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23 Mar 15. China’s KJ-500 AEW&C platform ‘enters service.’ Images from Chinese military issue websites indicate the Kongjing 500 (KJ-500) airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft has started to enter service with the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). While images of the KJ-500 in the PLAAF paint scheme first appeared in late 2014, the first image of one with an official serial number (30471), confirming its service entry, did not appear until 18 March. First seen in early 2013, the KJ-500 is based on the Shaanxi Aircraft Corporation (SAC) Y-9 four-turboprop transport combined with a fixed phased-array radar developed by the Nanjing Research Institute of Electronic Technology (NRIET, or 14th Institute). Chinese internet sources suggest that while the KJ-500 is smaller in size, electronic advances enable its radar to be as capable as NRIET’s fixed array for the KJ-2000 AEW&C system that is fitted to an Ilyushin Il-76 platform. In January 2013 Chinese television reported this radar could track 60 to 100 targets simultaneously out to 470 km. The KJ-500 radar’s three arrays are apparently the same size and contained in a saucer-shaped dome with an apparent satellite communications antenna in the middle. Other imagery indicates SAC considered but rejected a teardrop-shaped dome that would have allowed for larger side-looking arrays. The KJ-500 also features two passive electronic intelligence arrays. The KJ-500 apparently will succeed production of the KJ-200 AEW&C system, which uses a linear phased-array radar that is strikingly similar to the Saab Erieye radar but that allows only for a 240° field of view. (Source: IHS Jane’s)
23 Mar 15. In a special February ceremony on Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean – more than 2,100 nautical miles southwest of Honolulu – the U.S. Air Force and Lockheed Martin broke ground at the future six-acre site of the new Space Fence radar system. The event marks the official start of construction for the S-band ground-based radar system, designed to replace the 1960s Air Force Space Surveillance System to improve the way objects are tracked in orbit and increase our ability to predict and prevent space-based collisions.
“The number of small satellites and satellite operators around the world is skyrocketing, rapidly crowding an environment already congested by the more than 17,000 pieces of space debris that we are able to track today,” said Steve Bruce, vice president for Advanced Systems at Lockheed Martin’s Mission Systems and Training business. “By comparison, when it comes online in 2018, Space Fence will enable the Air Force to locate and track hundreds of thousands of objects orbiting Earth with more precision than ever before to help reduce the potential for collisions with our critical space-based infrastructure.”
In addition to the radar arrays, the Kwajalein installation will include an on-site operations center and an annex to the current island power plant that will ensure the Space Fence system has everything necessary to provide continuous space situational awareness. Lockheed Martin won the $915m contract in June of 2014 to engineer, manufacture and deploy the Space Fence radar system. The total contract value is estimated at greater than $1.5bn over an eight-year period of performance if all options are exercised. The Lockheed Martin-led team – which includes AMEC Foster Wheeler and General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies – has decades of collective experience in space-related programs, including sensors, mission processing, cataloging, orbital mechanics, net-centric communications and facilities.
23 Mar 15. New US Carrier Radar Enters the Picture. A move to develop a new family of sensors to replace aging air search radars on major US Navy ships has merged with the need for a lower-cost system on future aircraf