An Airborne Radar Sensor for Maritime & Ground Surveillance and Reconnaissance

The pod integrated variant of the airborne SmartRadar by AIRBUS Defence & Space, mounted under the wing of a Learjet 35 aircraft, is used as a testbed to develop advanced radar modes. In particular, it offers the capabilities of a multi-phase-center active electronically steered array (AESA) antenna and of a flexible, wide-bandwidth radar core. During the last two years, the already operated synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and ground moving target indication (GMTI) modes have been supplemented by newly developed maritime modes. This overview paper discusses the new maritime modes and presents recent results from our 2013 flight campaign. In particular, maritime modes for open sea surveillance, maritime moving target indication, and inverse SAR imaging of ships are discussed in detail. All of these radar modes make use of the instantaneous re-pointing capability of the fixed-mounted AESA antenna.