22 February 2021

UAE receives third GlobalEye AEW&C aircraft

by Gareth Jennings

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has received its third Saab GlobalEye airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft, the manufacturer announced on 20 February.

Saab delivered the third of five GlobalEye aircraft to the UAE on 20 February. (Saab)

The delivery of the third of the five Bombardier Global 6000 business jet-based platforms that were contracted to the UAE Air Force and Defence (AF&D) under the Swing Role Surveillance System (SRSS) programme came about 10 months after the first was handed over in late April 2020 and five months after the second was delivered in September 2020.

Having signed for an initial three platforms in 2015, the UAE added two more to its SRSS requirement in late December 2020. All five aircraft are due to be with the UAE AF&D by the end of 2025.

The GlobalEye platform is built around the Saab Erieye Extended Range (ER) S-band (2–4 GHz) 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, as with all AESA radars, can be dramatically extended by focusing the radar’s energy in a particular direction. Saab has 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.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has received its third Saab GlobalEye airborne early warning and cont...

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