Air Power: HATS - RFT has arrived | ADM February 2012

Nigel Pittaway | Melbourne

ATS, or AIR 9000 Phase 7, aims to introduce a new rotary wing training system, predominantly for Army and Navy crews, which will be in service for the next 20-30 years and has had a long and somewhat difficult gestation to date.

Although being conducted independently of the fixed-wing Pilot Training Scheme project AIR 5428 (see P40 for more), HATS by necessity shares some synergies and the two project offices are therefore very much aware of what one another is doing. The output of AIR 5428 will be the input to HATS for Army and Navy candidates.

HATS is more than just a helicopter acquisition project and, like its fixed-wing counterpart, seeks to acquire a complete training system, with simulation and courseware playing a role arguably as important as the helicopter itself. As it stands, the platform requirement is based upon a twin engine, glass cockpit IFR helicopter capable of both ab-initio and operational pilot and aircrew member training.

In recent times, it has been reported that Army has had second thoughts about both projects. Firstly considering whether to conduct any fixed wing training at all and secondly, if it were to abandon it, whether a two-type solution to HATS would be necessary – with a simpler, single engine helicopter taking care of the screening and ab-initio roles.

This has threatened to destabilise, if not delay, both HATS and AIR 5428, with some industry observers blaming the gestation period coupled with the Army promotion process for the alternative thinking, as personnel move into and away from the project.

Happily however it would appear that Army is back on board with the original HATS concept, though it has yet to make up its mind what the fixed wing introduction will look like.

“Army has reaffirmed their endorsement coming in to the RFT process, though both Army and Navy will continue to look at their needs,” said Stuart Harwood, Project Director of Aircrew Training Projects for DMO. “Defence has determined that a single helicopter type is both suitable for doing everything we need to do and will likely have the lowest overheads.”

“We received some excellent feedback which has been considered and a number of improvements made to the suite of documents,” Harwood added. “Basically we’ve set the boundaries for the solution space and now we’re going to go out with the RFT and challenge industry to dazzle us with practical and affordable innovative solution.”

There have been some changes along the way however, with early discussions around a Public Finance Initiative (PFI)/Public-Private Partnership (PPP) not being followed through.

“We have ministerial direction, after much advice, that we will progress HATS as a Direct Capital Acquisition through a performance-based contracting construct,” explained Harwood. “There will be a degree of partnering from the point of view that the contractor will be providing a lot of resources to both manage and deliver the training and that will be done under a performance-based contract.”

Another possible change may be the dropping of the requirement for the successful bidder to provide a maritime support vessel.

“We are looking at alternate methods towards delivery of the aviation training capability,” Harwood said. “At the end of the day there will still be an aviation training vessel to support maritime environment training competencies. We’re currently studying the most suitable means to deliver that and one option might be still to go with it as part of the HATS construct. Another option is to acquire the capability through other mechanisms and deliver it as government-furnished equipment to the HATS program.” 

Harwood says the tender process will depend upon how many responses are received and how many teams are downselected to run through the full process, but HATS should begin producing graduates from late 2016.

“From the release of the RFT there is a degree of flexibility on how we progress the tender evaluation as it will be based on the number and quality of responses. Our focus is more on when the project will start delivering graduates rather than when specific milestones will be hit.”

This is some way ahead of the timeline for AIR 5428 to begin delivering graduates, but he said that there are no plans for an ‘interim’ HATS to accept graduates from the existing system.

“The customer has done a very good job of defining what they need and moreover they have done this consistently over a number of years,” said Raytheon Australia CEO Michael Ward. “What we have seen is a finessing of requirements, not a marked change in them. What that allowed us to do was to start preparing our solution some while ago and we were able to go to the market early.”

Raytheon Australia is teamed with Bell and Virtual Simulation Systems to bid a training package centred upon the Bell 429 helicopter, becoming one of the first coalitions to declare their interest.

“We have been working closely with Bell to mature our solution and we have an excellent platform in the 429, which is at the start of its product development lifecycle,” said Ward. “We have also done a considerable amount of work with Virtual Simulation Systems, on the visual environment which supports the system.

“We’ve paid a lot of attention to the design of the support system because it is very important in terms of keeping costs down, providing the customer with the flexibility to maintain the system over 20 to 30 years.”

