DRDO's new VHF-SR radar is seen displayed at Aero India 2025. (Janes/Ajay Shankar Pandey)
India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has unveiled a new very-high-frequency (VHF)-band surveillance radar (VHF-SR) at Aero India 2025 in Bangalore.
DRDO officials said on 10 February that the VHF-SR can detect low radar cross-section (RCS) stealth targets at a range of 400 km and track up to 100 targets simultaneously. They added that the radar will be available for field trials within next three months, but did not provide any more details about these evaluations.
The VHF-SR uses 80 TR (transmit/receive) antennaarray modules arranged in 16 columns. Each array column is provided with five TR modules to achieve the angular super resolution of 10โ12ยบ. The radar utilises gallium nitride (GaN) TR modules, which provide high output power and enhanced signal reception capability for radar operations.
The radar can generate 20โ30 kW output power, depending on its modes of operation. DRDO officials did not disclose details about these various modes. The system can be deployed on a 6ร6 high mobility vehicle (HMV) and the antenna array can be kept foldable while moving, which makes it suitable for operating in high-altitude field deployments, DRDO said.
Advanced array signal processing technology is used in the system for element-level digitisation and beamforming. Two 100 kVA generators are used to meet the power requirement of the radar, although one of these is for redundancy.
An identification friend-or-foe (IFF) secondary radar antenna is placed at the top of the TR array module to detect friendly approaching aircraft. The radar features adaptive nulling technology to cancel jamming signals and frequency-hopping and pulse-compression technologies to provide improved immunity against enemy electronic warfare tactics.
For more information, please seeIndia unveils new surveillance system .
Looking to read the full article?
Gain unlimited access to Janes news and more...
