Type 346 radar speculation

[ricebunny]

Based on what I have gathered, the first version of the radar is a S-band AESA, with an octagonal antenna of about 4m diameter. The AESA is built out of quad TRMs, with each quad capable of 100W peak RF power. Total number of quads is estimated to be 1250, for a total of 5000 T/R elements and 125kW peak RF power per antenna. First version of the radar employed air cooling.

The S-band antenna is sandwiched between two C-band arrays. According to one rumor, the function of the C-band arrays is to provide uplink/downlink communication with the principle weapon of the the Type 052C destroyer: HQ-9. The missile itself uses active radar homing to target. Another theory is that the C-band arrays are illuminators and the missiles SARH or TVM. However their rectangular shape does not seem optimal for that role.

Only known photo of the S-band/C-band antenna, taken from a type 052C fitting out


What do you guys think? Was the Chinese state of the art really at this level in the early 2000s? The USN put to sea its first S-band AESA (SPY-4) radar a full decade later and was also late to the party in introducing a long range ARH SAM.

 

[RP1]

Given that it originally had a folding transmitter I think at least one of its methods of operation was as a space fed offset feed reflectarray. I remain very skeptical at the essays on Chinese equipment that appear on wikipedia, but do agree with assessments that the radome covers multiple antennas for search and track/illumination functions. Note that the notion that the whole thing was a massive AESA was, in the west at least, largely based on a single assessment by, IIRC, Friedman, who noted the large ducts to the array face installation on the test ship and concluded it must be AESA because the array face needed a lot of cooling. Image of the array with the early curved radome and what I suspect to be the feed "stick" unfolded is attached.

 

[ricebunny]

Interesting theory. I always thought that the retractable rod was something like a near field calibration device.

I have Friedman’s last World Naval Weapon Systems book (2006). Therein he speculates about it bring derived from the Ukranian Kvant bureau radar, but I think there was no evidence since to support that thesis.

Furthermore, he speculated that the radar operates in C-band, because the state-of-the-art at the time was not at a level where sufficient power could be packaged in S-band modules small enough to populate the array. It’s interesting to point out that the land version of HQ-9 used a C-band search and illuminate radar. However, wouldn’t such a large array be prohibitively expensive if it is densely populated with C-band T/Rs?

 

[RP1]

"I always thought that the retractable rod was something like a near field calibration device." It's possible, it was censored in some early pictures which was what made me suspicious.

 

[ricebunny]

I think that the original radar that appeared on the Type 052C may have been a C-band radar as this is most consistent with the ground based HQ-9. The actual C-band array should be quite a bit smaller than the radome, because it contained an IFF interrogator, missile uplink and downlink antennas for TVM and possibly side lobe cancellation antennas. Also, the array does not need to be as dense in the periphery which would help keep the manufacture cost manageable.