In a further purchase illustrating the emerging gulf between Tasman defence capabilities, the Australian government is spending $A2.46bn on four Gulfstream G550 Peregrine business jets to be modified in the US modified for the electronic warfare (EW) mission.
Defence Minister Chris Pyne says the Peregrine is a new airborne electronic warfare capability which will be integrated into Defence’s joint war-fighting networks, providing a critical link between platforms, including the Lockheed Martin F-35A Joint Strike Fighter, the Boeing E-7A Wedgetail, EA-18G Growler electronic strike aircraft warships and Army assets.
The aircraft will be based at RAAF Edinburgh in South Australia alongside the RAAF P-8A Poseidons and its incoming fleet of Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton UAVs. In addition, the RAAF’s future contingent of MQ-9 Reapers will operate from the base.
Modifications will include mission systems and secure communications equipment. The work will be undertaken at L3’s Greenville site in Texas.
A self-protection suite will also be installed, with other programme elements to include ground-based data processing systems, plus spare parts and crew training services.
The RAAF says the 2016 defence White Paper indicated there was an electronic warfare co-ordination role not being filled. Officers say the G550 will serve as “ the conductor of the orchestra”.
Point of Order 
This project is actually replacing two of AP3’s that are kitted out for ELINT and the C130 which I believe is a RoNo pallet system (never actually seen this one) but was a Sky Guardian on the other one a few times.
RAAF Edinburgh is the main RAAF hub for its ISR capabilities, aka spooky’s, sniffers and snoopy’s Units and of course JRON which was developed in Oz when old Bomber was the MoD.
The Gowlers will stay at AMB under separate SQN as a part of 82Wing.
NZ really has no need for such a capability such as this, but does need a 2nd MSR Aircraft to back fill the lack of numbers in the P8 Fleet and UAV BAMS capability as well due to lack of number within the P8 Fleet. The UAV BAMS must have the capability to talk aka share data to all NZDF assets including the OPV’s and IPV’s these two Naval vessels already have gaps within its ability to process any data from the Frigates and P3’s because of the cheap ass pollies and the clowns 🤡 in Treasury who always want Military capability on cheap.
There is already weight issues with the two OPV’s atm, which can be solved if they remove the ice belt fitted to the OPV’s and the lack of a half decent MCS in the OPV’s and IPV’s which is a bit of show stopper atm from having a truly world class ISR capability for the NZDF to enable it to operate in properly in peacetime and in a warlike or NonWarlike environment as required by the GofD.
LikeLike