The
Air National Guard is "ready to go" on upgrading its Aerospace
Control Alert F-16 fleet with new active electronically scanned array radars
and enhancements to improve homeland defense, ANG boss
Lt. Gen. Stanley Clarke
said on Tuesday. "The upgrades that we need are important for surveillance
and the ability to detect targets and threats to the homeland. ... It's a deficit
and we need to address this," Clarke told members of the House
Appropriations Committee’s defense panel. Industry has already completed
research and development on several radar options and "we've already
tested some of this equipment out at our test center in Tucson, [Ariz.],"
he said. "We think that it's a perfect match with current capabilities,”
he said. “There are several vendors out there," including Northrop
Grumman's Scalable Agile Beam Radar
retrofit
to Taiwanese F-16s as well as Raytheon's Advanced Combat Radar, added
Clarke. The Air Force canceled its planned
comprehensive
F-16 avionics upgrade that would have included AESA radar due to Fiscal
2015 budget pressures.
