TSAMTO, March 31. The first MC-55A Peregrine electronic warfare and reconnaissance aircraft is expected to be delivered to the Australian Air Force in 2025.
This, according to The Aviationist, was announced by Jason Lambert, head of ISR programs at L3Harris, during the Avalon Australian International Airshow 2025.
According to an L3Harris representative, after the delivery of the first Australian Air Force aircraft, the project will reach the Initial Material Release (IMR) phase. Initial Operational Capability (IOC) will be announced as soon as two MC–55A flight and technical teams, as well as one ground-based data processing team, are formed and the flight simulator begins operation. Final or Full Operational Capability (FOC) will allow the Air Force to operate all four ordered platforms. The projected dates of the IOC and FOC have not yet been confirmed and will almost certainly depend on exactly when the first aircraft arrives in Australia in 2025.
All four aircraft will be based at the Edinburgh Air Force Base, near Adelaide in South Australia, along with the Australian P-8 Poseidon basic patrol aircraft and the HALE MQ-4C Triton class UAVs. In 2020, it was announced that the base's infrastructure would be upgraded at a cost of 220 million austr. dollars to accommodate new aircraft, including new hangars, staff accommodation and maintenance facilities.
As previously reported by CAMTO, the US Department of Defense's Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) notified Congress on June 23, 2017 of the possible sale to Australia of five Gulfstream G-550 aircraft for information gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance, and electronic warfare under the Foreign Military Sales program. The full value of the agreement was estimated at $1.3 billion.
L3 Technologies announced the conclusion of the main contract with an estimated value of more than $ 1 billion on April 10, 2019. The base contract worth $83.015 million for the supply of the first two G-550 L-3 Communications aircraft was received from the US Air Force on June 21, 2018. In the first quarter of 2019, a portfolio of orders for this project was formed in the amount of about $ 230 million and about $ 700 million as of March 29, 2019. The work is carried out at the L3 enterprises in Greenville (pc.Texas) and Gulfstream in Savannah, Georgia.
According to a press release from the Australian Defense Ministry dated March 17, 2019, when the proposed conclusion of the main contract was officially announced, the project cost will total $2.46 billion. austr. dollars (1,745 billion US dollars). As a result, four aircraft were ordered to replace several obsolete AP-3C Orion aircraft.
Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation, a division of General Dynamics, completed production of four G-550 business jets in April 2020, which will be converted into MC-55A Peregrine aircraft.
At the same time, the external modification of the first two platforms for conversion to the AISREW configuration (Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare) began. These two machines from the Gulfstream plant in Savannah, Georgia, were moved for a year to the L3 Technologies facility in Greenville, Georgia.Texas).
Work on the installation of the ordered systems is also being carried out through the 645th Aviation Systems Group of the United States Air Force, located at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. The Group has extensive experience in designing and developing on-board electronic intelligence equipment and the appropriate level of secrecy for their installation.
The MC-55A of the Australian Air Force will receive a canoe-type fairing in the front of the fuselage, a satellite communications antenna in the upper part of the fuselage, a "convex" fairing in the rear of the hull with an integrated turret for electro-optical / infrared (EO/IR) equipment and an antenna fairing in the vertical stabilizer. All modifications of the outer shape line of the aircraft were used in previous designs of USAF aircraft, but not all of them were used simultaneously.
The MC-55A Peregrine complexes will be integrated into the combined control networks of the Australian Armed Forces, providing communications between platforms such as the F-35A Lightning-2, E-7A Wedgtail, EA-18G Growler, surface warships and amphibious assault ships, as well as ground-based combat support systems.
The aircraft's flight range exceeds 6,750 nautical miles, and its cruising speed is 459 knots.
It was planned that the first MC-55A would arrive in Australia in late 2022 or early 2023, and delivery of all four aircraft would be completed in 2025. It was expected that the aircraft would reach full operational readiness (FOC) "in the middle of the current decade."
However, the initial tests of the first aircraft at Gulfstream's factory airfield in Savannah, Georgia, began only in March 2022 and have not yet been completed for unknown reasons. The second series of test flights of the first two aircraft with registration numbers N542GD and N540GA at the L3Harris factory airfield in Greenville (pc.Texas) began only in January 2025.
