Military uses of airborne SAR:
(1) Detect the enemy’s in-depth military situation;
(2) Reconnaissance of enemy artillery positions, tanks and troop assembly areas within a certain distance;
(3) Reconnaissance of the enemy’s forward airports and aircraft types;
(4) Reconnaissance of warships and troop transports parked in enemy transportation hubs such as train stations or military ports;
(5) Use high-resolution SAR to image and identify enemy large heavy weapons;
(6) Use lower frequency high-resolution SAR to identify enemy tank-explosive minefields;
(7) Assess the enemy's losses after bombing the enemy's military facilities with missiles or aircraft.

With the development of technologies such as resolution, real-time imaging, high-speed image processing, data compression, real-time image transmission, and secondary image distribution, the technical performance of synthetic aperture radar systems is getting higher and higher, and the working status and system combination are becoming more and more complex. Its general development trend is:

(1) Functionally develop in the direction of multi-platform, multi-frequency band, multi-polarization, multi-working mode, multi-function compatibility, and multi-domain information processing integration.
(2) In terms of performance, synthetic aperture radar should have the target recognition capability of high-resolution imaging of small-velocity targets; use multi-dimensional resolution of rotating objects and large information bandwidth to improve resolution.
(3) On the transmission path, it will develop from a single aircraft-to-ground real-time transmission to comprehensive directions such as aircraft-to-satellite-ground, aircraft-to-machine-to-ground, aircraft-to-ship, and ground-to-ground ground networking facilities.
(4) Three-dimensional imaging: SAR interferometers can be used to measure the height of scatterers to obtain three-dimensional images, such as the American P3-SAR.
(5) Combination of SAR system and GMTI: For example, the HISAR radar in the United States, in addition to large-scale surveillance and reconnaissance functions, also has ground and slow-motion target display; another example is the multi-functional airborne tactical radar

AN/APG76, in addition to DBS/SAR strip mode and spotlight mode, also has ground moving target detection capabilities.
(6) Combination of multiple working states: For example, the P3-SAR in the United States has two working modes: strip surveying (for rough surveying) and cluster surveying and mapping (for precise surveying). It only needs to pass through the surveying and mapping area once. One viewing angle can image a scene and multiple smaller areas.

(7) SAR is gradually integrated with phased arrays: Westinghouse and Texas Instruments jointly developed T/R components for SAR active arrays for the X, L, and C bands, as well as three-part subarrays for the X, L, and C bands. Active array antenna.