Technology and the New Look Meet the F/A-18 Radar Reliability Challenge

The F/A-18 Program is among the first to apply the Naval Air Systems Command “New Look Acquisition Fundamentals” from contract award. The New Look establishes firm requirements and incentives for achieving reliability and maintainability. It imposes stringent disciplines on design, test, and manufacturing to assure compliance to those requirements. In the case of the radar (at least), the level of reliability and maintainability specified could not be achieved by these disciplines alone. A substantial simplification of system architecture and its hardware (over previous tactical radars) was also required. This paper describes how that simplification was achieved, while at the same time gaining substantially in multimission capability. It also summarizes the status of key elements of the New Look program at this early stage of the development program.