Raytheon has recently been awarded Tranche 2 of the Navy’s Retention and Motivation Initiative, which is aimed at keeping crews current in modern, glass-cockpit, twin-turbine helicopters until the MRH 90 and MH 60R are established in service over the next few years. Initially formed around second-hand AgustaWestland 109E Powers, the four year RMI/2 will replace these with three Bell 429s and, if the two one-year options for extensions are exercised, will stretch things out until HATS will begin graduating students.

“RMI/2 and Phase 7 are in no way con nected, but it will allow us to conduct some de-risking activities for the Phase 7 offer which includes the issuance of a military type certificate,” added Ward. “The 429 is a very economical platform to support. We were able to make an offer for RFI/2 which was, in dollar terms, significantly lower than our offer for RMI/1 for the same scope of work.”

Ward says he estimates around 25 platforms will be required for HATS and, if the Raytheon-led bid is successful would subsume the three RMI helicopters.

Another established teaming is that of BAE Systems Australia, AgustaWestland (via parent Finmeccanica) and Rotorsim (itself a consortium of CAE and AgustaWestand) which during 2011 announced it would base its HATS bid around the AW109 GrandNew, the latest variant of the A109 family.

The team displayed an example of the GrandNew, on loan from Linfox, to the Navy at Nowra recently, giving pilots and aircrew a chance to sample the aircraft for themselves.

Speaking at the teaming agreement, announced during last years Avalon Airshow, AgustaWestland CEO Guiseppe Orsi said,  “With this team, we have brought together the world’s foremost rotorcraft capability provider in AgustaWestland, a global leader in simulation-based training with CAE, and one of the world’s most capable through life support partners in BAE Systems.”

Rotorsin was founded in 2003 to provide ‘comprehensive training solutions to AgustaWestland operators around the world’ and has been training pilots on the AW109 family since 2006.

Boeing Defence Australia and Thales Australia also signed an agreement at Avalon to co-operate on a bid for HATS. Although they are yet to announce a choice of platform there is speculation that their training system may be based upon the Eurocopter EC135 platform.

“The teaming with Thales is going well, we’ve been looking at the various components of the system and how to pull a training system design together that meets the Commonwealth’s needs,” said Mark McDonald, Boeing Australia’s Business Manager for AIR 9000/7 and 5428. “We’ve been assessing platforms throughout the year and our focus has been on a platform which best meets both the Commonwealth training system goals and the candidate system design.

“That process is not quite done and at the moment we anticipate announcing our preferred platform in the first couple of months of 2012.”

McDonald says the Army Aircrew Training and Training Support (AATTS) system run by BDA at Oakey on behalf of Army has provided valuable experience, which has been used to hone the HATS bid.

“Boeing’s experience at Oakey highlights the significance of AIR 9000 Phase 7, but HATS is both broader and more complex than AATTS,” he claimed. “That experience has allowed us to offer a solution that minimises the Commonwealth’s establishment costs and risk.”

Thales Australia’s Tony Landers, Manager Business Development Maritime & Aerospace is also happy with progress: “We have been working very effectively with Boeing throughout the year, working up our solution in anticipation of the tender and we are ready to go,” he said.

Eurocopter has indicated that it will offer the EC135 to whichever team wants to use it, acting as the Original Equipment Manufacturer. Given the relatively small numbers of helicopter types which meet the HATS criteria and also that both AgustaWestland and Bell have teamed with other companies to supply the GrandNew and 429, it would appear to place the European aerospace giant in a position to have the EC135 in more than one bid.

Lockheed Martin Australia (LMA) also used the Avalon show to announce their partnership with Bristow Helicopters ‘to provide a comprehensive student-centered training design with a demonstrated cost-effective helicopter support capability’. Under the arrangement, LMA will utilise its global training systems and logistics experience, coupled with the operational know-how of Bristow, which manages a world-wide fleet of offshore support helicopters.’

The company declined to provide any further details when approached, saying only that “The LMA-Bristow team’s focus remains on the merits of the training system rather than selection of the flying platform.”

Not all players have officially declared an interest in the project and the complete make-up of industry coalitions, or teaming, for the competition will not be finally known until the RFT is released.

Australian Aerospace, Eurocopter’s subsidiary in Australia, is one such company which has yet to formally announce its intentions but industry sources say a decision has been made to bid for HATS as a prime contractor, naturally based around the EC135.

If HATS is to begin delivering its first graduates in late 2016, as predicted by the Project Office, significant and timely progress will need to be made through the tender process. 2012 is shaping up to be a very interesting year.