How quickly can an AESA slew its beam?

[Scott Kenny]

Like the title says.

I'm asking for this in terms of a scifi setting, but this is the most technical forum I hang out on. (In terms of having AESA lasers for the terminal point defense layer, analogous to the 20mm guns in WW2, and it matters for relative velocity for the Autonomous Kill Vehicles aka fighters)

Are we talking thousands of degrees per second? Millions?

Thanks! (and if this is more appropriate to be in a different place, please move it appropriately mods.)

 

[ayatsuji]

An electronically scanned array points its beam by rewriting the phase settings of each element. Moving from 0° to 50° off boresight takes no longer than moving 1°. Either way it's a single phase-shifter settling time, which on modern RF AESAs is on the order of a microsecond or less. In practice, the limit is usually how fast the beam-steering controller can push new settings out to thousands of elements, not the phase shifters themselves.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.17607
Although this paper does not directly address your specific question, it outlines general concepts regarding various phased-array radar configurations.
The details provided in the explanation for Fig. 2—such as the radar beam illumination time of 10 ms—might be particularly useful to you.
You might find even better information by searching for the term "radar resource management." My area of expertise is MIMO communications rather than radar, so I am not deeply familiar with the field, but I hope this proves helpful.

 

[Seragina]

It's basically the same as pulse repetition frequency (PRF) for up to 2kHz.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10280742

In this example paper it can do up to 10kHz with 4 simultaneous channels. And as you can see the steering change can be done with each pulse (for any arc angle).