AIRBORNE EARLY WARNING
Technology (NRIET). While undoubtedly of Chinese origin, very little of substance has emerged concerning the KJ-2000’s radar. Unconfirmed reports suggest that a prototype sensor began flight testing during 2003; that its development programme was launched circa 2001/2002; that it entered service with the PLAAF during 2007; that NRIET made use of its experience with the shipboard H/LJG-346 active phased array radar in the development of the airborne sensor and that Israeli know-how in the areas of transceiver module technology and composite material production process specification was of value to the Chinese AEW&C radar development effort (at one time, China was close to receiving an Il-76 AEW & C platform that was equipped with an Israeli electronically steered radar). If correct, these various suggestions point to the KJ-2000’s trio of
fixed, electronically-steered antenna arrays being made up of active transceiver modules, although this is by no means certain. The enigmatically titled ‘38th Institute’ has been reported as the source of a phasedarray radar that has been applied to a Y-8 transport aircraft based AEW&C capability that is possibly designated as the KJ-200. The putative KJ-200 has almost certainly entered operational testing (if not service) with the
The PLAAF’s KJ2000 AEW & C weapon system is based on the Il-76 airframe © Chinese Internet
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ASIAN MILITARY REVIEW
PLAAF and is characterised by a plankshaped antenna housing that is mounted nose-down above its host’s centre fuselage. Similar in design to the antenna housing used with Saab’s S-band (3.1 to 3.3 GHz subband) Erieye AEW radar, it is tempting to conclude that the KJ-200 makes use of the same sort of active technology. Elsewhere in the Y-8 AEW&C community, China has developed a second such aircraft which features a conventional rotating rotodome to house its radar antenna and which (under the ZDK-03 designation) is being exported to Pakistan. Here, the capability was demonstrated to the Pakistani Air Force during 2006, an event that was followed by a $278 million contract for four ‘improved’ ZDK-03 aircraft that was placed during 2008, with delivery to take place during the period 2011 to 2014. The remaining AEW orientated Y-8 (the Y-8J) is flown by the PLAN and is equipped with Thales UK (formerly Racal) 10 GHz Skymaster multi-mode maritime surveillance and AEW radar. Reported to have been first