"Customers are looking for revolutionary enhancements" to their F-16s radars, at affordable upfront and life-cycle costs, which is part of the reason Northrop Grumman has created the Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR), said Arlene Camp, director of advanced F-16 systems for Northrop Grumman. With thousands of F-16s flying, in 25 countries, the market for these radars that are designed to support future weapons and tactics is formidable.

The company designed the SABR to retrofit into F-16s without any structural, power or cooling modifications, and the same F-16 mounting points are used for SABR installation. Camp says SABR retrofits should take less than a day.

With half the number of line replaceable units than mechanically scanned radars, the new fire-control active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar also gains a 30-lb. weight savings, and a reliability that "conservatively" should be 1.5 to 3 times better than mechanically scanned radars, said Camp.

Northrop Grumman's first flights with the radar, fitted into a Sabreliner test bed, yielded good operational results, said Camp. She hopes the validation program will include flying SABR on an F-16 late this year.