Following the achievement of $87.8 M worth foreign military sales (FMS) contract, Northrop Grumman will deliver the APG-68(V)9 airborne fire control radar to the regions of Oman, Thailand, Iraq for deployment on F-16 fighter aircraft.
Northrop Grumman will supply a sum of 43 systems, wherein six radar systems will be delivered to the Royal Thai Air Force, 15 radar systems to the Royal Air Force of Oman, and 22 radar systems to the Iraqi Air Force. The company will complete its deliveries by March 2015. The FMS contract is coordinated by Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, located in Ohio.
Northrop Grumman's VP for Global Systems Solutions, Tim Winter says that the achievement of APG-68(V)9 Fire Control Radar delivery contract from Thailand, Oman and Iraq assures its baseline position and value for the entire new F-16 production and F-16 avionics upgrades. The significant beneficial features of APG-68(V)9 radar has inspired 12 nations to purchase around 750 systems till now.
The APG-68(V)9 allows leveraging air-to-air and air-to-surface threats at greater ranges with increased precision than legacy F-16 fire control radars. The radar ensures all-environment, autonomous, precision air-to-surface targeting with synthetic aperture radar ground mapping mode of high-resolution.
Since 36 years, Northrop Grumman has been designing and developing F-16 fire control radars. It encompasses the newly introduced Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR) AESA; eight variants of the APG-68; three variants of the APG-66; the APG-80 Airborne Electronically Scanned Array (AESA), specifically developed for the F-16 Block 60. The fire control radars for the B-1, F-22 and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fall under the company's extensive fire control radars.
The contract is in sequence with U.S. defense policy to allow the Iraqi Air Force to foster foreign relations with partners like Thailand and Oman and to presume sovereign air defense duties.
Source: http://www.northropgrumman.com/