How to buy radar and RF sensors
Radar performance claims are only comparable when the conditions behind them are stated. Make the supplier write the conditions down, then compare the numbers.
This category covers military radar and radio frequency sensors: surveillance and fire control radars, active electronically scanned arrays, radar warning receivers and the RF front ends behind them. Weather radar for civil aircraft is a separate guide, as are electro-optical sensors and electronic warfare systems, which frequently come from the same suppliers. The buyer here is comparing claims that look like specifications and are often marketing, so the work is in normalising them.
Make the conditions explicit
Detection range means nothing without the target, the environment and the probability attached. Ask for radar cross-section assumed, probability of detection and false alarm rate, the scan volume and revisit rate, the clutter environment and the propagation conditions. Ask whether the figure is modelled, measured on a range, or measured in a flight or field trial, and ask for the trial report. Ask about track initiation time and track maintenance in the presence of manoeuvre, because a detection that never becomes a stable track is not a capability. Ask what the electromagnetic interference behaviour is with the other emitters on the same platform, and ask for the co-site analysis. Then ask the questions the datasheet never covers: prime power draw, cooling requirement, mass, volume, and what the platform must give up to carry it.
The specifications and the export list
Military electronic systems are enumerated on the munitions list, and the enumeration reaches the technical data and defense services connected to them, not only the hardware.1 Ask for the classification of the specific configuration offered to you, and ask what a foreign sale would require. Ask which standards the build is against, and check them in the government's standardization register, where each document carries a status and dates, so a quotation written against a cancelled revision is visible before award rather than after.2
Qualifying the company, not just the sensor
Defense suppliers now carry a cybersecurity obligation that is assessed rather than asserted: the certification programme sets levels for protecting federal contract information and controlled unclassified information, with self-assessment, third-party certification and government-led assessment depending on the work.3 Ask what level applies, what the supplier holds and when it was assessed. Ask about the supply chain underneath the sensor: which components are single-sourced, which are foreign-sourced, and what the obsolescence plan is for the RF devices, because that is where programmes lose years. Federal award data is public and shows what the company has been contracted to do and at what scale, which is a reasonable sanity check on a capability pitch.4
Sustainment is the long half
Ask what the mean time between critical failures is and how it was derived. Ask what depot-level repair requires, who can do it, and whether the government or the supplier holds that capability. Ask what a software-defined upgrade path looks like and what it costs. Ask what happens when a gallium nitride device generation goes end of life mid-programme.
Questions that sort suppliers
Ask for the trial report behind the headline range figure. Ask for prime power, cooling and mass at the same operating point. Ask for the obsolescence management plan. Ask which platforms already fly or field this exact configuration.
Sources, in the order cited
- 1Electronic Code of Federal Regulations · 22 CFR Part 121, The United States Munitions List
- 2Defense Logistics Agency · ASSIST Quick Search, the standardization document register
- 3Electronic Code of Federal Regulations · 32 CFR Part 170, the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification Program
- 4United States Department of the Treasury · The USAspending API, federal award data