Battlefield Surveillance Aircraft ASTOR

The ASTOR (Airborne Stand-Off Radar) system, an X-band airborne radar, was developed for the United Kingdom's ground-surveillance program. Based on the Hughes ASARS-2 radar used in the U.S. Air Force U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, it features a passive phased array design with a new 4.6-meter antenna developed by Marconi Radar & Countermeasures Systems. The radar, manufactured by Raytheon, was integrated into Bombardier Global Express business jets, operating at high altitudes in all weather conditions to provide high-resolution battlefield imagery with an instrumented range of 250-300 km and a range resolution of 1.18 m. It offered both a low-resolution wide-area swath mode and a high-resolution spot mode, achieving resolutions under 30 centimeters in spot mode, with an electrically steered antenna that had a narrow blind spot fore and aft of the aircraft. ASTOR entered service with the RAF in December 2008 and was decommissioned by 2021.

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