VVIP B.777-300ERs For IAF

Following the green-light from the Defence Acquisition Council last May, the process of buying back two Boeing B.777-300ERs from Air India for the Indian Air Force’s Palam-based Communications Squadron was recently completed, and by early next year they will proceed to the Bedek Aviation Division of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), where they will be retrofitted with customised interiors (to be supplied by Germany’s Lufthansa Technik AG), as well as a state-of-the-art communications/self-protection suite of Israeli origin. The entire retrofittiong exercise involving the two B.777-300ERs and their consequent airworthiness certification as VVIP transportation aircraft will be completed by next October.

The to-be-retrofitted avionics suite’s architecture, called EL/M-2160F Flight Guard, will be installed and integrated by IAI, with ELBIT Systems Ltd, Israel Military Industries (IMI) and ORBIT Communication Systems being the principal sub-contractors. IAI/ELTA will supply the EL/M-2160(V1) radar-based MAWS (for detecting and tracking inbound radar-guided SAMs), while IMI will provide the chaff countermeasures dispensers for diverting such SAMs. For neutralising the threats posed by heat-seeking SAMs and AAMs, ELBIT Systems on December 16, 2015 was awarded a US$26.5 million contract to supply belly-mounted, conformal commercial multi-spectral infra-red countermeasures (C-MUSIC) suites. Based on Elbit Systems’ MUSIC family of directed Iinfra-red countermeasure (DIRCM) system for fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, C-MUSIC uses advanced fibre-laser DIRCM technology that is integrated with a passive airborne warning system (PAWS).

The secure SATCOM communications suite (incorporating ECIL-built encryption systems) will be ELBIT Systems’ InterSKY 4G multi-service, two-way broadband (voice, video and data) system that will be operable in the Ku and Ka bandwidths. The airborne VSAT antenna (AirTRx 60cm parabolic antenna) will be supplied by ORBIT Communication Systems.

To be retrofitted in future will be ELBIT Systems’ ClearVision enhanced flight vision system (EFVS) that covers the full flight envelope and overcomes extreme weather conditions and low-visibility situations in day and night.  Comprising TV, IR and thermal imaging sensors, and a HUD, this nose-mounted solution enables intuitive ‘out-of-the-window’ flying, minimises the dependency on airport landing aids, reduces landing minima and provides takeoff credit. The EFVS’ display fuses conformal flight guidance symbology with synthetic vision presentation and high-resolution video on a HUD. Using multi-spectral sensors to capture and display terrain and airport lights in darkness and reduced visibility, the sensors are combined and fused on the HUD, with a global terrain database (synthetic vision system, or SVS), functioning as a combined vision system (CVS). 

The CVS provides a high-fidelity view of the outside world even when actual visibility is zero and enables pilots to see the runway lights better, in conditions impairing the visibility of unaided approach. The different sensors help identify the profile of runway lights, and to penetrate atmospheric obscurants such as fog, clouds, rain, snow, dust or smoke. It also improves the pilot’s vision of both conventional floodlights and LED-based lights, which cannot be detected by conventional FLIR-based sensors. This dramatically improves the pilot’s ability to execute precision and non-precision approaches and safely land, thereby reducing the risks of controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accidents.