The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has received the first of three contracted Saab GlobalEye airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft, the manufacturer announced on 29 April.
The United Arab Emirates has ordered three GlobalEye aircraft, with the initial contract signed in late 2015. In November 2019 the country also announced its intention to complete a contract amendment for the purchase of an additional two systems.
“The delivery of the first GlobalEye is a major milestone for Saab, but also an important step in the history of airborne early warning and control. We have set a new standard for the market and I am proud to say that we have delivered the most advanced airborne surveillance solution in the world to the United Arab Emirates”, says Micael Johansson, President and CEO of Saab.
GlobalEye is Saab’s new airborne early warning and control solution. It provides air, maritime and ground surveillance in a single solution. GlobalEye combines Saab’s new Erieye Extended Range Radar and a range of additional advanced sensors with the ultra-long range Global 6000 aircraft from Bombardier.
The GlobalEye is built around the Saab Erieye Extended Range (ER) radar that is housed in the same external dorsal ‘plank’ as the company’s original Erieye system. Equipped with Gallium Nitride (GaN) and other technologies, the Erieye ER is an active electronically scanned array (AESA) system that doubles the radar’s power efficiency compared with previous Erieye iterations. It has a range in excess of 650 km that can be extended by focusing the radar’s energy.
Saab said the Erieye ER is resistant to jamming and features all-weather functionality in all domains (air, sea, and land surveillance), as well as an “extremely high” tracking-update rate against targets of interest.
Besides the radar, the aircraft is also equipped with the Leonardo Seaspray 7500E AESA 360° multimode radar, as well as a retractable Star SAFIRE 380-HD electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor turret, automatic identification system (AIS) for shipping, HES-21 electronic support measures (ESM) suite, and countermeasures. Performance figures disclosed by Saab give the GlobalEye an endurance of more than 13 hours and a top speed of 450 kt.
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