Wes Bush: Northrop Begins EMD Phase for Air National Guard F-16 Radar Upgrade Program

Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush has said the company is in the engineering, manufacturing development stage for the Air National Guard’s program to upgrade the active electronically scanned array radar aboard the Lockheed Martin-built F-16 Fighter Falcon aircraft, the National Interest reported Wednesday.

Bush told investors Wednesday the company will update 72 AESA radars on the service branch’s F-16 jets once it completes the EMD phase.

The U.S. Air Force tapped Northrop in June to install APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar systems on Air National Guard’s 72 F-16s in compliance with the U.S. Northern Command’s joint operational requirement for homeland defense.

Bush noted that SABR aims to provide F-16 pilots with fifth-generation radar capabilities to counter enemy threats.

“I would just say that the adoption that we’ve seen so far has been great, both domestically – primarily domestically, but the international interest on this is significant,” he said of the integration of SABR with F-16s.