Fighter jets typically house their main radars behind a radome in the nose, while conventional airborne early-warning aircraft often carry large radar arrays in prominent structures above the fuselage.
Although aircraft wings offer a large surface area, their relatively thin cross-sections leave limited internal space for radar equipment.
Top Chinese military aircraft designers have now proposed a revolutionary method to integrate large antenna arrays into aircraft wings, using flight manoeuvres and coordinated formations of unmanned aircraft to expand radar coverage.
The design was outlined in a study published online on October 10 in the peer-reviewed Chinese journal Measurement & Control Technology, which presented wing-mounted radar as a new approach to building multifunctional, high-performance airborne early-warning systems.