Hi Orca,
You're not alone in being a big supporter of the AESA radar upgrades planned for Typhoon.
You're even less alone in having lost track on how they are progressing.
After a period during which one Eurofighter partner nation seemed eager to just put CAESAR into production, in time to be installed in T3 jets, while another wanted something a little more advanced and a little more modern, the advantages of Ferranti/GEC/Selex Edinburgh's repositioner became evident to all, and a common 'Captor E' baseline was accepted, with three different variants - one for export, one for three of the four core partner nations and another for the UK. That was the last time, in retrospect, that I felt that I really knew what was going on, or at least when EF GmbH, the partner companies, the customer air forces, Euroradar, and the Euroradar companies were all saying pretty much the same thing (or nothing, in some cases).
It soon became less clear and much less simple.
Before contracts were signed in about 2014 it was bad enough, but at least it was (just!) a matter of constantly changing what the basic export, core partner and British radars were called, and of Selex and EADS briefing slightly different things to try and highlight their particular technlogies, and to make it seem that particular things had already been decided in an effort to grab more of the eventual four nation radar programme when it did become a reality.
But after contracts were signed (when they really had to start things moving in order to have an AESA radar for Kuwait (and Qatar) things became far less clear.
At each successive trade show there was a completely different story. At one show we were told that there would be a core radar programme with three different variants, and that the UK radar 2 might even have a completely different antenna, to meet more stringent requirements, including EA. Then, at the next show it was said that there was a single common radar programme, and that any differences between versions would be trivial and limited to software, and that the basic common radar would meet everyone's requirements. Then at the next show we were back to there being two basic standards of hardware - one for export and core nations, the other for the UK and (variously) perhaps Germany, or Italy, or a Saudi retrofit.
The story was changing at least once per year.
The status of the UK Radar 2, in particular, changed with astonishing regularity "ebbing and flowing with the career of Will S********", according to one senior RAF officer. (Wonder if he's on PPrune, because I bet he's got an interesting story to tell?)
When the rest of the partners were driving hardest in the one common radar direction, it was even suggested that the UK might have a different AESA altogether, possibly one based on Bright Adder, though no-one ever seemed to agree on exactly what this elusive TDP was, and uttering the words "Bright" and "Adder" sometimes became a way for journalists to wind up unco-operative briefers, or to try to demonstrate that they knew more than they actually did (while actually proving their cluelessness!) in just the same way as using the words 'Restore' or 'Strongbow' tended to.
No-one has ever explained how a UK radar 2 would actually be funded. Even developing a different variant of an AESA Captor would seem to be an expensive undertaking, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of money in the UK Typhoon future developments pot......
Telling the Belgians that they could have Radar 2, with this in mind, seems to have been pretty bloody bold!
Thanks for your last post - I found it really educational and thought-provoking.
Last edited by Jackonicko; 26th Oct 2018 at 22:08.