C4I: Control of the air - almost within reach | ADM Oct 2010
The RAAF’s Vigilare command and control system is now operational, and starting to live up to expectations; Wedgetail is showcasing its potential, but hasn’t yet delivered on its promise – there’s work still for Boeing to do.
Gregor Ferguson | Sydney
The RAAF’s emerging air defence command and control capabilities passed two further milestones in mid-year, but the full operational capability of its Wedgetail Airborne Early Warning & Control (AEW&C) system remains at least 12 months away.
On 2 September, the Network Centric Command and Control System (NC3S) which Boeing Defence Australia (BDA) has been developing under Project Air 5333 Vigilare was accepted into RAAF service and formally commenced surveillance and battlespace management operations across Australia.
The Vigilare system installed in 2 Control and Reporting Unit (2CRU) in the Northern Regional Operations Centre (NROC) at RAAF Base Tindal had previously undergone its most searching test during the biennial air defence EX Pitch Black in July and August this year.
During this exercise NROC provided continuous surveillance and battlespace management for offensive counter-air and offensive air-support operations.
The system interacted with multiple exercise players, including RAAF F/A-18 Hornets, F-111s, Hawks, forward air control PC-9s, and AP-3C Orions; F-16s from Singapore and Thailand; an RSAF E2-C Hawkeye Airborne Warning and Control aircraft, and a range of transport aircraft and tankers.
A notable absentee from this exercise, however, was the Wedgetail AEW&C system, but more on this later.
This year’s defence portfolio budget statement states an approved project expenditure of $275 million for Vigilare, including facilities and other work outside the scope of Boeing’s prime contract.
The project was delayed by significant software and communications integration difficulties and is some three years behind schedule.
With the NROC final acceptance milestone now achieved, Defence has decommissioned its legacy Warden command and control system and BDA has started implementing the 3 CRU Vigilare upgrade in the EROC Facility at RAAF Base Williamtown.
Final acceptance for the complete Vigilare system is currently scheduled for September-2011, and the full system should be available in time to support US and Australian forces in EX Talisman Saber later that year.
Completion of Vigilare will be an important step towards the RAAF’s goal of having a fully integrated air defence command and control system.
As well as replacing obsolete processors, displays and communications switching equipment, Vigilare will also fuse 2CRU and 3CRU into an extended command and control network.
It integrates and displays sensor, communications and other data from sea, air and land sensors and platforms, via 250 separate communications interfaces.
The upgraded CRUs will fuse this sensor data with intelligence information to help compile the ADF’s Recognised Air Picture (RAP), stretching from the mid-Indian Ocean to the western Pacific.
Vigilare can handle up to 10,000 target tracks concurrently and incorporates a fully integrated training and simulation capability.
It is now at the heart of Boeing’s bid to provide a Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system to the United Arab Emirates (UAE); the company has also identified significant export market potential in the UK, Asia, Latin America and even the US.
Making it work
This requires all nodes on the network – the ground stations, aircraft, warships and other external sensors – to be able to communicate seamlessly in real time using secure voice, data and Link 11 and Link 16 Tactical Data Links (TADILs).
And it is the communications switching element of the project, in particular the TADILs, which has presented the major technical and schedule challenges; these have bedeviled Wedgetail also.
“NROC is now correlating a myriad of data feeds from sensors and information across Defence, civil and foreign sources providing directed air surveillance and air battle management capabilities for the RAAF,” Tim Malone, the DMO’s Vigilare project director said.
“In my opinion, this capability, especially the sophisticated TADIL implementation, is arguably world-class.”
“We’re extremely pleased with the way Vigilare has transitioned into operational service at NROC,” Steve Parker, vice president and general manager of Network and Space Systems for BDA said.
He described it as a ‘true systems-of-systems environment’.
“We proved at Pitch Black that Vigilare is able to provide a comprehensive picture of the skies above in a coalition environment,” Parker said.
“This system is a game changer for the RAAF because of its fully integrated data link capabilities, multi-level communications, multi-source correlator tracking, and advanced system management capabilities.”
Notwithstanding the delays and technical difficulties Vigilare has encountered, BDA says the end product has significant global market potential and the company is now Boeing’s global centre of excellence for ground-based command and control systems.
Where’s Wedgetail?
Wedgetail was a prominent absentee from EX Pitch Black but the DMO’s Wedgetail project director, Air Vice Marshal Chris Deeble, explained to ADM this was primarily a manpower issue.
The RAAF provided a mission crew from 2 Squadron’s training cadre at Williamtown to man a Wedgetail aircraft taking part in RIMPAC in Hawaii.
This aircraft was the one that is still in prime contractor Boeing’s hands in Seattle, and so was flown by a Boeing cockpit crew with RAAF Air Combat Officers (ACOs) operating the sensors and mission systems.
