Viasat Receives Government Certification of IFF Test Set and IFF Certification Tools

Viasat, Inc. (NASDAQ: VSAT), a global leader in satellite communications, today announced that its Viasat Radio Frequency Generator (VRG)-1000 solution has been recertified by the Department of Defense AIMS program office.

Initially certified in 2017, the VRG-1000 has expanded its capabilities and is the only AIMS certified real-time, Identify Friend or Foe (IFF) RF environment generator.

The Viasat VRG-1000 is a commercial IFF testing capability that is highly specialized for testing military and commercial IFF systems. IFF systems are used in nearly all aircraft worldwide for reliable navigation and aircraft identification.

The VRG-1000 is unique in its ability to model complex flight environments at RF, making it easier for IFF manufacturers or integrators to test the effectiveness of their systems. The VRG-1000 provides certification tools for transponders, interrogators and passive receivers. Viasat’s evolved solution can significantly simplify the process for complex testing, which would previously require the use of multiple test sets to complete a single test. The Viasat solution will accelerate the supported test times from weeks to hours, including the VRG-1000 certification tool that performs complex Automatic Overload Control (AOC) transponder certification tests in less than one hour.

The VRG-1000 enables testing in a realistic, highly dense environment which other IFF test sets can’t replicate. The Viasat solution is designed to support a density of 400 targets on a single system, and over 2000 targets with multiple systems. The VRG-1000 IFF test set can also generate RF for up to 50 tightly synchronized interrogators to create complex, non-overlapping interrogations for testing transponder density and corner cases.

“With the increasing complexity of the RF signal environment, the need for more advanced, realistic testing capabilities has never been more important as older IFF testing capabilities can no longer support new AIMS certification requirements,” said David Schmolke, Vice President of Mission Connections and Cybersecurity, Viasat Government. “Viasat’s VRG-1000 IFF test set allows the user to perform comprehensive and complex flight-testing during development and our certification tools enable IFF certification testing in a fraction of the time previously required, resulting in improved product time-to-market with lower development and test costs for our customers.”