Naval radar trends: A look back - a look forward

The paper looks - chronologically spoken - back to the 90s of the last century, when the foundations were laid for a naval radar later to become the world market leader in the segment of small ship, air and sea target Surveillance and Target Acquisition Radar (STAR), named TRS-3D, developed and built by the former predecessor of Airbus Defence and Space, the TST Deutsche Aerospace. TRS-3D comprises a passive phased array antenna controlling its beam electronically in elevation and rotating electro-mechanically 360° in azimuth. At the beginning of the new century, the state of the art next generation TRS-4D emerged with four Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) apertures installed in a fixed way, two of them - now spatially spoken - covering fore and two of them covering aft of the ship, thus yielding an instantaneous full awareness around the platform. Additionally there is also a lower cost, rotating version of the TRS-4D, incorporating AESA capability. The paper finally gives a brief outlook on future developments of naval radar that can be expected.