THE UK Ministry of Defence has selected Racal-Thorn Defence to act as prime contractor for the radar and mission-system upgrade (MSU) on the Royal Navy's fleet of Sea King AEW Mk.2A airborne-early-warning (AEW) helicopters.
At the heart of the upgrade is the company's Searchwater 2000 radar, already selected for use on the Royal Air Force's Nimrod 2000 maritime-patrol-aircraft programme. Racal-Thorn estimates that the two contracts will be worth more than ú150 million ($237 million).
The MSU requirements include increased detection range, better performance in sea clutter, the ability to compile an "all-air-targets" picture, an improved man-machine interface (MMI) and enhanced coastal performance in coastal operations.
Racal-Thorn is offering a distinct version of the 165-175kg Searchwater 2000, which has a new high-power transmitter, receiver/exciter and MMI mated to the generic signal processor (GSP) and digital processor (DP) used in the maritime-reconnaissance variant and the AEW Sea King's existing antenna.
The Nimrod 2000 iteration teams the core GSP/DP processing chain with a Texas Instruments transmitter and antenna derived from what the company terms a "fully funded US Navy programme".
The two variants also differ in the maritime-patrol sensor having no dedicated-radar MMI in the Nimrod 2000, where data are displayed directly through the aircraft's standard mission-system workstations.
Racal was competing against GEC-Marconi Avionics, which was offering a derivative of its Blue Vixen radar, while Lockheed Martin, Hughes and Westland formed a team to offer a variant of the APG-63U radar.
Source: Flight International
