During the 2024 International Defence Exhibition and Seminar (IDEAS 2024), the Pakistan Air Force’s (PAF) National Aerospace Science and Technology Park (NASTP) revealed that the JF-17 Thunder will undergo an ‘Operational Capability Upgrade’ (OCU). NASTP is also designating this JF-17 OCU project as ‘PFX Alpha’, indicating that it is the first sequential step towards the future PFX fighter program.
Currently, it seems that the primary task of the JF-17 OCU (or PFX Alpha) is to upgrade the Thunder’s radar and avionics suite and, potentially, integrate the fighter with additional air-to-air and air-to-surface munitions, especially homegrown solutions like the Rasoob 250 and AZB-81LR, among many others.
However, while the task of the OCU is to upgrade the fighter with new subsystems, the goal is deeper: it might be the PAF’s first major step towards independently managing the Thunder platform.
The most assured way of achieving that goal is through the use of locally developed and produced inputs, especially those that tie into other parts of the system, like how the radar manages the air-to-air missile (AAM) and anti-ship missile (AShM) stack.
Hence, it is not surprising that PFX Alpha – i.e., the stepping stone towards the PFX – would target the use of Pakistani subsystems in the JF-17. The most notable of NASTP’s subsystems are the following:
Original AESA Radar Program(s)
NASTP stated that the JF-17 OCU will have a new AESA radar. While NASTP did not reveal the detection range of the new system, it did disclose that it will have ‘enhanced tracking’ for 50 targets, all air-to-air and air-to-surface modes, and ‘advanced’ electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM) capabilities.
As with NASTP’s other radar programs, the JF-17 OCU would likely use an AESA radar with GaN TRMs. GaN TRMs are more energy efficient than older gallium arsenide (GaA)-based TRMs, providing for more output and, in turn, performance in terms of range, target tracking, and synthetic imaging resolutions.
One advantage of a GaN-based AESA radar is that even a compact design can confer high-performance capabilities. This is critical for the JF-17, which has limited space for housing a radar as well as its power, cooling, and other support systems. So, even if the new radar has a similar size and number of TRMs as the Nanjing Research Institute of Electronics Technology (NRIET) KLJ-7A, it should offer a longer range, better targeting, and other performance improvements.
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