Westinghouse radar for the F-15

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Some interesting insights into the losing design for the F-15 radar.

Oral-History:Robert Baim

ethw.org

It didn’t take me long to think about it. I cashed in and went back to Westinghouse. I think it was about an 8-month hiatus. I was hired specifically to help Jerry in the marketing team for the F-15 radar competition with Hughes. We went through that program together. It was another one of those long hours, and lots of travel, and interesting people. The technology was just amazing that we were able to bring to bear on the F-15 at the time. To me, it was.

Hochheiser:

And this was for the radar system for the F-15?

Baim:

Yes, for the radar system. And, of course, we lost that competition. I thought when we lost the competition that that was probably the end of my short career in radar marketing.

Hochheiser:

What can you tell me about the competition itself? How did that work? Was this against Hughes?

Baim:

Yes. Both companies actually built radars to have a fly-off in St. Louis and we -

Hochheiser:

So this is in St. Louis, then the prime contractor was -

Baim:

McDonnell Douglas. So we took our radar out there, and we thought we did fairly well with our approach. Our approach technically was basically an enhancement on the AWG-10 pulse Doppler radar. And we had a high-low PRF radar that we targeted for that job. And the customer wanted medium PRF. And our guys, the technical guys, basically resisted going to medium PRF for technical reasons, mostly having to do with processor. And they made a calculated risk, and lost.

Hochheiser:

They made a calculated risk that their approach would be technically superior.

Baim:

Yes. And it was, by the way, in the fly-off, according to our data and whatever we were able to get. We actually, I guess we say, checked more blocks in the fly-off than the competition. But I think the competition showed the promise of that Medium PRF approach, and Hughes wound up winning.

 

[stealthflanker]

So, the winning design (APG-63 by Hughes) was a pure medium PRF design as APG-66 ?

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Nope, it was low (pulse only), medium and high PRF. Medium PRF was more complex and required greater performance from the processor than high PRF for pulse-oppler operation. Westinghouse felt they could meet the requirements without it, reducing complexity. Hughes gambled on the more complex solution.

The customer went with Hughes, because medium PRF was the future for better all-aspect performance, regardless of which prototype radar ticked the most boxes in the evaluation. Westinghouse's radar would have been more mature but less future-proof.

Westinghouse then went full speed into medium PRF research and serious design-to-cost work with the WX series of private venture radars allowing them to come back and win the F-16 radar contract with AN/APG-66.

George Marrett, the test pilot for Hughes on the F-15 radar evaluation, recounts in Testing Death the very many difficulties they encountered with their radar - they didn't manage a medium PRF radar track until 2 weeks before the end - and they got half their data passes done in the last two weeks of the two month evaluation, flying 3 missions in one day, eventually managing to collect 80 percent of the requested data passes.