ST.PETERSBURG. May 29 (Interfax-AVN) - The Aerospace Equipment corporation is designing a radar for the fifth- generation fighter, the corporation's press service said on Thursday.
"Research institutes and plants of the corporation are working to create the Panda on-board radar, which is a crucial step towards creating an airborne radar for new-generation planes," a press service official told Interfax-Military News Agency.
A new stage of Panda's tests has been completed recently, the official said.
"Positive experience obtained through upgrading N-001 on- board radars to N001-VE radars for the SU-30MKK fighter in the framework of a Chinese contract allowed us to launch new modernization stages, these being creation of multifunctional radars codenamed Panda," he said.
According to the official, tough requirements for weight, size and energy consumption were set for the radar during the passed modernization stages. The radar's total weight was not allowed to not grow by more than 20kg, and minimal energy consumption was supposed to remain the same. A slight increase in weight was compensated by the modernized design of the SILS-27 windshield indication system worked out and mass produced by the corporation's enterprises led by the Elektroavtomatika design bureau.
Addition of the Baget signal processor and a new linear receiver into the multi-station computer network rendered the plane map-making capability.
Experts say that Russia is unlikely to create a mass- produced fifth-generation radar before 2010 or 2012 even if R&D is funded on a sufficient level. Only modernized radars of Generation 4+ and Generation 4++ can bridge this gap.
"These on-board radars already have tactical and combat specifications increased by 40 to 50 percent. They allow the fighter to fire at several targets at once and to fire at ground and aerial targets simultaneously," the press service said.
The Tikhomirov instrument engineering R&D institute, the Ryazan state-owned instrumentation plant, and other enterprises of the corporation are working to introduce fifth-generation radar elements into fourth-generation airborne radars, which will help reduce the term and expenses on R&D related to creating new competitive on-board radars.
Aerokosmicheskoye Oborudovaniye has created a special fund for this purpose. Target allocations in 2000-2002 allowed the corporation to come up with a series of new assets for on-board equipment of SU-27, SU-30 Flanker, and MIG-29 Fulcrum fighters, MIG-AT and YAK-130 combat trainers, and the KA-52 Alligator helicopter gunship. The corporation spent USD95m on R&D and production facilities upgrade over this period.