The advantages of GaN is that you can have more power going through a module (~10W for a regular silicon, and more than 70W for a GaN). This does however comes at the cost of a bigger overall module, which means you’ll end up with less modules per surface area. I wonder how much modules those upgraded radars will end up with.
The more powerful the module, the less you have to combine to get an effective range on a said target, meaning it’s easier to track one target. While you have less overall modules, you need fewer of them to track each target so overall the number of tracking targets remains high or even increases.
France initially decided yo keep the regular silicon modules instead of going to GaN because they found it simply too expensive. They will however also switch to GaN for the F5 variant at least, now that it has become more cost effective
On paper maybe, they evaluated Radar types and decided on the Captor-M which until the last 5 or so years wasn’t seen as a major incumberance to Typhoon.
Little fun fact I just found out by the way, both the RBE2-AA and Captor-E are based on the same joint AESA-study/prototype between France & Uk from '93 and Germany joining in '95.
The prototype is called AMSAR and the program ended in '08.
I think Germany is ditching the Captor Mk.1 and going with Mk.2 like Britain, there used to be a page on Hensoldt that literally said they were in the process of producing the needed T/R modules (something like 100000) needed to make the radars needed for Germany and maybe Italy and that page just disappeared.
The problem with PESA and EASA at the time of development that they added signficant weight and space constraints due to the need to provide substantially more cooling and even greater power generation which had not been factored into the original design. The entire nose section forward of the cockpit would have had to have been redesigned, in addition to ballast and balance weights being used in other areas of the aircraft.
In this regard, mechanical scanned radars were significantly superior at the time as the technology was much more mature, compact, reliable and cost efficient.
Also, it was established that the ECR90 and subsystems could have several generations of upgrades, whereas the available PESA/ESA radars at the time could not be easily upgraded and would need to be replaced at the same time the CAPTOR-M with a modernised AESA.
Sure an electronically scanned array would have provided slightly better performance, but it just was not viable for the project at the time of development.
The original ISD for Eurofighter was 1995 and it was judged that AESA technology would not be mature enough by then. That judgement is clearly correct as it was not until the early 2000’s that the first airborne AESA radar’s started being introduced to service on fighter aircraft. Obviously the ISD of Eurofighter slipped, but the decision to use an advanced M-Scan radar was already made by then. And before you make some snide comment about how the Eurofighter was late and therefore bad I’ll remind you that the Rafale’s original ISD was meant to be 1996, and it too was similarly delayed.
Starting in 1993, and continuing through the 1990s & early 2000s the Euro-radar companies worked collaboratively with the French on the AMSAR (Airborne Multi-role Solid-state Active-array Radar) demonstrator. Branching off from the joint programme the Euro-radar companies went on to develop the CAESAR (Captor AESA Radar) demonstrator based on CAPTOR, while the French went on to develop the DRAAMA (Demonstrator Active Antenna Radar and Advanced Modes) demonstrator based on RBE2. CAESAR was actually successfully flown on Eurofighter in 2007, while as best I can work out DRAAMA was not flown on Rafale until 2009 (so it seems technically the Eurofighter flew with an AESA radar before the Rafale).
Following on from the two demonstrator programmes the French decided to push ahead with RBE2-AA, directly based on DRAAMA, and had it enter service in 2013. Meanwhile the Eurofighter nations (likely motivated by the adequate performance of CAPTOR-M, and probably some politics as well) decided instead to work towards a more advanced AESA solution resulting in the GECAR programme and then ECRS Mk.0 which started testing in 2016, finished development in 2020, and entered service in 2021.
If the Eurofighter nations wanted they could have decided to build a CAESAR based production radar (like the French did with DRAAMA) and had it enter service sooner. However it seems they were not in a rush to replace CAPTOR, and decided they would rather wait on even more advanced radars becoming available. This approach can be seen with how an AESA radar (ECRS Mk.0) is currently in service on Eurofighter, but the main consortium members have decided to wait on Mk.1 & Mk.2 before equipping their fleets.
So it’s not really accurate to claim the Euro-radar consortium lacked the ability to develop AESA radars. They broadly kept pace with the French throughout the development of AESA radars (and actually flew their national demonstrator first). There was just a different approach taken as to how soon an AESA radar should be put into production.
Besides joke can we appreciate both platform? Cause both Rafale and EFT are amazing machines and we dont need for another heated conversation about “muh this is better”.
The information that is publicly available on the CAESAR programme seems to imply that it worked well. So I personally consider that option to be unlikely.
