A waveguide array for an unmanned airborne vehicle (UAV)

As part of the CORE radar developments taking place at Astrium UK (formally MMS(UK)) there is a desire to accommodate future synthetic aperture radar (SAR) users who are looking away from space applications towards more airborne based operations. Here the user is looking for very low ownership and operating costs and is naturally attracted to the UAV concept. UAV has by its very nature a more localized theatre of operation, and is ideally suited to policing and disaster monitoring for example. In SAR terms, the advantages of night time, all weather and through smoke/cloud cover operation is very attractive. The UAV that Astrium has under consideration will operate at X-band frequencies using an X-band narrow wall slotted waveguide array composed of individual subarray modules