It is is important in today's world to always keep up with constant advances in the field of aerial warfare and one area

that cannot be neglected is airborne early warning and control or aerial surveillance. Until some time recently, major air forces of the world used to exhibit or show off their AEW aircraft via flying displays or photos and videos of giant planes carrying rotating radar dishes sitting on top of the fuselage. Such planes were very expensive and the radar systems they carried aloft with them were just as costly and available to only a handful of operators. However, radar technology is a field that is never known and understood only by a few advanced nations. With unexpectedly huge cash flowing in, some nations have been able to afford making their own advances in this field. So, today, these countries are capable of producing better types of radars including the advanced phased array radar aka electronically scanned radar instead of making do with just the older generation mechanically-rotating dish radar. The new phased array radars can be carried aloft by smaller aircraft due to their compact shapes. One aircraft very ideal for use as a phased array radar plane or AEW plane is the Su-34. This is because the Su-34 has a 'well' located between its twin engines and the phased array radar unit can sit in this well. Other than the well, the Su-34 has enough space in the cockpit (behind the crew) to keep a CPU unit for the radar. Countries that are able to manufacture Su-34 aircraft should examine the usefulness of using them as highly advanced AEW / SEMA / aerial surveillance planes.