UK awards AirTanker network node upgrade for Voyager
The UK is to upgrade between 10 and 14 of its Voyager tanker-transport aircraft with the VOSE capability to turn them into information nodes. (AirTanker)
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has contracted AirTanker to upgrade its Airbus Voyager tanker-transport aircraft into an airborne information node for multidomain operations.
Announced by the Voyager Delivery Team (VDT) in late June, the award covers the design, development, certification, qualification, embodiment, and through-life support of the Voyager Operating System Evolution (VOSE) capability across the majority of the fleet of 14 aircraft.
“This … will resolve the Military Mission System obsolescence by embodying the Multifunction Information Distribution System and the Joint Tactical Radio System (MIDS/JTRS),” the notification said, adding that the award is valued at GBP170 million (USD231 million).
According to the VDT, the upgrade will be rolled out to between 10 and 14 Voyager aircraft. No timeline was disclosed.
News of the award comes five years after the Royal Air Force (RAF) said in 2020 that it was to trial the use of the Voyager as an airborne information node as part of a wider drive to develop a next-generation air force under Project Astra.
The experiment conducted under the guise of Babel Fish VII saw a Voyager aircraft equipped with the Deckard, Nexus, and Raven systems. Deckard is a ‘cloud'-based application, Nexus is a data platform, and Raven is a micro-digitalised server.
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