Several RAAF capabilities were the subject of briefings by senior RAAF officials at Avalon, including the recent (and ongoing) operational success of the Boeing E-7A Wedgetail Airborne Early Warning & Control (AEW&C) platform during Operation Okra.
Wing Commander Paul Carpenter, executive officer of No.42 Wing provided details of an interim modification to provide an IP chat capability to Wedgetail immediately prior to the Operation Okra deployment.
WGCDR Carpenter was previously the Commanding Officer of No.2 Squadron and the detachment commander of the first rotation of Wedgetail personnel, who returned to Australia in January.
He said that, prior to the initial Okra deployment, the Wedgetail was fitted with an IP chat capability, providing text, rather than voice connectivity with the Combined Air Operations Centre in-theatre.
“The introduction of the IP chat capability into the aircraft was a real success story for us,” he explained.
“That project looked like being many years in the future but when we got notice of our deployment, our engineering department team got together with the Wing, AEW&C System Project Office and Boeing Defence Australia, and came up with a solution in a matter of weeks.”
He said the system went ‘live’ on the evening before the first mission, in which the Wedgetail became the first Australian military aircraft to operate over Iraq during the current campaign.
“It uses an iridium satellite telephone system and it was developed incrementally, getting communications set up and them providing basic data, getting in to the right networks and tapping in to the American system, because the Americans use IP chat extensively,” he added.
Boeing Defence Australia managing director Kim Gillis also revealed that Boeing was marketing the E-7A platform to a number of countries at the present time.
“There are a number of other customers looking at it and we are competing in a range of campaigns but they are not public yet,” he said.
This article first appeared in Australian Defence Magazine VOL.23 No.4, April 2015