Page 28 - Australian Defence Magazine May-June 2020

28 EW AIR555
MAY/JUNE 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
PEREGRINE
TO SOAR
FOR RAAF
Construction of the four Gulfstream G550 business jets acquired for Project Air 555 has been completed and external modifications required for the MC-55A Peregrine electronic warfare support configuration are now under way on the first two airframes.
JULIAN KERR | SYDNEY
GROUP Captain Jason Lind, Director of Intelligence, Surveil- lance and Reconnaissance (ISR) at RAAF Headquarters, told ADM that the other two airframes are currently in storage in the US.
Modifications to their hulls will begin at Gulfstream as soon as the first two aircraft are delivered from there to L3 Technologies in Greenville, Texas within the next 12 to 18 months for the installation and integration of their mission systems.
Contract authority for this work has been handed to the US Air Force’s 645th Aeronautical Sys-
tems Group, also known as ‘Big Safari’,
based at Wright Patterson Air Force Base
in Ohio. The secretive group has exten- sive experience in the design and devel- opment of specialised special mission aircraft, particularly those engaged in ISR and EW activities.
“Big Safari are providing program engi- neering management; they will guide L3, they – and we – will approve the design, and they’ll project-manage sub-contrac- tors which are primarily L3 and Gulf- stream,” GPCAPT Lind said to ADM.
The RAAF’s MC-55As will feature a ‘canoe’ fairing under the forward fuselage, an upper fuselage satellite communications antenna, a rear tailcone fairing housing an integrated electro-magnetic infrared (ER/IR) turret, and an antenna fairing on the top of the vertical stabi- liser, he disclosed.
“As you can imagine, there’s additional engineering re- quired if you’re going to integrate a multitude of sensors. You also need to change the internal configuration.
“I don’t want to go into specifics, but all the modifications to the outer mould line of the aircraft have been used in previous de- signs, although they haven’t all been used together at once,” he added.
“It doesn’t mean we’re using the same sensors or mission equipment that other folks have used but certainly we’re using the outer mould so that we can leverage off engineering that has already been undertaken.”
INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS
Israel, Singapore and Italy operate G550s modified by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) with large conformal antennae in the airborne early warning and control role, while the Israeli Air Force also operates two ‘Shavit’ G550 variants tasked with communications and electronic intelligence (ELINT) missions.
“Yes, we’re aware of the Shavit but we haven’t had any contact on it with the Israelis – we have a degree of exper- tise ourselves,” commented GPCAPT Lind.
“THE DECISION TO ORDER FOUR RATHER THAN FIVE G550S FOLLOWED A FORCE STRUCTURE REVIEW “AND OUR FORCE PLANNING INDICATES THAT WILL BE SUFFICIENT AT THE MOMENT”, SAID GPCAPT LIND.”