MacRobert Award

2000 Finalist

BAE Systems Sensor Systems Division for their CAPTOR Radar for the Eurofighter

[News Release]

BAE Systems Sensor Systems Division led an international consortium called Euroradar in the development and production of the CAPTOR radar the primary sensor for the Eurofighter Typhoon.

The team responsible for this submission consists of Professor John Roulston OBE, Paul Holbourn, Tony Kinghorn, David Graham and Russell Shoulder.

Picture of an aeroplane and a jet plane in flightCAPTOR is a ground-breaking development in radar technology. For the first time it allows the fighter pilot to detect low-flying targets by countering the effects of ground and sea clutter and producing high resolution, high quality ground mapping.

Exploiting the Doppler shift in the radar echo does this: the echo in a moving target will have a different frequency from that of static targets (i.e. the ground). However the team found that unless they increased the repetition rate of the microwave radar pulses they could not measure the Doppler shift. And if they increased the pulse rate it confused the signals from near and far targets. The solution was to use a medium pulse-repetition rate with some extremely complex mathematical processing to separate all the signals and design a waveform free of interference. The result is that CAPTOR is the only airborne radar that sees every target, whatever the position and speed. It measures the target angle to within one milliradian and range to within 10 metres.

In addition, the mechanical design of the radar scanning system allows the beam to be re-positioned rapidly, conferring tactical advantage in track update and allowing scanning patterns to be adapted to target disposition. These concepts rely on the innovations in the control and advanced processing electronics, which function in the harsh temperature and vibration environment of the fighter. The entire product has been designed for minimal maintenance and low-cost application.

620 radars are required for the Eurofighter Typhoon as presently ordered by UK, Germany, Italy and Spain. The prospect of export sales looms large with Greece having confirmed a minimum requirement of 60 systems. The overall value of CAPTOR to the UK economy is several billion pounds.

During the development phase, CAPTOR was known as the ECR90 Radar.

 

 

Updated July 2012

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