Chinese military aircraft designers have proposed a new airborne early warning radar that fits into the wing of an aircraft rather than a traditional nose-mounted radome or large radar dome above the fuselage.
The concept uses changes in attitude and coordination between multiple unmanned aircraft to expand surveillance coverage and potentially give smaller platforms some of the capabilities traditionally associated with dedicated early warning aircraft.
The design was described in a study published in the Chinese journal Measurement and control technology. The authors include Ren Yunsong and researchers at the AVIC Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute, which developed China’s J-20 stealth fighter and designed the two-seat J-20S variant to operate alongside unmanned aircraft.
A radar system built into the wing
Conventional fighter aircraft typically house their primary radar in the nose, behind a protective radome. Meanwhile, airborne early warning aircraft often use large radar systems mounted above the fuselage to provide surveillance over a wide area. Both approaches have their limitations: Fighter aircraft noses limit the size of the antenna, while large radar structures increase weight, drag and complexity.
The Chinese team proposes to embed the radar antenna, control components and related equipment into the wing of the aircraft. The antenna’s radiating surface would face downwards, with a protective cover following the outer contours of the wing. This arrangement could provide a larger antenna aperture without the need for a prominent external radar dome. the South China Morning Post reported.
The main challenge is that wings provide significant surface area but have relatively thin cross-sections, limiting the volume available for radar hardware. The design therefore aims to use the wing surface more efficiently while relying on aircraft maneuvers to control radar coverage.
In one proposed mode of operation, an unmanned aircraft would roll more than 45 degrees, tilting the wing-mounted antenna to the side of the aircraft. By changing its attitude, the platform could redirect the radar beam to different sectors without relying entirely on a mechanically rotating antenna.
Multiple aircraft could work as a distributed radar network
The proposal is based on distributed air combat, a concept studied by DARPA in 2014. Instead of relying on a single, expensive aircraft for large-scale surveillance, distributed operations would use multiple smaller platforms to share detection and tracking responsibilities.
Researchers describe four modes of operation for the wing-mounted radar, which include omni-directional and multi-directional detection, large-area surveillance, focused search for specific targets, and coordinated operations to combat electronic jamming. Multiple aircraft could divide surveillance tasks or combine their efforts to improve coverage in a particular sector.
This approach could help address a key challenge of airborne early warning, namely providing comprehensive detection coverage without relying on a small number of large, expensive platforms. Conventional early warning aircraft provide space for extensive radar arrays and powerful onboard systems, but their size and cost can limit the number of systems that can be deployed. Therefore, smaller unmanned aircraft could potentially offer greater flexibility if they can achieve sufficient detection performance and coordinate reliably.
The concept could eventually be considered for future Chinese fighter jets, including the J-20 and next-generation designs commonly referred to as the J-36 and J-50. However, the paper does not identify any of these aircraft as a confirmed platform for the technology, nor does it disclose any development plan or flight test results.
