The US Air Force has unveiled its "leap ahead" radar technology for the F-22 Raptor. This aircraft will carry the new APG-77 radar, which can look in several different parts of the sky simultaneously. The radar has several transmitters on the face of its array, and has powerful computers to process the signals. While the range of the radar is classified, it is widely thought to exceed 400km, rivaling the 480km range of the E-3A AWACS. Future upgrades will include synthetic aperture radar, automatic target direct and target cueing, and ground moving target indication. The critical step is getting the Block-3 software to work; its first test flight is to be on 4 Dec. Congress has demanded that this software be successfully flight tested before the end of the year.--Stephen V Cole