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According to Professor John Roulston, GEC-Marconi Avionics Technical Director, the ECR 90 radar (for which he is also the supervisory director) is the most mature piece of equipment on the EF 2000. It appears a bold statement at first sight - radars are inherently quirky pieces of machinery and rarely perform to schedule in a tight development programme. Yet, despite some technical snags in the early 1990s, the ECR 90 is currently meeting all its design goals and, in several key parameters, exceeding them. In recent trials, it has been demonstrating detection and track-while-scan ranges well above specification.
ECR 90 was born on the back of controversy. Originally proposed by a Ferranti-led consortium, it was pitched in a bitter battle throughout the late 1980s against the MSD 2000, an evolved version of the Hughes APG-65, in which GEC-Marconi Avionics had a leading stake. In March 1990, GEC acquired the radar interests of Ferranti and abandoned its support for MSD 2000 after it became clear that the UK Ministry of Defence would not budge from its clear support for the ECR 90.
In May 1990, the ECR 90 was chosen as the radar for the Eurofighter, despite Germany's then-clear preference for the MSD 2000. In recompense for its agreement to switch horses, the German government got industry to indemnify the risk in the radar, a move that effectively absolved Bonn from any responsibility should things go wrong. It is a measure of the faith that people like Prof Roulston and others had in the system, observers say, that ECR 90 has reached the stage that it is at today. In the industry reshuffle that followed the May 1990 decision, AEG Telefunken (now part of DASA Airborne Systems in Ulm) was substituted for Siemens as Germany's prime workshare partner in the radar. The other consortium members are FIAR of Italy and Enosa of Spain.
The key aspect underwriting the UK's confidence in system performance was that the ECR 90 was itself a derivative radar. Its antecedent was the Blue Vixen system developed for the UK Royal Navy's Sea Harrier FA.2 fighter. While other nations notably, the USA and France - have chosen to adopt phased array radars for their new combat aircraft programmes, the...