FA-50 Light Combat Aircraft to Get Raytheon’s PhantomStrike Radar

Korea Aerospace Industries' FA-50 Light Combat Aircraft will be outfitted with Raytheon’s new PhantomStrike radar.

PhantomStrike is a fully air-cooled fire-control radar designed to provide long-range threat detection, tracking and targeting. Working with the United States Government, PhantomStrike was approved to be exported as a Direct Commercial Sales product to KAI.

PhantomStrike is a compact AESA radar that is smaller, lighter and requires less power. It is designed for a wide range of platforms including light-attack aircraft, rotary-wing aircraft, uncrewed aerial vehicles, and ground-based towers.

PhantomStrike combines two Raytheon Technologies specialties — a gallium nitride-powered array and the compact high-reliability integrated receiver/exciter processor, or CHIRP — to match the capability of modern AESA radars. The upgrades provide capabilities including digital beam forming and steering, multimode functionality, and interleaved ground and air targeting.

Production of the radars will take place in Forest, Mississippi; Tucson, Arizona; and Scotland, with support from Raytheon UK. Initial deliveries are expected in 2025.