Northrop Upgrades Radars for Air National Guard F-16s

The U.S. Air Force has completed installation of Northrop Grumman’s AN/APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR) on Air National Guard F-16s to meet a U.S. Northern Command Joint Emergent Operational Need (JEON) for homeland defense.

SABR extends the operational viability and reliability of the Air National Guard F-16s and provides pilots with 5th generation fighter radar capabilities.

With this upgrade, the APG-83 radar is flying operationally on 72 jets stationed at nine U.S. Air National Guard bases throughout the country.

Northrop Grumman provides the SABR APG-83 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) fire control radar for the F-16 with advanced capabilities derived from Northrop Grumman’s family of highly successful 5th generation fighter AESA radars. The greater bandwidth, speed and agility of the APG-83 enables the F-16 to detect, track and identify a greater number of targets faster and at longer ranges. In addition, it features all-weather, high-resolution synthetic aperture radar mapping to present the pilot with a large surface image for more precise target identification and strike compared to legacy systems.