Israeli Navy close to completing radar upgrades for ships

The Israeli Navy is set to complete all radar upgrades on its Sa’ar 4.5 and Sa’ar 5 ships in less than a year, a senior naval official has told Janes .

INS Lahav leads another Sa’ar 5 fitted with the ALPHA radar during Exercise ‘Mighty Waves’ in August 2019. They are followed by the French frigate Auvergne . (Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images)

The navy is currently upgrading its Sa’ar 4.5s with the IAI Elta ELM-2258 Advanced Lightweight Phased Array (ALPHA) radar. This is an active electronically scanned array (AESA) S-band system with a rotating antenna that was designed for the relatively small ships.

Two of the three Sa’ar 5 corvettes are also receiving the ALPHA. One was seen with the new radar during Exercise ‘Mighty Waves’ in August 2019.

The third Sa’ar 5, INS Lahav , has already been fitted with the larger ELM-2248 MF-Star radar, providing a testbed for the systems that will be installed on the new Sa'ar 6 ships being built in Germany. The senior officer said this radar might be swapped for an ALPHA, but a final decision has yet to be taken.

“We will soon complete the ALPHA installations. This will give us an ability to deal with very complex aerial threats and to view them in high resolution, distinguishing between all sorts of targets,” the source said.

Meanwhile, personnel from the navy's Weapons Systems Department are working to make the radar cross section of the Sa'ar 6 ships “as small as possible”, the source said.