The Blue Vixen was a cracking little RADAR with only 1 issue - no proper High PRF. This meant that it had inferior detection range to the Foxhunter. But Blue Vixen had Medium PRF so its performance against targets against main beam clutter was far better than Foxhunter. That trade off was OK for the subsonic SHAR as it didn't need the long range detection that a supersonic jet needs for long range missiles like AMRAAM. We looked at Blue Vixen for F3 but on grounds of cost, redesign of the computer architecture and shorter detection ranges it was rejected - the AOP and FSP for Foxhunter was the answer for AMRAAM carriage on F3.
Blue Vixen was improved again after SHAR and formed the basis of ECR-90 CAPTOR with the full compliment of PRFs. So this cracking little RADAR went on to form the basis of CAPTOR with a few lessons from Foxhunter thrown in. Much to the annoyance of Hughes that was trying to sell an improved version of APG-65 for Eurofighter, allegedly!
