KFX's AESA Radar Achieve 50% Progress

Hanwha System KF-X AESA Radar Update

Defense journalist Yu Young-won was granted exclusive interview with Hong Yoon-seong, the lead Hanwha Systems developer in charge of the AESA radar being developed for the KF-X project.

The following is the summary:

- Development is going smooth and on schedule. Mr. Hong says that they're currently at around "50%" progress.

- There was a lot of risk involved with indigenous radar development and so they worked with the Agency for Defense Development (ADD) and Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) to mitigate it

One way was to prove that they can attain level of technology required for complete development, and they did so by creating a prototype for the hardware (HW) aspect of the development. Once the hardware was confirmed to work, they would proceed with the rest of the system by each stage, which includes software (SW) development..

Hardware Authentication 2016-2019

Hanwha Systems developed radar antenna and power supply, which were then integrated and tested with ELTA Systems signal processor. This was to test the feasibility of using indigenously developed HW for aircraft use.

By November 2019, 10 overseas and 6 domestic aerial testing sorties had been carried out. These tests proved that the HW works as intended and that development can continue to the next stage.

- While exact data is classified, KF-X AESA radar's Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mode provides high-quality image up to an object smaller than 1 meter.

- KF-X AESA radar can detect and track hundreds of ground targets, and this capability can be applied to hunting down North Korea's transporter erector launchers (TEL).

(The radar has air-to-air, air-to-ground, and air-to-sea modes, which can be used simultaneously)

- Prototype KF-X AESA radar had around 1,088 Transmitter-Receiver Module (TRM). By 2023, the number is expected to increase by 20% to have around 1,200~1,300 modules. (F-22's radar has 2,000 and F-35's radar has 1,200)

- KF-X AESA radar is expected to perform better than AN/APG-83 being installed on KF-16V.

- Maximum detection range is said to be around 200 km (unknown against which-sized target)

- Flight testing done in Israel was said to be highly satisfactory