Judah14 wrote: * | March 25th, 2017, 2:48 pm |
The reason why SPY-1F is bulky for the performance it has is that it uses older technology. Newer AESA radars like the radars used in the Japanese FCS-3 system used for the ESSM missile use gallium nitride electronics technology to allow better performance from a compact system than contemporary AESA radars using gallium arsenide electronics technology.
The SPY-6 AMDR, another AESA radar, also uses gallium nitride electronics technology and a SPY-6 radar array with the same size as a SPY-1D array has superior performance to the SPY-1D.
http://breakingdefense.com/2012/10/navy ... rs-afloat/
“We’re going to be delivering over 30 times the radar capability in the same space,” Capt. Doug Small, program manager for AMDR, told Breaking Defense. That’s essential to track large numbers of incoming enemy aircraft and ballistic missiles at the same time, something current destroyers have only limited ability to do.
To run the new radar, however, Small went on, “it’s going to take roughly double the power [and] maybe a little more than double the cooling” so it doesn’t overheat. “We fit — easily might be a little overstated — but we fit within the DDG-51 footprint,” he said. The Navy is just completing a two-year study of all the modifications required.
So while Arleigh Burkes are upgraded with other new equipment all the time, AMDR cannot be affordably retrofitted to existing ships. The changes to accommodate it are so extensive that the Navy considers them a new iteration of the class, “Flight III.” The USS Murphy and the next few destroyers planned are all Flight IIAs, which have the passive SPY-1 radar as earlier Arleigh Burkes. They are distinguished by the addition of a helicopter hanger. The Navy plans to start building the AMDR-equipped Flight IIIs in FY 2016.
The weight and volume does not go away. You can't fight physics.