An Airbus-led industrial consortium has received the RIFAN 2.1 contract from the French defence procurement agency, the company announced on 4 March.
The €150 million contract will run for up to eight years. The consortium also includes Naval Group and Rohde & Schwarz.
The contract covers work to maintain and adapt the French naval forces' existing IP network, RIFAN 2, to the needs of the navy, to integrate new ships and address hardware and software obsolescence.
The work will also enable future front-line frigates and replenishment tankers to be integrated into the RIFAN 2 network. The network adaptations will involve both its central architecture and an update of the cybersecurity incident monitoring and detection system.
A total of 63 ships are equipped with the RIFAN 2 network, which is designed for the exchange of data of various classification levels between ships at sea and on-shore command centres. The network transmits data from applications specific to the coordination of carrier group operations and those dedicated to the daily and logistical management of life on board. The system uses satellite connections, such as Comcept or Syracuse, and also the radio communication systems allowing all-Internet Protocol exchanges between ships, with a range of several dozen nautical miles.
RIFAN 2 also provides overall network management and cybersecurity incident monitoring capability.
The airborne three-domain, the two ground-based and the ¼ ATR OpenVPX-based cross-domain systems were engineered to provide real-time security across multi-domain operations.
DARPA’s Mission-Integrated Network Control (MINC) programme was set up to develop an autonomous tactical network and enable critical data flow in contested environments.
Why space is an essential part of modern military capabilities
Defence-secure mixed reality headsets can save hours, or even weeks, of travel time to fix defunct equipment or get subject experts effectively “on-site” where they are needed.
The Joint Counter Radio-Controlled Improvised Explosive Device Electronic Warfare (JCREW) counter-improvised explosive device (C-IED) and Drone Restricted Access Using Known Electromagnetic Warfare (DRAKE) counter-UAS (CUAS) systems are mounted and dismounted RF jammers.
Adarga’s Vantage information analysis tool is in service with the UK MoD and individual UK forces. It builds on the company’s Knowledge Platform which processes, organises and analyses open source material, as well as information held by the user’s military, security and intelligence services.
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