A People’s Liberation Army (PLA)-accredited, publicly traded firm is marketing an advanced airborne fire-control radar believed to be from Elta Systems, the same Israeli state-owned subsidiary at the heart of an incendiary chapter in US-Israel relations that continues to reverberate 15 years after Washington forced Israel to cancel a controversial contract with Beijing.
According to a product catalogue by NAV Technology Company, the Beijing-based firm claims its active electronic scanned array (AESA) radar “incorporates Elta’s decades of field-proven experience with real operational feedback from Israel Air Force combat pilots.”
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While the catalogue — distributed at Airshow China in Zhuhai last November — does not directly identify Elta’s ELM-2052 radar by name, its two-page description is nearly identical to publicly available marketing data by Elta, a subsidiary of state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), whose Phalcon aerial warning and control radar deal with Beijing was terminated in mid-2000 due to fierce opposition from executive and legislative branches of the US government.
The NAV-purported product boasts advanced multimode capabilities for precision, long-range attack of multiple air, sea and moving ground targets.
If indeed the radar is part of NAV’s product portfolio, it could provide Chinese-made fighters — including those planned for export to Iran and other nations hostile to both Israel and the United States — with the ability to track and attack dozens of targets simultaneously.
Israel’s Ministry of Defence on Monday said it has no knowledge of NAV and its claimed association with Elta. Yet when asked if the MoD had ever granted IAI a license to market the Elta airborne AESA radar in China or to a Chinese subsidiary, spokeswoman Orna Simhoni-Ofer declined to answer and referred Defense News to IAI.
Read the full story at Defense News , by Wendell Minnick and Barbara Opall-Rome
