Defence Business: Pitch Black 2012 Enabling air combat operations from the ground | ADM October 2012

The Royal Australian Air Force’s biennial Pitch Black exercise played out over the Northern Territory in August, involving between 80-100 fast jets and supporting aircraft and 2,200 personnel from six countries.

As the premier Air Defence exercise, Pitch Black naturally focuses on the delivery of air power, both from an Offensive and Defensive Counter Air perspective.

With upwards of 50 aircraft departing from Darwin and Tindal each day of the exercise, attention is naturally drawn to the sight and sound of fast jet operations, but what of the effort required from the supporting elements on the ground that enable the fighters to project the required air power?

Aside from maintenance requirements every fighter that leaves the ground has to be refuelled and secured while parked. Pilots, ground crew and support personnel need to be fed and sustained, communications need to be established and maintained and a myriad of other tasks carried out.

When it is considered that Darwin has no permanently based aircraft and is a long way from anywhere the effort required to support the influx of aircraft and personnel every two years is significant.

This herculean task falls to the Combat Support Group, the largest but least known of the six Force Element Groups of the operational side of the RAAF.

Exercise overview

The exercise this year celebrated a number of ‘firsts’, not the least of which was a glimpse into the networked future of the RAAF, with Super Hornet, Wedgetail and the new KC-30A tanker all interacting for the first time in a major Australian exercise. The KC-30A is still undergoing Operational Test & Evaluation and so did not participate fully in the exercise, but two aircraft deployed to Townsville and flew daily sorties in support of the ‘Classic’ Hornet, the only type cleared to refuel from it at the present time.

Other capabilities making their debut at Pitch Black this year were the conformal Airborne Early Warning and Control Gulfstream 550 and Boeing F-15SG Eagle from the Republic of Singapore Air Force. From a geo-political standpoint, the presence of Indonesian Su-27 and Su-30 Flankers in Darwin for the exercise represented the greater level of engagement between the two countries. The Indonesian Air Force (TNI-AU) flew four Flankers from their home base, Hasanuddin (Makassa or Ujung Pandung) on Sulawesi on internal fuel only, a distance of over 800 nautical miles, demonstrating the impressive range of the aircraft.

Their presence marked the first time that operational Flankers from any country have visited Australia, but also the first time the TNI-AU has participated in a multi-lateral air combat exercise.

Pitch Black 2012 was primarily an Offensive Counter Air training scenario with the (largely) Darwin-based Blue Force attacking targets defended by Red Force. Blue Force was made up of RAAF ‘Classic’ and Super Hornets, RSAF F-15SGs and Block 52 F-16C/Ds, Royal Thai Air Force F-16A/Bs and the Indonesian Flankers.

Red Force flew Defensive Counter Air Missions mostly from Tindal and was made up of RAAF Hornets from the homebased 75 Squadron, deployed USMC F/A-18Cs and a handful of 76 Squadron Hawk Mk.127 aircraft.

Air to ground weapons, both live and inert, were dropped on the Delamere Air Weapons Range and both sides were supported by AEW&C, ground radar and tanker assets as required.

Combat support group enabling air base operations

Combat Support Group is the key enabler for any Air Base Operation, but the scale of effort required to support an exercise such as Pitch Black, a feature of which is intensive flying operations from two major bases and a host of other facilities, is huge.

“Any exercise or activity that has anything to do with the delivery of air power, will have someone from Combat Support Group present,” explained Commander Combat Support Group, Air Commodore Tim Innes. “We provide fuel, food, ordinance, ground support equipment, Air Movements assistance, security for the aircraft on the ground and even liaise with the civil authorities. Our job is to provide all those functions that make it easier for the aircrew to go out and fly and get on with the job of delivering air power.”

Planning for a Pitch Black exercise typically begins 12 months out and CSG draws on resources across the 13 Australian bases and Butterworth.

“In the 12 months leading up to Pitch Black we’ll typically have three major planning meetings, working out where we’re going to get our people, ground support equipment, fuel trucks etc. We’ve got to plan well ahead to arrange our fuel reserves and keep stocks on base up to the required level,” AIRCDRE Innes said. “It’s quite a complex activity to make it all come together.”

The increased security requirements of newer aircraft such as the Super Hornet and Wedgetail has further increased the workload of CSG and this will ramp up even further with the arrival of the first Joint strike Fighters later in the decade.

“We very much plan Pitch Black to exercise some of our higher-end ground protection scenarios. We have some valuable aircraft there and the unique thing is that they’re not based in Darwin, so we have to plan security for the deployed aircraft. It certainly lets us exercise that deployed capability for our aircraft and validates the knowledge that we can operate under expeditionary conditions, from other than our home bases,” AIRCDRE Innes said.

“We count Pitch Black as a key part of our training continuum. Air Force is a little bit different from Army as we’re doing the job at the same time as we’re training.” Reflecting the level of regional cooperation at Pitch Black was the integration of ground troops from Singapore and Thailand in Darwin and US Marines at Tindal. The Royal New Zealand Air Force contribution to the exercise also came in the form of ground security personnel.

Besides the aircraft, security had to be provided for deployed ground-based assets around the exercise area, from the Air Weapons Range at Delamere to the deployed TPS-77 radars of No.3 Control and Reporting Unit.

“Operating with other nations means we practice interoperability. It’s in our interest to understand how our close regional neighbours operate, and theirs to understand us, so we can collectively prepare for any issues around the region,” AIRCDRE Innes said.

A subset of Pitch Black was Exercise Hellfire, which was initially intended to be a live fire exercise for the Airfield Defence Guards of No.2 Airfield Defence Squadron Fire restrictions in the Northern Territory at the time prevented any live firing, but the unit still derived value from operating in a different environment and terrain.

Air Commodore Innes said that, apart from the changed security dynamic, one of the biggest challenges was the sheer size of Pitch Black 2012.

“There’s always lessons learned from exercises such as this, being a big complex operation and there are always some things that can be done better,” he said. “We will go back and analyse what we did and try to improve things next time around. For Pitch Black 2014 I think we will fine tune some of our physical security, there’s probably some efficiencies we can gain from the Pitch Black 2012 experience.”

Although the combat jets at Pitch Black captured the attention of the public, they could not have performed their intended function of air power delivery without the enablers of Combat Support Group.

“Combat Support Group provides the fundamental functions, organisation and operations for the launch of air power,” concluded AIRCDRE Innes. “We’ve done our job if people don’t notice us.”