The Australian Department of Defence has restructured a plan to upgrade the Royal Australian Air Force's four General Dynamics RF-111 reconnaissance aircraft.
The revised project - Air 5421 "Tactical Reconnaissance and Strike Support" - will proceed pending its endorsement in a defence white paper which is to be published in November.
Air 5421 replaces the dormant stand-off imaging project to fit the four reconnaissance platforms with a synthetic aperture radar and a long range oblique photography system.
That project was put on hold in December 1996 pending a review of strategic and tactical airborne sensor requirements performed in 1997-8. Moves to restructure the requirement appear to have been carried out during late 1999 and earlier this year.
The restructuring is understood to be heavily based on lessons emerging from Australia's deployment of its RF-111s against Indonesian military and pro-Jakarta militia forces operating in East Timor between April and November last year.
Those operations included the use of an experimental imaging pod comprising a Raytheon DB-110 dual-band sensor mounted in a converted supersonic drop tank with on-board digital recording. The existing RF-111C suite comprises three Recon Optical wet-film cameras and a Lockheed Martin AAD-5A line scanner.
The Australian Department of Defence is also rationalising the ongoing F-111 Block Upgrade programme, with co-ordination of all projects being grouped together as Air 5422.
Upgrade work on the F-111C planned for this year includes the fitting of a narrow-band digital voice terminal and new cockpit voice data recorders.
The RAAF hopes to complete the integration of the PGSUS AGM-142 Have Nap missile onto upgraded aircraft by the end of next year.
Source: Flight International
