Saab debuts new Sea Giraffe AMB D radar

Saab's Sea Giraffe Sea AMB D radar, unveiled in October 2026. (Saab)

Saab has launched an upgraded and redesigned variant of its Sea Giraffe AMB C-band (NATO G-band) agile multibeam 3D shipborne surveillance radar.

Known as Sea Giraffe AMB D, the new ‘digital' evolution introduces a rotating active electrically scanned array (AESA) antenna together with a new software architecture and modern processing. Unveiling the system on 27 October 2026, Saab said the AMB D offered greater range, higher accuracy and improved electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM) performance in comparison to the previous Mod C production baseline.

Sharing commonality with the ground-based Giraffe AMB D radar launched in June 2026, the key change introduced with Sea Giraffe AMB D is a new AESA ‘front end' based on an array of Gallium Nitride transmit/receive modules. According to Saab, the move to an AESA antenna, coupled with new ‘back end' processing, enables Sea Giraffe AMB D to detect, track, and classify aircraft out to an instrumented range of 250 km, representing a 50% increase over the previous Mod C.

The Sea Giraffe AMB D array face comprises six Transmit/Receive Modules. Each module is populated by six Transmit/Receive Elements (TREs), aggregating to a total of 36 TREs per array.

A surface channel - unique to the Sea Giraffe AMB D variant - allows for the detection and tracking of manned or unmanned surface vessels out to 50 km. The AESA array, combined with the high antenna refresh rate (1Hz), also provides an improvement in tracking accuracy against high speed manoeuvring targets, said the company.

ECCM is another area where Saab claims a significant improvement. Specific ECCM features include very low sidelobes, fast frequency change, sidelobe blanking, sidelobe cancellation, sector transmission, and automatic selection of the least jammed frequency.