Sydney-based engineering and technology company, Cirrus Real Time Processing Systems, has secured three new defence contracts for Air Force and Navy systems.

Cirrus managing director, Peter Freed, said the company was very pleased to start 2020 with these new engagements with Defence.  

“The breadth of engineering encompassed by these works – spanning from the development of sensor and simulation technologies to the supply of support engineering services – exemplifies the capability within the high technology small to medium sized enterprise (SME) sector of the Australian defence industry,” he said.

One contract is with the RAAF for the development of light weight, deployable and interoperable Electronic Warfare (EW) sensors for the localisation of radio frequency transmitters.

Another is with the Royal Australian Navy for the extension of the Cirrus Generic COMCEN (communications centre) Simulator (GCS) to additionally simulate the behaviour of the Maritime Tactical Wide Area Network (MTWAN) functionality that operates in concert with a ship’s COMCEN.

Announcing the original Cirrus simulator deal with the Navy last year, then Defence Minister Christopher Pyne said this was another innovative step forward for our Navy, providing our highly capable sailors with the training tools they need to succeed in their mission of preserving peace and security for all Australians.

He said the naval communications simulator allows sailors to train in a simulated operational environment. It creates scenarios that may be faced by communicators embarked in major fleet units.

 “Communicators are critical to the success of our fleet as we operate in an increasingly dynamic maritime domain, regularly in task groups with ships, aircraft and troops on the ground,” he said.

The Cirrus third contract is also with the RAN and follows the Commonwealth’s exercise of an option for the expansion of engineering services provided for additional Tactical Electronic Warfare (TACEW) equipment.

That equipment was recently delivered by Cirrus to the RAN (HMAS Watson) under an earlier contract.