RF Products to provide a complete VHF/UHF Multi-Mode, Multi-Band RF Distribution System for Royal Australian Navy

RF PRODUCTS, INC. — Camden, New Jersey — announced today that it received a contract to provide a complete VHF/UHF Multi – Mode, Multi – Band RF Distribution System (M3B RFD) for the Royal Australian Navy’s (RAN) SEA 1442 Phase 4 Project. The Project includes a total radio – to – antenna upgrade to RAN’s 8 ANZAC Class Frigates , which were commissioned from 1996 to 2006.

The award to RF Products was a subcontract from Selex ES, the UK based Prime Contractor, as the result of a competitive Request for Tender by the Australian Defense Material Organization (DMO). RF Products was teamed mutually – exclusively with Selex and thereby participated in the overall radio system design and in writing the prime proposal submitted to the DMO.

The Australian Minister for Defense Sen. David Johnston said the communications modernization on board the ANZAC frigates will be a significant boost for the Navy, ensuring the ANZAC frigates will achieve and maintain information superiority in the maritime environment. “The SEA 1442 Phase 4 Acquisition Contract [ to Selex ] , valued at nearly $188 million, will deliver a significant improvement to the communications capability through an integrated system, including new radio and switching systems, secure voice and tactical communications system, and a communications management system,” Senator Johnston said, “This new system will allow high – speed networking of ships within a task group as well as more efficient and effective communications from ship to shore “.

The capability upgrade will lay the foundation of a maritime architecture critical to future RAN tactical communications. It will also contribute towards the Australian Defense Force’s network – centric warfare concept in the maritime environment. RF Products’ RFD basically includes all of the RF equipment required between all of the M3B radios and the antennas distributed throughout the top of the ship. The RFD solves cosite interference problems among the radios and keeps antenna population to a minimum. The RFD enables multiple radios to operate simultaneously and enables the operator to quickly and easily change radios between bands and modes either singularly or all at the same time.

The control of the complex RFD is simplified via RF Products’ patented Remote Control RFD Digital Dashboard (R2D2 TM ) “RF Products has been in the military RF tuning business since 1921 and we have been building on that background toward this level of overall radio and RFD system performance through the last 15 years of IR&D investment and experience deliver ing to other customers ” said Frank Arlotta , RF Products Vice President of Sales, Marketing and System Engineering . “RF Products has the first and still only Type Designated airborne RFD, the ARC – 233.

We are very grateful for this contract which is the new state-of-the-art in shipboard radio system design and proves that our M3B RFD / R2D2 concept provide s coherence across different ship designs and different aircraft designs. War fighters will be able to more easily adapt platform external communications to changes i n mission focus. Governments will be able to see a more significant return on their investment in modern radios through increased and improved ship and aircraft communications capabilities.”

RF Products’ M3B RFD is operated through software developed by Specialty Systems Inc., another New Jersey company.

This was RF Products’ second win to provide hardware for the ANZAC Frigates. In 1991 RF Products won the contract to provide UHF Multicouplers for use with the old generation radios originally installed in the ship construction phase.