Rebirth of the 1980s: The Military Industry Empire

At ten o'clock in the evening, Qin Yang returned home, exhausted.

Seeing him enter, Nie Xiaoqian quickly came over, took the coat Qin Yang took off, hung it on the coat rack, and went to get him slippers.

"Alas, it's not easy to earn money," Qin Yang said, taking off his coat, putting on slippers, and plopping down on the sofa.

"Earn money? Weren't you talking about four engines and two drones? What else can you earn money from?"

"I didn't want to earn it either, but there's no way, they brought the money to me, I can't refuse it," Qin Yang said, "You weren't there at the time, you didn't see what Harell was like. He couldn't move when he saw our radar antenna. After coming out, he applied to me to buy a set of radar equipment, plus a radome."

Nie Xiaoqian originally planned to go and join in the fun, but considering the weather was too cold, Qin Yang didn't agree, so she could only obediently wait at home.

Hearing Qin Yang say this, Nie Xiaoqian was very curious: "Don't they have AWACS planes?"

Nie Xiaoqian looked at Qin Yang in shock: "Can they agree?"

"They have no choice, they can only use ours," Qin Yang said, "After all, ours is ready-made. If they buy our radar antenna and radome back, they can immediately modify it. If they act fast, they can tinker out their own AWACS plane by the end of this year."

"Yang-ge, did you plan this all along?" Nie Xiaoqian thought of something.

"What do you think?" Qin Yang put his arms around his wife: "I've also thought of something else."

"What is it?"

"Want to try what it feels like on the sofa?"

Everything was within Qin Yang's calculations.

The famous Phalcon AWACS plane was officially launched in 1984. At that time, Elta Systems began research and development work on an L-band, active phased array conformal radar system. This research was a year earlier than when Sweden began developing the 'Erieye' active phased array radar system.

Did the Israelis see the trend and decide to choose the high-end active phased array?

Of course not. At that time, the active phased array was not mature. There were no monolithic microwave integrated circuits. They were still using a method of soldering various components on a circuit board. They were large and consumed a lot of power.

Conventional AWACS planes choose the S-band, which has a long radiation range, but the Phalcon system specifically chose the L-band because microwave components in this band are easy to manufacture.

The reason for using this is because the layout of this radar antenna is arbitrary: the Israelis creatively turned the nose of the Boeing 707 into a big nose, and the sides into big cheeks, and installed conformal antennas on it. All of this was just to reduce the difficulty of research and development, after all, they couldn't handle the big disc themselves.

This layout has a big flaw: it can only cover 260 degrees of space, and the tail is a large blind spot. Even if an antenna is installed on the tail, the search distance is very small because the area is not large enough. What's even more deadly is that because there are few radar components, this AWACS plane can only search for azimuth, not measure altitude. It is a genuine two-dimensional radar!

Israel's AWACS plane is just a useless thing, so later, when the East placed an order for the Phalcon, it strongly requested a big disc.

The Israelis had a hard time. Even if they lowered various performance requirements, the development of the Phalcon AWACS plane was still not smooth. It only made its first flight in May 1993 and was officially delivered to users in 1995.

This year is exactly when the Israelis are hesitating, and they don't know what kind of AWACS plane method to choose. At this time, the East suddenly appeared with an advanced AWACS plane radar antenna system. Do the Israelis still need to hesitate?

Use the Eastern system to tinker out a strategic AWACS plane! The air force cannot be without this kind of AWACS plane. What is 200 million US dollars? Cry poverty to the American daddy, and maybe they'll get it?

Back then, when the East purchased AWACS planes from Israel, just the radar system alone cost 250 million US dollars per plane. Qin Yang didn't ask for the same price, which was already giving them a lot of face.

Just as Qin Yang and Nie Xiaoqian were exploring the mysteries of the human body on the sofa, Horev and Harell returned to the hotel.

"Expensive, it's really too expensive. Two hundred million US dollars for a set of radar equipment is simply robbery," Horev said, "We absolutely cannot do this deal, otherwise we'll be fools!"

"But this thing is really important to us," Harell said, "We can confirm that the radar antenna manufactured by the Easterners is fully qualified, and our country can manufacture other electronic systems. That is to say, as long as we buy such a set of equipment back, we can assemble a strategic AWACS plane like the E-3 by the end of this year!"

Harell was very excited and kept talking.

"Horev, think about it, our E-2 can only fly for six hours at most and has to go back, and the crew members have to stay in a small space. If we replace the airframe with a Boeing 707, one plane can go up and perform more than twenty hours of missions! The area controlled will also be very large, we are only short of the radar antenna!"

"Moreover, Natalie also saw the AWACS plane modified by the Easterners at the test flight institute, which shows that there is no problem at all in putting this big disc on the Boeing 707. We can do a lot less work. I think we should spend this money!"

"Oh, God, I guess you must be crazy."

"I'm not crazy, we have to reach this cooperation with the Easterners! I'm sure!"

Harell was serious.

However, such a cooperation cannot be decided by him alone, he has to report back.

Of course, Qin Yang wouldn't dream of a pie falling from the sky. This kind of thing can't be rushed, it has to be done slowly.

The next day, Capital Airport.

A cargo plane from Israel landed, and when the cargo door opened, a group of people had already greeted it.

"JT3D engine, complete backup engine, this box is exactly the same as the ones imported by our civil aviation system," Old Lin said with emotion, "President Qin, you only let the Israelis see it for two minutes, and you exchanged so many things, amazing!"

"I spent two months laying the groundwork for these two minutes," Qin Yang said, "Old Lin, there are also two Patrolman drones inside. If Shenyang isn't interested, then we'll do it ourselves!"

"Let's do it, they're not doing this, they want to build a 'Pride' aircraft."

What?