With Wedgetail crew training still ramping up, there simply wasn’t the trained manpower available to field a second aircraft during EX Pitch Black; the RIMPAC deployment was a contractual requirement under the Wedgetail project, to demonstrate joint and coalition interoperability, so this was the RAAF’s priority.
The good news is the system performed well overall on RIMPAC and earned itself a good reputation, says AVM Deeble: its radar performance was rated as good as or better than any other early warning assets on the exercise.
This is partly due to the quality of the RAAF crew, who boasted over 6,000 hours between them on E-2 and E-3 early warning aircraft and some 2,000 hours on Wedgetail.
The Electronic Support Measures (ESM) system performed well, as did the radar and communications systems and the aircraft was extremely reliable given its immaturity, achieving 90 per cent platform and mission system availability.
The bad news is that the system is maturing more slowly than hoped: some technical issues persisted with the TADILs, mission computer, target tracker and ESM on RIMPAC.
Nevertheless, says AVM Deeble, the overall performance of the system provided a clear view of the ultimate potential of the aircraft and augurs very well for the future.
However, the final acceptance program has had to be altered.
Under a new, graduated acceptance schedule, Defence anticipates achieving final acceptance of the Wedgetail system hardware on schedule by the end of 2010.
A further six months work will be required to complete integration and acceptance testing of the software, which means final acceptance of the software component should take place in the final quarter of 2011, in time for the RAAF to declare Initial Operational Capability (IOC) on the schedule which AVM Deeble set out earlier this year.
Importantly, hardware acceptance signals the end of airborne platform testing of the Wedgetail system.
The hardware configuration will be fixed and all of the outstanding software integration and testing work can be done in the now-complete software support facility at Williamtown.
In terms of aircraft deliveries, the fifth jet is due to be handed over to the RAAF later this year and the Seattle-based sixth aircraft will be delivered to Williamtown by early 2011, as planned, in the final hardware configuration.
Radar performance
Back at the start of the year the biggest issue concerning the Wedgetail community was the radar performance.
This was generally at or above predicted levels (and impressed observers at RIMPAC, AVM Deeble said), but a couple of significant shortfalls had been identified in testing and then studied closely in 2009 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory.
An ongoing Collaborative Radar Study is now under way involving the lab, Boeing, radar manufacturer Northrop Grumman, the Commonwealth of Australia (DSTO and DMO) and US Air Force Electronics Systems Command (as the contracting agent).
The harmonious relationship between these players, says AVM Deeble, is making it possible to tackle the issues constructively.
Importantly, the Lincoln Laboratory concluded that the radar architecture and hardware were fundamentally sound: the shortfalls can be rectified using software, and software will also be the key to extending the radar’s performance in the future.
The underperforming capabilities in question haven’t been disclosed but AVM Deeble told ADM the necessary fixes are under development, with Technology Readiness Levels set to climb from a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of 6 up to the required TRL 9.
The ESM system worked well on RIMPAC in spite of some minor technical glitches; these and some of the TADIL issues were able to be rectified on the spot.
A couple of more serious TADIL issues persist and these along with some high-end ESM integration will take a bit longer to resolve.
The ESM integration issue isn’t a matter of getting the sensors and processors to work, ADM was told: the challenge now is to integrate the ESM capability into the mission system to a level where it can actually help the radar initiate and develop target tracks.
This represent a new and much higher level of functionality for an AEW&C system and places Wedgetail, the DMO, the RAAF and Boeing at the global forefront of such integration work, says AVM Deeble.
This is a large part of the software challenge that has delayed full system acceptance.
Apples and oranges
The very existence of this issue is a result of the very significant differences between the E-3 AWACS and the Wedgetail: the former has a mission crew of 18 to handle manual functions including track initiation and management of the ESM system.
The smaller Wedgetail system is designed to automate these and other functions to allow a much smaller mission crew of just seven operators, or 10 if circumstances demand.
High levels of automation demand high levels of integration.
There’s an obvious risk in pursuing this, but the pay-off is a smaller crew and previously unachievable flexibility in the way an AEW&C platform can be employed.
The Wedgetail program is on the cusp of retiring significant elements of project risk, Deeble told ADM.
The major phase of airborne testing should be complete this month, with incremental software improvements scheduled over the next few months.
Wedgetail should really start to make its presence known on major ADF exercises in 2011, including Aces North and Talisman Sabre.
The timing of IOC probably won’t be determined by technical or logistics issues so much as the capacity of the crew training system.
The need to recycle trained crews through regression training as capabilities such as ESM come online is putting short-term stress on the system.
Once this has eased, however, the ADF will field one of the most advanced air defence command and control systems in the world, an integrated capability that will be the fulfilment of a long-held ambition.