Defence Business: Romeo to come aboard early | ADM August 2012

With the US Navy MH-60R ‘Romeo’ acquisition program significantly ahead of schedule, the way ahead is clear for the Royal Australian Navy to accept the first two aircraft early in 2014. Perhaps even more significantly, the 24th, and last, Romeo will be delivered to Australia in mid 2016, over two years ahead of the original Air 9000 Phase 8 schedule.

With the first two helicopters only eighteen months or so away, contract activity between the Commonwealth and industry is now turning from acquisition to sustainment, with various contracts to be let from early next year.

From a capability standpoint, almost all Romeos will be delivered in a US Navy (USN) common configuration and will go to sea in mid 2015, as a fully-functioning ship’s flight. During this time, development and testing of Australia-specific equipment will be undertaken in the US, before being introduced to the fleet via a retrofit process beginning in 2016. During that period the helicopter will replace the existing S-70B-2 Seahawks in a process which is to be managed carefully, ensuring that no capability gap occurs on the one hand and a sustainable training continuum is established on the other.

Project history

The overarching Project Air 9000 is the Australian Defence Force’s multi-phase rotary wing roadmap, a blueprint for the introduction of new helicopter capability across the Army and RAN, with one of its goals being a reduction in the number of types operated.

In its original form, Air 9000 Phase 8 sought to replace the 16 S-70B-2s by around 2020 and, as this earlier Seahawk was to undergo a Mid-Life Upgrade in the meantime, a decision on its replacement was deferred until the 2015-2020 timeframe.

The failure of Seasprite to enter service as planned left an Anti-Surface Warfare capability gap however and in response the MLU was cancelled and Phase 8 accelerated from the original timetable, both to de-risk the ageing Seahawk and to replace the lost Seasprite capability.

Phase 8, the Future Naval Aviation Combat System, was first made public in the 2009 Defence White Paper. Under consideration were the MH-60R offered by an industry consortium known as Team Romeo (now Team Seahawk) and Eurocopter NH90 Naval Frigate Helicopter. Team Romeo/Seahawk is made up of Sikorsky (air vehicle manufacture), Lockheed Martin (mission systems integration), General Electric (engine manufacture), Raytheon (sensor integration) and CAE (pilot training simulators).

The competition was conducted over 15 months, a commercial sale versus an FMS process and, despite a hard campaign by Australian Aerospace (the local Eurocopter subsidiary), Romeo was ultimately declared the winner in June last year.

The FMS acquisition contract covers 24 MH-60R helicopters, 60 T-700 GE 401C Engines (48 installed and 12 spares), communication equipment, support equipment, spare and repair parts, tools and test equipment and other logistics support services.

Delivery schedule

The head contracts (Letters of Offer and Acceptance in FMS parlance) were signed by the Commonwealth in June 2011, cover ing acquisition and sustainment, allowing the USN to sub-let contracts (airframes, engines, simulator etc) on Australia’s behalf. The sustainment contracts, currently under negotiation, will be negotiated by the Maritime Helicopter Support Company (MHSCo), the prime sustainment company and a joint venture between co-primes Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky.

The accelerated delivery schedule for the helicopters themselves is the result of the degree of urgency flagged by the Defence White Paper.

“Phase 8 is the only project in the Defence White Paper which was foreshadowed as a matter of urgency,” explained Project Director Captain Scott Lockey. “We went from First to Second Pass in less than eighteen months and that pace has been maintained since the LOAs were signed and we are working at pace every day to deliver the program effectively and quickly.

“With the accelerated delivery schedule we’re facing a situation where we’ll have more aircraft accepted by the end of 2015 than we’ll have maintainers to maintain them and aircrew to fly and operate them,” he adds. “But the DMO will be working closely with the headquarters to look at the optimal transition program from the Bravo (S-70B) to Romeo.”

The requirement for Romeo is to support eight ships’ flights simultaneously which will leave only a small number of helicopters at Nowra to support training. This is similar to the way the current Seahawks are operated today.

To achieve this transition without reducing Navy’s combat aviation capability, the plan is to have a Romeo flight ready to go to sea, with all personnel trained, before a corresponding Bravo flight is withdrawn. To meet the tight introduction schedule, the two helicopters to be delivered in January 2014 will be from a different production lot to those following and will need to be brought up to a common configuration at some point in the future.

Following the initial pair, seven more Romeos will be delivered in 2014, seven in 2015 and eight during 2016, two years ahead of the original Phase 8 requirement.

Romeos for Australia

Australia’s MH-60Rs will be operated by two squadrons at HMAS Albatross, Nowra, on the NSW south coast, an operational support squadron and a training support unit.

The operational squadron will be No.816, which today flies the Bravo version, and will have the responsibility of maintaining the eight ships’ flights aboard the upgraded Anzac frigates and Air Warfare Destroyers (AWDs). It will be the ability to support the first deployment to sea with a fully armed and operational helicopter and a fully trained detachment of aircrew and maintainers, which will mark the Initial Operating Capability (IOC) milestone in mid 2015.

