt.
 

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