Active Phased Array Radar

Active phased array radar (APAR) is a shipborne multifunction 3D radar (MFR) developed and manufactured by Thales Nederland. During the tracking and missile-firing tests, target profiles were provided by Greek-built EADS/3Sigma Iris PVK medium-range subsonic target drones. According to the RNLN, ... 'APAR immediately acquired the missile and maintained track until destruction'. These ground-breaking tests represented the world's first live verification of the ICWI technique.BAE Systems have also claimed that Sampson eliminates the need for several separate systems. They suggest that on the Type 45 destroyer, the Alenia Marconi Systems/Signaal S1850M long-range 3D radar that is designed to work in partnership with Sampson 'really is superfluous and is not needed to perform the mission of the ship'. BAE Systems believes that the reason the large volume search radar has been incorporated into PAAMS is 'more of a historic nature, associated with work sharing issues' that were a huge problem during the trilateral Project Horizon. Some tasks are difficult to combine, for example (long range) volume search takes a lot of radar resources, leaving little room for other tasks such as targeting. Combining volume search with other tasks also results either in slow search rates or in low overall quality per task. Driving parameters in radar performance is time-on-target or observation time per beam. This is perhaps a the key reason why the Royal Navy selected the S1850M Long Range Radar to complement Sampson on the Type 45 destroyers. It is also a reason why NATO in its NATO Anti-Air Warfare System study (NAAWS) defined the preferred AAW system as consisting of a complementary Volume Search Radar and MFR. This - as NATO points out - gives the added advantage that the two systems can use two different radar frequencies; one being a good choice for long range search, the other a good choice for an MFR (which is especially nice as physics makes both tasks difficult to combine). reported great success using tailored surface-search software for the APAR sets fitted to the De Zeven Provinciën-class frigates deployed on anti-piracy roles. By sacrificing some of APAR's high-end anti-air warfare capabilities, which were deemed unnecessary for the anti-piracy role, its performance and resolution were improved in the surface-search role. Active phased array radar (APAR) is a shipborne multifunction 3D radar (MFR) developed and manufactured by Thales Nederland. APAR has four fixed (i.e., non-rotating) sensor arrays (faces), fixed on a pyramidal structure. Each face consists of 3424 transmit/receive (TR) modules operating at X band frequencies.