Originally Posted by
DuckDodgers
It's good to see this going ahead bringing commonality to the F-5 community. When discussing Nemesis we must remember that it has only a single channel receiver and the limitations that come with this. Given the SWaP constraints of the F-5 along with cooling, I'd guess that the system is around 1,500W output power which, and this is total ballpark, gives a contact against a fighter size target (let's say F-15) at around 42nm. It is however better than the legacy APG-66 (A-4K, F-16A/B pre-MLU).
As for an AESA, that would be an interesting programme to work on given the power and cooling requirements! Personally, I don't see either the USN/USMC nor Tactical Air Support getting one in the next 2 years for this and other reasons. I also have an issue with the line about a cheap platform to operate; the data from the first round of CAF CAS for an all in cost per hour put the F-5 iro $16,740 versus an F1 from ATAC iro $12,259. This isn't surprising given the lowball Fallon award of $106,789,764 for 5 years and 2,500hrs per year.
Agreed, DD, about the issues regarding figment of an AESA. I do think it will happen on the COCO platforms in a few years, I just don’t believe we will see it in the short term. The current US contracts have been awarded and that money has been invested already and Europe is yet to be fought over. My personal belief is that we will potential start seeing AESA becoming widespread in the next round of CAF CAS contracts. Certainly not in Europe initially, businesses will need to shore up any capabilities there before spending again.