Uttam AESA Radar

Uttam is a solid-state gallium arsenide (GaAs) based active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar under development by the Electronics and Radar Development Establishment (LRDE), a laboratory of the Indian Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). It is a low probability of intercept radar. It is a liquid cooled AESA radar featuring quad band modules that can be stacked to form a larger unit. This allows the manufacturer to scale the radar to be used in larger aircraft.

Development
The radar development began in 2012 and its full-scale model was displayed at the 2017 Aero India air show and aviation exhibition. A fully functional active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar prototype was unveiled at Aero India 2019, the prototype was mounted inside the glass nose of a HAL Tejas prototype.

Hindustan Aeronautics Limited is the lead integrator and Bharat Electronics is major supplier of subsystems. As per Project director D Seshagiri of Electronics and Radar Development Establishment (LRDE), Uttam AESA radar is 95% indigenous, with only one imported subsystem. The National Flight Testing Centre had evaluated the radar and cleared it after performance tests. The integration problem of Astra BVRAAM due to older generation of radars will also be solved by Uttam.

During Aero India 2021, there was a licensing agreements for technology transfer from DRDO to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited for manufacturing and integration of the Uttam in the Mark 1A variant of the HAL Tejas.

An advanced version of the Uttam radar, called the Virupaaksha radar will be developed to be used on board Sukhoi Su-30MKI after Super Sukhoi upgrade.

Testing
As of 2021, three units were in various phases of testing. The Uttam radar has completed 230 hours of airborne testing onboard two Tejas fighter jets (LSP2 and LSP3) and on an executive jet; presumed to be DRDO's Dornier 228 "Nabhratna" used as a flying test bed by LRDE. Once fully validated and certified, it is planned is to introduce the radar in later batches of Tejas Mark 1A aircraft. The Uttam radar will be used with DRDO's Unified Electronic Warfare suite. Indian Air Force Test Pilot School would start final demonstration trial of Uttam AESA radar from December 2021 and if successful will be sent for serial production. LRDE has completed 250 hours of performance testing on two Tejas fighters as well as Hawker 800 executive jet.

As of April 2024, the radar has completed 125 test sorties onboard Tejas Mk 1 prototypes as per ADA Director Dr Jitendra Jadhav. The radar has cleared testing Air to Air (A2A) and Air to Ground (A2G) modes while few more tests are yet to be conducted. The performance of the radar is on par with other proven designs like EL/M-2052.

Features

 * Full solid-state (electronics) radar, based on GaAs
 * High MTBCF (redundancy)
 * Range: >100 km
 * Multi Target Tracking (50 Targets), Priority Tracking (4 Targets).
 * Simultaneous operation modes.
 * Solid-state, active phased array technology
 * Pulse Doppler, all aspect, shoot down capabilities
 * Simultaneous multi-target tracking and engaging
 * Simultaneous multi-mode operation
 * High ECM immunity
 * Ultra-low side-lobe antenna
 * Flexible interfaces allowing scalable design.
 * Modular hardware and software
 * Fast-beam agile system
 * Quad band TRM modules pack
 * High mission reliability (built with redundancy)
 * IFF modes.
 * C-band LOS, Ku band satcom link.

Operational Modes
Uttam AESA radar has a total of 18 modes in Air to Air, Air to Ground and Air to Sea roles. The modes have been validated on-board a business jet and further proofing is being done on HAL Tejas to validate the same on supersonic platform.
 * Air-to-Air
 * TWS/Multi-target detection and tracking
 * Multi-target ACM
 * High resolution raid assessment
 * Air-to-Ground
 * High resolution imaging (SAR Mode)
 * High resolution tracking (SAR Mode)
 * AGR – Air-to-Ground Ranging
 * RBM – Real Beam Map
 * DBS – Doppler Beam Sharpening
 * GMTI on RBM, SAR
 * Weather
 * Air-to-Sea
 * High resolution imaging (SAR Mode)
 * High resolution tracking (SAR Mode)
 * Sea search and multi-target tracking
 * RS and ISAR classification modes.

Applications
The fighter jet platforms that have been integrated with Uttam radar or are planned to be integrated are as follows:


 * HAL Tejas Mk1/1A (Testing phase): Already integrated on Limited Series Production aircraft (LSP 2 and 3). They have completed 125 developmental flights. The radar will be directly integrated on Tejas Mk1A from the 41st production aircraft onwards.
 * Hawker 800 (Testing phase)
 * HAL Tejas Mk 2 (Planned)
 * Sukhoi Su-30MKI (Planned): During the Super Sukhoi upgrade, the present PESA Bars radar will be replaced by the Virupaaksha radar. In the first phase, 84 units would be upgraded indigenously.
 * Mikoyan MiG-29K (Planned)
 * HAL TEDBF (Planned)
 * HAL AMCA (Virupaaksha variant planned)