The training squadron will be responsible for the final training of operational crews and maintainers as well as the support of ADF activities around the country.

The goal is to migrate as much training off the ‘live’ helicopter as possible, through the increased use of simulation, with only the final stages of training to be carried out by the training support squadron. This is somewhat of a departure from practice on the Bravo today, where one squadron is responsible for both training and operations.

Although 23 of the helicopters will initially be delivered in a USN-common configuration, there are seven Australian specific modifications which will be installed post-production.

“We will be leaving an aircraft behind in the US as a prototype for the seven mission systems options to be developed, prototyped, tested and certified under the USN airworthiness system,” said CAPT Lockey. “When all the remaining 23 have been delivered and the prototype certified, a retrofit program will commence in Australia.”

The modifications comprise the addition of a VOR/ILS system; Automatic Dependent Surveillance –Broadcast (ADS-B); A Voice Recorder to be incorporated into the helicopter’s Crash Recorder; Off-aircraft Acoustic Conversion System (to allow acoustic data conversion to be compatible with Australian acoustic systems); Additional message sets for the Link 16 Tactical Data Link; Installation of a Variable Message Format (VMF) Tactical Data Link; And installation of low-power beacons, to enable the helicopter’s deck recovery system to be compatible with the ASIST system on the AWDs.

These seven options will be retrofitted to the Romeos as they begin their three yearly deep maintenance cycle, which is due to commence during 2016.

Because they will be USN-common from the outset, all Australian Romeos will be fitted with the USN’s HawkLink Ku-band Tactical Common Data Link (TCDL), which transmits broadband video, radar, and acoustic and other sensor data to the host vessel over line of sight distances.

Though this will render them capable of sharing onboard data with American warships when operating in a coalition environment, Defence is not yet contemplating the installation of HawkLink into the RAN ships.

“In the life of the Romeo project, there isn’t a window of opportunity to carry out the combat system changes to the Anzac ships,” said CAPT Lockey, noting also that the way HawkLink is used by the USN is a different operational concept than that anticipated for Australia’s Romeos.

Australian industry capability

In March, Ferra Engineering in Brisbane was awarded a $6 million contract by Lockheed Martin for the supply of the extended weapons pylon and mission kits to the MH-60R production line.

Production will commence later this year and will see Ferra manufacturing the sub-assemblies for around 70 helicopters, not just Australia’s aircraft. The components will be delivered to Lockheed Martin, who will then hand them over to Sikorsky for installation on the production line.

This work is part of Lockheed Martin’s AIC initiative and outside Phase 8 AIC requirements, which are still under negotiation.

“We’ve been working closely with the US Navy over the last eleven months, since the LOAs were signed,” said CAPT Lockey. “To understand and contribute to the contracting activities and to assist in the developments of the Statements of Work that goes with these contracting activities.”

“A collective deed has been signed by the five industry players which make up Team Romeo,” said Chris Clapperton, Director Maritime and Asia Strategies for Sikorsky Aerospace Services. “All the annexes or particular activities will be between the individual companies and the Commonwealth. Discussions will begin later this year and executed in early 2013.”

The bulk of Australian industry contribution to the program will be in the sustainment area, overseen by MHSCo and it is anticipated that between 100 and 120 jobs will be created in the Shoalhaven region, primarily in the support of the supply chain, programmed maintenance interval activities, logistics support and the supply of Field Service Representatives.

CAE Australia is expected to be contracted by its North American parent to sustain the simulators and training devices which is expected to result in a local ‘footprint’ of between 10-15 personnel.

GE Australia will be responsible for the sustainment of the T700 engines, which will grow its presence in the Brisbane area with local company, Asia Pacific Aerospace.

“It hasn’t been finalised yet, but we expect a co-operative agreement between APA for maintenance and TAE for engineering support,” said CAPT Lockey.

Raytheon will also be contracted for the sustainment of mission devices, such as the Airborne Low Frequency Sonar (ALFS) and Electro-Optical devices.

“We don’t want to commence sustainment contracts until we have products to sustain and therefore Australian industry involvement won’t commence until we’ve received the first couple of helicopters and have begun operating them,” CAPT Lockey cautioned.

In addition, there are opportunities for Australian SMEs to participate in the global supply chains of Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky, as Ferra has demonstrated. One of the proposals put forward by Sikorsky doing the Phase 8 competition was the remanufacture of Army Black Hawks and Navy Sea Hawks for onward sale to border protection and paramilitary operators around the world.

“The concept as proposed, is that the Commonwealth would provide the helicopters to Sikorsky Helitech in Brisbane, who would carry out the remanufacture and when they are sold, share the profits with the Commonwealth,” concludes Clapperton.

“That proposition is still on the table, but the Commonwealth has to be finished with their old helicopters before we can take them and at this stage they are still using all their Black Hawks and Seahawks.”