Airborne early warning and control
An airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) system is an airborne radar early warning system designed to detect aircraft, ships, vehicles, missiles and other incoming projectiles at long ranges, as well as performing command and control of the battlespace in aerial engagements by informing and directing friendly fighter and attack aircraft.
AEW&C units are also used to carry out aerial surveillance over ground and maritime targets, and frequently perform battle management command and control (BMC2).
In the case of the United States Navy, the Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye AEW&C aircraft is assigned to its supercarriers to protect them and augment their onboard command information centers (CICs).
The intention was to cover the North West approaches where German long range Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor aircraft were threatening shipping.
[12] It was also recognised that a larger land-based aircraft would be attractive, thus, under the Cadillac II program, multiple Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress bombers were also outfitted with the same radar.
Boeing produces a specific system with a "rotodome" rotating radome that incorporates Westinghouse (now Northrop Grumman) radar.
[30][31] In addition to purchases by the US Navy, the E-2 Hawkeye has been sold to the armed forces of Egypt, France, Israel, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan.
[33] The APY-9 radar has been speculated to be capable of detecting fighter-sized stealth aircraft, which are typically optimized against high frequencies like Ka, Ku, X, C and parts of the S-bands.
Historically, UHF radars had resolution and detection issues that made them ineffective for accurate targeting and fire control; Northrop Grumman and Lockheed claim that the APY-9 has solved these shortcomings in the APY-9 using advanced electronic scanning and high digital computing power via space/time adaptive processing.
[35] In May 1997, Russia and Israel agreed to jointly fulfill an order from China to develop and deliver an early warning system.
In July 2000, the US pressured Israel to back out of the $1 billion agreement to sell China four Phalcon phased-array radar systems.
This radar consists of an array of transmit/receive (T/R) modules that allow a beam to be electronically steered, making a physically rotating rotodome unnecessary.
AESA radars operate on a pseudorandom set of frequencies and also have very short scanning rates, which makes them difficult to detect and jam.
[37] In 2015, DRDO delivered 3 AWACs, called Netra, to the IAF with an advanced Indian AESA radar system fitted on the Brazilian Embraer EMB-145 air frame.
[39][40] The DRDO proposed a more advanced AWACS with a longer range and with a 360-degree coverage akin to the Phalcon system, based on the Airbus A330 airframe,[38][41] but given the costs involved there is also the possibility of converting used A320 airliners as well.
[47] In December 2006, the Pakistan Navy requested three excess P-3 Orion aircraft to be equipped with Hawkeye 2000 AEW systems.
[50][51][52] Israel has developed the IAI/Elta EL/M-2075 Phalcon system, which uses an AESA (active electronically scanned array) in lieu of a rotodome antenna.
Israel uses IAI EL/W-2085 airborne early warning and control multi-band radar system on Gulfstream G550; this platform is considered to be both more capable and less expensive to operate than the older Boeing 707-based Phalcon fleet.
The creation of Sea King ASaC7, and earlier AEW.2 and AEW.5 models, came as the consequence of lessons learnt by the Royal Navy during the 1982 Falklands War when the lack of AEW coverage for the task force was a major tactical handicap, and rendered them vulnerable to low-level attack.
The first examples were a pair of Sea King HAS2s that had the Thorn-EMI ARI 5980/3 Searchwater LAST radar attached to the fuselage on a swivel arm and protected by an inflatable dome.
[citation needed] The AgustaWestland EH-101A AEW of the Italian Navy is operated from the aircraft carriers Cavour and Giuseppe Garibaldi.
[60][61] The Crowsnest system was partially based upon the Sea King ASaC7's equipment; an unsuccessful bid by Lockheed Martin had proposed using a new multi-functional sensor for either the AW101 or another aircraft.
