Research in optical microwave interaction, at its earlier stages, was spured by the desire to make an optically fed and controlled phased array antenna with monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) transmit/receive (T/R) modules. In the first part of this paper experimental results are presented demonstrating an optically fed phased array antenna operating at C-band in the 5.5 to 5.8 GHz frequency range. The present system consists of two optically fed 14 subarrays with MMIC based active T/R modules. Custom designed fiber optic links have been employed to provide distribution of data and frequency reference signals to phased array antenna. One of the challenges of the future is the development of better interfaces between electronic (microwave) and optical components, including the chip level merging of photonic and electronic components on III-V compounds. This aspect of the research is covered in the second half of the paper.