Air Power: Training for the tanker | ADM Feb 2011
Katherine Ziesing | Canberra
The Multi-Role Tanker Transport (MRTT) should be close to being accepted into service by the time ADM readers make their way to the 2011 Avalon Air show. But work on training the pilots, boomers and aircrew is already ahead of the curve.
In fact, RAAF pilots have been honing their flying skills on the Airbus A330 and Boeing 737 families thanks to a training agreement with Qantas, allowing pilots to fly both international and domestic flights once they’ve completed their conversion course.
“We learnt with Wedgetail that we wanted to grow our experiences in the aircraft before we actually got our aeroplane,” Chief of Air Force Air Marshal Mark Binskin explained to ADM. “So with Wedgetail, our front end crews did flying with Virgin. This experience flying was extremely useful, so we took that model and put it into the KC-30 where and we’ve had a number of pilots flying with Qantas on A-330 flights, both international and around Australia. The support from Qantas has been fantastic.
“We have a similar arrangement with maintenance personnel. Some of the maintainers have been working with Qantas at their various jet bases to develop a good understanding of the aeroplane before we get it. And then obviously we’ve got some people in the project team in Spain who are flying the aircraft as well.”
ADM was surprised to learn last year that the Airbus Military test program in Spain does not have any Australian pilots or boomers on board, despite being the lead customer for the platform. AIRMSHL Binskin did confirm that there were RAAF people on hand in Spain, with a test pilot “getting a bit of flying – about 400hrs total so far” alongside the Airbus Military test program.
On the boomer front, RAAF personnel have been on secondments with the US Air Force. RAAF boomers are able to get some experience on the KC-135s and while the refuelling system is not the same as the MRTT systems, it does provide a valuable training opportunity with an important ally. The RAAF air combat force has also been able to keep their skills up with various exercises such as Red Flag, Talisman Saber, Pitch Black and Bersama Shield series where they have support from Omega tankers to deploy (a lease arrangement in place since the B707s retired) and also the USAF, Republic of Singapore Air Force and Royal Malaysian Air Force during the exercises.
Local training
Qantas Defence Services (QDS) is contracted to provide RAAF air and ground crews training on the ‘green’ A330 during the initial acquisition before moving on to the more specific Military Differences (the difference between the commercial and military nature of the modified A-330 cockpit) training provided by Airbus Military, a Defence spokesperson said. ADM understands that QDS and Airbus Military are working together closely to develop the program, as QDS will deliver the program here in Australia.
Airbus Military is responsible for all MRTT-specific initial aircrew and maintenance training under the acquisition contract, according to a Defence spokesperson. However, Airbus Military has subcontracted QDS to provide some of this initial training. Once the program has been bedded down, QDS and CAE will provide the training mainly at RAAF Base Amberley.
QDS will provide:
• maintenance training
• crew attendant training
• support and test equipment training
• aircrew emergency procedures training (using Qantas escape and door training facilities)
• cargo loading training for air movements staff
• safety and familiarisation training for Squadron executives and other staff.
CAE will provide:
• pilot training (conversion, currency and other courses)
• air refuelling operator or boomer training (conversion, currency and other courses)
• simulator operation training (enables RAAF aircrew to conduct independent training sessions)
• maintenance of simulation devices
Game changer
AIRMSHL Binskin is very much looking forward to the “game changing capability” that the MRTT presents to the RAAF.
“The KC-30 has 270 seats for transport and probably the best capability of any tanker airborne today,” AIRMSHL Binskin told ADM. “It will be able to take fighters anywhere we want round the globe; it will allow us to tank a C-17 if we need to for longer range missions; it’ll allow us to tank the Wedgetail and it can refuel other KC-30s. It will be a great change from the way we do business today and we will be able to fundamentally rethink about the way we do our operations globally - the KC-30 will allow us to do it a lot easier than we currently do.”
There are very few RAAF platforms that the KC-30A will not be able to refuel such as the C-130 and P-3 fleets but AIRMSHL Binskin is confident that it will be able to tank the P-8s once they come online. There are no plans in the pipeline to make these two platforms KC-30A compatible either given the business case involved in such as decision.