Forum: Technology

With AESA tech. is it really necessary to have a Radome? Couldn't you distribute emitters all over the surface of the plane, or small clusters of emitters? I guess for maintenance reasons it makes more sense to have it all in one place. Maybe the reasoning is, "we've always done it this way". I can see benefits to having multiple arrays, namely a more spherical view of the airspace. Anyway, this was just a weird thought that popped into my head. Question

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Maybe the math gets weird when you're combining info from sensors placed every-which-a-way on the airframe. Don't forget the F-22 is planning to have those cheek arrays at some point. A small cluster in the tail would make sense to me, though only the Russians have actually given half a try as far as I know.

Doesn't the B-2 carry a pair of radars instead of just one? If so, then apparently it's doable in principle.

I had thought of utilizing just such a design in my own fictional 5th gen fighter. I thought of putting a pair of AESA with overlapping fields of view in the wing leading edges in order to allow the canopy to be much closer to the front of the plane (promoting better visibility). I eventually decided to go back to the more conventional "radar in nose" approach because I didn't know if a pair of AESA would be practical, design-wise or cost-wise, in a fighter jet.

Thanks to this website, I have to keep redesigning my plane because I keep learning new things on here...

With nothin' in the nose and everything disbursed around the airframe, I suppose the "radome" gets changed to "nose cone". Regardless, ya still need a pointy end for aerodynamics.

Forum: Technology

AESA and the Radome