Thales Radar Offered For HAL Tejas Mk-1A Combat Aircraft

The French company Thales is offering a lightweight, compact active array radar for India’s Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), dubbed Tejas Mark-IA.

Thales radar is an advanced Fire Control Radar (FCR) designed for air-to-air superiority and strike missions, based on fully solid-state Active Electronically Scanning Array (AESA) technology, enabling the radar to achieve long detection ranges, high mission reliability and multi-target tracking capabilities.

The firm recently completed its initial flight test. “It is therefore ready and able to adapt to the tight schedule imposed by the Mk1A LCA,” the company release says.

The tests conducted during summer 2017 at the Cazaux air base in France, on a test bench aircraft, focused on metrological analyses of the radar performance. These test flights proved that the radar is fully operational and perfectly corresponds to the specific requirements of HAL for its combat and air superiority missions.

The Thales radar is compliant with the requirement and provides simultaneous modes of operation supporting multi-mission capabilities for air-to-air, air-to-ground and air-to-sea operation modes, and weapon deployment.

In December 2016, Indian state-owned military aircraft maker Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) floated global bids to procure around 100 state-of-the-art active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar systems for an improved variant of Tejas. The estimated contract value is $1.85 billion.

The Indian Air Force intends to induct a total of 123 Tejas Mark-IA aircraft.