AESA upgrade battle heats up for F/A-18 Hornets

APG-79(V)X radar - photo Raytheon

19.01.2015 By Stephen Trimble - FG

Washington DC - A new competition has emerged to upgrade the radars for potentially hundreds of the original Boeing F/A-18 Hornet fighters operated by US and foreign militaries.

Northrop Grumman and Raytheon have confirmed plans to offer tailored versions of each company’s active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars for so-called “legacy” F/A-18 Hornets, including A, B, C, D models.

Raytheon recently performed a flight test of the APG-79(V)X radar, a system scaled down from the APG-79 installed on the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.

“I was sitting in the testbed myself and watching it real time it felt like watching the APG-79 I saw in the fleet,” says Michael “Ponch” Garcia, a Raytheon business development director and former US Navy F/A-18E/F pilot and instructor.

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