The pre-planned product improvement roadmap for the Su-30MKI continues to make steady progress, with two Indian Air Force (IAF) Su-30MKIs, delivered in mid-2002, being dispatched to United Aircraft Corp (UAC) of Russia’s Irkutsk-based facility (IRKUT Corp) where both airframes will be strengthened and refurbished, and their navigation-and-attack system will be upgraded in order to arm the aircraft with the BrahMos supersonic air-launched cruise missile for both maritime strike and ground attack. Thus, while all structural and electrical work will be undertaken at Irkutsk, the Tikhomirov-NIIP will upgrade the Su-30MKI’s existing NO-11M ‘Bars’ passive phased-array radar’s performance and operating modes by incorporating a radar target extraction LRU. Once all this has been done, the two upgraded Su-30MKIs will be flown back to India to begin the weapons qualification test-firings, which will be jointly conducted by BrahMos Aerospace and the IAF.
And come 2014, UAC, together with Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) will begin upgrading the first 100 IAF Su-30MKIs by modifying their airframes to make them stealthy, converting the existing ‘Bars’ into an active phased-array radar, enhancing the situational awareness by incorporating active electronically scanned transmit/receive arrays on the aircraft’s wings, and beefing up the defensive-aids suite by installing a combined radar/laser warning system and a missile approach warning system. Tikhomirov-NIIP had by last November begun laboratory-level tests of a ‘Bars’, which was fitted with an AESA array made up of X-band transmit/receive modules built by Istok JSC. Since then, another two ‘Bars’ radars have been modified as part of the R&D phase, which will last until 2012, and will be followed by flight qualification a year later. Incidentally, Tikhomirov-NIIP has also developed the Irbis-E passive phased-array radar for the Su-35BM and will soon begin work on modifying the Irbis-E into an active phased-array radar, which will go on board the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) that will be co-developed by UAC and HAL. In addition, both UAC and Tikhomirov-NIIP have come together to develop the ‘smart skin’ concept under which an AESA array’s transmit/receive modules can be placed anywhere on board the Su-30MKI to generate the relevant radiation field required for achieving more than 180-degree field-of-view.
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