Speculations on US Airforce’s Air-to-Air Missile Radar Seeker Technical Scheme

In recent several decades, stealth technology has been developed quickly among the military countries, the typical RCS of fighter plane has dropped from 0.1~1 m2 to around -40 dBm2, and the detection of stealthy target is a urgent problem needs to solve. Active phased array (APA) radar seeker technology is widely considered as the most likely solution to the detection of stealthy targets for medium range air to air missile (AAM), but the cost of APA radar seeker is high, and the improvement of stealthy targets detection range is still limited. In order to find a way to improve the stealthy targets capture capability of AAM radar seeker, the improvement project of US airforce’s medium range AAM as well as the background of transformations from platform-centric warfare to network-centric warfare and SoS-centric warfare (SCW) are both considered in this paper, based on the detection range calculation of airborne radar, track-via-missile (TVM) radar seeker and the Ku, Ka band radar seeker to typical stealthy targets in clear atmosphere or rain conditions, it is speculated that the US airforce are likely now developing the composite guidance mode of TVM and active radar seeker technology in dealing with stealthy targets. TVM radar seeker technology in X band can make full use of airborne radar resources, and can improve the detection capability of stealthy targets, also the cost is greatly reduced compared with active phased array seeker.