Abstract: The inherent characteristics, development trends, and the urgent need for transitioning from “digitization” to “softwareization” of airborne fire control radar are analyzed in this article. First,the software radar technology system is outlined from the perspectives of overall design, basic hardware and software, component development, integration and verification. In response to the strong real-time and embedded characteristics of airborne fire control radar, key technologies urgently needed to be solved in this field of software radar have been studied. The key technologies include open system architecture, lightweight/ low-latency middleware, principles of component abstraction and division, efficient component development mechanisms, and model-driven component integration development environments. Then, the verification approach for airborne fire control software radar is discussed in terms of real-time performance, reconfigurability, and software decoupling. Finally, for the current situation that China has not yetequipped with airborne fire control software radar that fully meets the requirements of open architecture, some key problems that need to be focused on and solved are pointed out.