A few weeks ago, ADM reported whether Australian Super Hornets were to get the MIDS terminals as integrated into the US Navy’s Super Hornets which had been criticised by the US Navy’s director of operational test and evaluation, Michael Gilmore, as being neither operationally effective nor operationally suitable.
This report came from ‘Inside the Pentagon’ newsletter.
We noted that ViaSat had earlier announced it had received an additional order for MIDS-LVT terminals which included support for a FMS requirement from Australia.
ViaSat Australia’s Peter Weismann has pointed out that the MIDS-LVT terminals destined for our Super Hornets are not the MIDS-JTRS terminals referred to in the report.
“MIDS-JTRS has not been approved for Australia and JTRS radios of any type are yet to be approved for Australia,” Weisman said.
“The MIDS-JTRS is a brand new capability at the leading edge of technology with four completely separate radios [1 x Link 16 and 3 x JTRS] squeezed into the same space that currently holds a single Link 16 MIDS-LVT terminal.
“These incredibly complex terminals are designed and built to withstand what can only be called a controlled crash every time an aircraft lands on a carrier deck with tremendous strain on the whole airframe, not just the radio terminals.
“Initial Operational Testing (IOT) provides the opportunity to catch out any or all issues under “real life” scenarios prior to being certified operational and this is just what the testing did; as it is designed to do.
Advice from ViaSat US is that all the faults and issues noted in the US article have been rectified and are about to be test flown on a terminal in June.
“The MIDS Low Volume Terminal [LVT] is a single channel Link 16 terminal and is entirely different to the MIDS JTRS except for the size.
These are the type of terminals currently fitted to the RAAF Super Hornets,” he said.
ViaSat has begun delivering ground and shipboard versions of the MIDS-LVT terminal for use in Australian Defence projects such as JP2048 LHD, SEA 1448 ANZAC ASMD Upgrade and JP2089 Tactical Information Exchange Domain.
We understand that all are performing as expected without any issues whatsoever.