Radars and navigation

Our rich radar heritage and vast experience, together with our constantly evolving technology and expertise, enable us to provide a world-class service. We provide and maintain cutting-edge radar capability, cost-effective solutions that have been proven time and again in extreme environments and harsh operational conditions.

We continue to invest in the development of innovative radar technologies, pushing the boundaries of defence capability, helping our Armed Forces operate effectively in rapidly evolving complex environments and reinforcing our position as leaders in military radar.

As complex threats become increasingly sophisticated, we’re continuing to collaborate closely with our customers, industry partners and the supply chain to rapidly deliver affordable world-class radar capability to enable the UK Royal Navy and Royal Air Force and their global allies to maintain operational advantage by staying ahead of the threat curve.

In a congested and contested electromagnetic world, environmental, atmospheric and man-made structures all interfere with radar, leading to cluttered pictures and inaccurate or confused information. The proliferation of wind farms and reallocation of portions of the radio spectrum are among the additional challenges we face as we strive for ever greater performance and new capabilities in our products.

At BAE Systems our signal processing project has investigated ground-breaking techniques to ensure radar systems are not flooded with false alarms, helping us to create processes to optimise radar performance in real time.

Our four-year direct digital synthesis project continues to revolutionise the subsystems that generate waveforms to transmit and digitise received radar signals, resulting in fewer line replaceable units in the radar system which reduces both capital and through life costs.

Working with a third-party technology provider, we have developed a new bespoke transceiver which has been tested at our site at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. The system’s ability to cancel clutter has been proven and this approach is ready for adoption in new and existing radar throughout 2020.

And at the very cutting edge of possibilities, PhD students at one of our partner universities are researching the potential for cognitive radar. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, we’re exploring the capability of processing radar signals in a completely different way for better results and enhanced future products. This thinking has the potential to revolutionise radar processing and our industry.

It doesn’t stop there. In an ongoing programme of technology assessment, our expert team constantly evaluates and assesses current radar capabilities and methods to enhance radar performance in the future, enabling our customers to maintain operational advantage by staying ahead of the threat curve.