🔷 GaN's the Man

GaN

Welcome to 2025, where Gallium Nitride (GaN) is now the semiconductor material-of-choice in AESA radars around the world.

What

First, a quick refresh: semiconductors are the materials at the heart of all electronics. They're halfway conductors—they let electricity flow, but you can control that flow.

For decades, silicon ruled the roost.

Then came Gallium Nitride (GaN), which is a compound semiconductor (see, it has 2 words in the name). Think of GaN as a superhero version of silicon, especially for high-power electronics like radars.

Weirdly, GaN was invented in the 1990s to solve a very niche, very non-military problem: colored LEDs—specifically, the blue LED (if you’re too young to remember the 1990s, all LEDs were red).

GaN has a "wider bandgap" than silicon, which means it can handle much higher voltage and temperature, it wastes less energy (i.e., less heat), and it can pack more power into a smaller space.

So What

GaN is also very useful in RF devices... like active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars.

Benefits of GaN-based radars:

• Longer range for the same size radar (or better at finding small targets)

• More capabilities at once (tracking targets, jamming enemy signals, etc.)

• Wide frequencies it can operate (non-traditional spectrum operations, harder to jam, etc.).

• Or, the same/improved performance in a much smaller, lighter package

What’s New

Almost all new surface-based AESA radars have replaced Gallium Arsenide (GaA) with GaN. As the tech matures, it’s also proliferating across air applications.

The F-35’s APG-81 radar is getting upgraded to Northrop Grumman’s APG-85, which presumably has GaN. That’s not news, but this is: Raytheon confirmed its upgrading the F-15EX APG-82 radar with a GaN variant dubbed the APG-82(V)X.

The world’s largest fighter AESA radar is about to get even better.

India

On the international front, India’s GaN-based Virupaaksha radar is going into its Su-30MKI fleet as part of the 300-jet ‘Super Sukhoi’ upgrade program.

It’s a scaled-up GaN version of the smaller Uttam AESA radar used in the Tejas fighter fleet, which is also getting a GaN AESA upgrade.

Open sources say the Virupaaksha radar will have 2,400 T/R modules (the elements on the array). By comparison, the F-35’s APG-81 has 1,676. Open sources also claim it can operate in the S-Band (2-4 GHz), which is way outside the typical X-Band range (8-10 GHz) of fighter radars.

South Korea

You probably missed it, but a few months ago, Hanwah started mass production of an AESA radar for the KF-21. This is South Korea’s first indigenous AESA radar and, yep, it’s using GaN T/R modules too.

This radar has been in development since 2016.

Speaking of South Korea, Raytheon just delivered its first PhantomStrike AESA radar to South Korea for integration on KAI’s FA-50 (light combat variant of the T-50).

The PhantomStrike radar is GaN-based, which is how it can be about half the size and weight of a traditional AESA radar and still pack a punch. It’s also one of (maybe the only?) AESA radar on the market that is air-cooled.

Disruption

As GaN-based radars mature, expect novel capabilities to emerge.

Beyond the obvious longer-range detection and jamming resilience, we can imagine multi-frequency target engagements that leverage different spectrum characteristics (like S-band for long-range search and X-band for fire control) being automated via a single AESA aperture.

These ‘out-of-band’ frequency capabilities are also going to throw a wrench into stealth aircraft employment considerations.

Zooming out

Analysts predicted that 2025 would be the tipping-point year for GaN adoption across multiple industries, and in defense, it looks like they were right.

Look for GaN to find its way into missile seekers and (more) electronic warfare in the coming years.

The frequency fight is about to go through another evolution.

In That Number

175-190

Lockheed Martin expects to deliver 175–190 F-35 fighter jets this year, targeting a steady rate of about 156 annually.

TRIVIA

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, a dentist came up with a novel idea: attack Japan by dropping thousands of tiny incendiary devices on their cities…attached to an animal. Which animal was it?

A) Bats 
B) Rats 
C) Pigeons

On the Radar

X-BAT. Shield AI unveiled X-BAT, a fighter-jet-sized, stealthy VTOL autonomous drone with a 2,000-mile range designed to launch and land on a trailer.

• The Merge’s Take: We dig that X-BAT is pulling concepts from the past; notably the 1950s X-13 Vertijet and the 1990s F-15 ACTIVE 3D thrust vectoring programs. Keep an eye on this concept as it matures. Long range, large payload, runway-independent, stealthy, and multi-role flexibility are all great things—but everything that flies is a compromise of engineering trade-offs. Time will tell what these are. 

Freedom Eagle-1. AV’s FE-1 counter-drone interceptor won the Army’s Long-Range Kinetic Interceptor (LRKI) program. The FE-1 uses a dual-thrust solid rocket motor and is designed to shoot down Group 2 and 3 drones.

• The Merge’s Take: The dual rocket motors, RF-seeker, and 20-lb warhead might seem like overkill, but the FE-1 was designed to be flexible in deployment (good cue not required) and employment (longer range and can also target larger aircraft). The cost of this flexibility: $150,000-$200,000 per interceptor. The cost of a venerable Shahed-136 drone—the FE-1’s primary target—is roughly $50,000.

3 to 1. Airbus, Leonardo, and Thales have signed a landmark pact to merge their space businesses. The new entity will pool complementary technologies across the space sector to better compete on the global market. Notably, this excludes launch services.

• The Merge’s Take: Europe’s space industry is losing money and market share, and the primes are consolidating their resources to survive and fill the sovereign space demand. This merger may partially solve that, but it’s not a good signal for the rest of Europe’s space companies when there will be one giant behemoth to compete against (should this space merger be approved).

• The Merge’s Spicy Take: Even this European mega-merger won’t touch launch. SpaceX owns that game. Europe just waved the white flag on rockets.

They Said It

“X-BAT looks super cool, but Anduril's unannounced runway-independent, AI-piloted aircraft with even longer range flew its first VTOL flight in January of 2020. The airframe is currently sitting in the Anduril HQ showroom. See you at the Dubai Airshow next month, @shieldaitech!”

— Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril, calling out Shield AI on X

Our Latest Episode!

Knowledge Bombs

• China’s huge GJ-X stealth drone has been spotted in the air for the first time

• Sweden & Ukraine unveiled a plan to deliver up to 150 Gripen E fighters

• SOCOM is looking for a small drone-launched fire-and-forget missile

• Seasats unveiled Quickfish, a high-speed USV

• Apex announced plans to launch a space-based interceptor demo next year (video!)

• Raytheon delivered its first PhantomStrike radar for KAI's FA-50 fleet

• AV won a $95.9M Army contract to deliver Freedom Eagle C-UAS missile

• Airbus, Leonardo, & Thales signed a space merger pact to form a new joint venture

• The Space Force is planning to establish a $905M maneuverable GEO satellite program

• Anduril acquired IR camera manufacturer AIRS

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ANSWER
A) Bats. The Bat Bomb involved releasing a compartmented bomb full of hibernating bats carrying small napalm incendiary devices. The project had several tests but a series of setbacks, including a time when some bats escaped prematurely and blew up a hangar and a general's car.