Northrop Grumman [NOC] announced Feb. 26 that it is offering its advanced AN/APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR) for the Air Force’s B-52H Stratofortress radar replacement program.
The service is planning to upgrade the aging Northrop Grumman-made APQ-166 terrain-following and mapping radars on its venerable bomber fleet. The SABR is under consideration by B-52 aircraft manufacturer Boeing [BA] for the Bomber Modernization Radar System program, Northrop Grumman said Tuesday in a press release. That program will include engineering, manufacturing, development and delivery of seven radar units to start, but the Air Force has expressed plans to upgrade the full fleet of 76 B-52 bombers with a new system.
The SABR is currently installed onto multiple domestic and international variants of F-16 fighter aircraft. Northrop Grumman is also pitching the radar to the Marine Corps for its F/A-18C/D/ Hornet fighter fleet, and is offering a version of the system to the Air Force for its B-1B bombers. The radar leverages technologies from the company’s AN/APG-77 system, currently installed on the F-22 Raptor, and the AN/APG-81 on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
“The SABR and SABR-Global Strike family of radars provides differentiating capability for air dominance and strike missions,” said Tom Jones, vice president and general manager, airborne C4ISR systems, Northrop Grumman. “Our hot production and sustainment lines are already in place to support our current and future customers’ needs for decades to come.”
Boeing plans to make a source selection decision for the radar replacement by summer 2019, a company spokesperson told Defense Daily.
