Projects: ADF in the air | ADM December 2012/January 2013

While two major events during 2012 have helped shape the future of Australia’s air combat capability, further decisions to be taken during the course of 2013 will provide more direction.

During 2012, Ministers Smith and Clare announced an approximate two year delay to the acquisition of the Lockheed Martin F-35A Joint Strike Fighter and confirmed an ambitious program to acquire an airborne electronic attack capability by converting twelve of the RAAFs Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornets to EA-18G Growler configuration.

The two year delay to Air 6000/2A (New Air Combat Capability) is broadly in line with a revised US timetable, but to date just two of the 14 aircraft committed to have been ordered and until the timetable for the second tranche is announced during the course of 2013, even this timeline is not certain.

Mitigating the capability gap

There are three broad options: Do nothing and hope the Classic Hornet fleet can survive out to 2020 and beyond without further upgrades or modifications; upgrade the Hornet fleet and wait for the F-35A to enter service, or; Purchase more Super Hornets and take delivery of the F-35As at some point in the future.

Within these options are several permutations, including adjustment of the Super Hornet to Growler timeline to cover a gap or to mitigate risk with extending the Classic fleet, but each has associated cost and risk and the decision will be made with the relationship between these factors in mind.

The cheapest option will be to do nothing, but this also attracts the highest risk. Given the uncertain F-35A timetable, will the Classic Hornet have enough fatigue life to soldier on and, just as importantly, will it be capable of maintaining superiority over emerging capabilities?

Structurally upgrading Hornet comes with cost and risk in different proportions to the first option and previous experience with the F-111C would suggest that accepting risk at the ‘wrong’ end of a platform’s life can lead to more expensive remediation measures than first thought.

Given the successful integration of the Super Hornet, the purchase of a further batch could arguably represent the lowest risk, but would almost certainly the highest up-front, or known, cost.

Furthermore, the F-35A is not out of the woods yet in terms of flight test and, though a lot of progress is being made significant risks remain. On a cost basis also, there is an uncertainty over whether the US and partners will take aircraft to their currently declared profiles and, depending on when Australia’s aircraft are built, the price of acquisition has the potential to change significantly beyond its control.

To upgrade, or not

Australia’s Classic Hornets are arguably the best ‘non-Super’ Hornets in service, having undergone a series of structural and equipment modifications from 1999 under the Hornet Upgrade series of projects, including new radars and weapons, tactical datalinks and the Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing system (JHMCS).

Senior RAAF officers have indicated the Hornet will remain operationally viable during high level air combat exercises such as Pitch Black out to at least 2015, but after then it begins to wane. Even Super Hornet has attracted its share of critics, who consider it to be marginally capable now, let alone into the next decade, but this view is not shared by Defence.

Structurally, the Classic Hornet was designed with a 6,000 hour life and though the highest time Australian jet has yet to reach that figure, 10 have already undergone a complex and expensive Centre Barrel Replacement (CBR) program. The US Navy and Marines have already extended the life of some Classic Hornets to 8,000 hours however, so the risks are largely understood.

“However we don’t life aircraft purely on hours any more. We have some really smart scientists developing fatigue-calculating algorithms and we can exceed 6000 hours so long as the fatigue ‘index’ has not been reached,” explained Air Commodore Axel Augustin, Director General Aerospace Combat Systems.

“We also have a lot of highly skilled engineers, who will ensure we can get there if that is the decision. There’s work to be done, but I am comfortable it can be achieved.”

AIR CDRE Augustin points out that the integration of JHMCS and advanced missiles such as ASRAAM and AMRAAM have significantly slowed down the accrual of fatigue, as the Hornet no longer needs to be manoeuvred as aggressively - transferring fatigue from the airframe to the pilot’s neck, as one fighter pilot described it!

“We will effectively be the first service to retire our Classic jets, all FMS Hornet customers are examining options to extend their fleets will be operating theirs out to 2030,” he said. “I’m pretty confident that our life extension can be achieved.”

From an operational viability perspective, Group Captain Phil Gordon, Director Air Combat Transition Office, said, “We’re looking at all options to keep the jet viable, but there’s been no specific decisions made to this point. We’ve upgraded the fleet along the way and the MIDS datalink, JHMCS, 8222 jammer, new countermeasures system and weapons like JASSM mean we still have a very capable fighter.”

Super Hornet

The introduction of the Super Hornet has been a success story for the RAAF, all 24 aircraft are in service and the project ontrack to achieve FOC in December.

“We’ve already deployed the aircraft to a number of exercises, including Darwin for Pitch Black and Guam for Cope North, as well as conducting exercises with (USN Growler squadron) VAQ-132 at Amberley in October,” AIRCDRE Augustin said.

“In my view our crews are gaining experience; the jet’s working well and we’re looking good,” he said. “We have not identified any risks which would prevent Air Force from declaring FOC.”

The future of Super Hornet however depends very much on the decisions taken around any capability gap. With the loss of twelve aircraft to the Growler process in the fullness of time, one of the options is to migrate Super Hornet training role back to the US Navy.

However, unless more Super Hornets are purchased in the capability gap mitigation, the 12 remaining aircraft will have to shoulder the advanced training and operational roles. The Growlers will be produced in two batches of six, commencing in 2015, partly to mitigate the transition of training back to the US Navy and partly to ensure no loss of strike fighter capability while the F-35A is introduced to service. “No decision on Super Hornet training has actually been made at this point in time, but clearly we’re looking at our options,” he added.

Enter the Growler

Chief of Air Force, Air Marshal Geoff Brown has indicated that the first Growler will begin conversion in 2015 and commence Operational Test & Evaluation in the US sometime the following year. IOC, which is the delivery of the first six aircraft, enough trained crews and an adequate number Raytheon ALQ-99 jamming pods, is slated for 2018, but the timing of the second batch is subject to all the permutations described earlier.

It has yet to be decided where the conversions take place, but at least the first two will be done by Boeing in St Louis.

“There’s not a lot of risk around the conversion itself, because most of the work was done on the production line; the wiring is all in the jet, antenna locations have been blanked off and the wiring behind is capped and stowed,” detailed AIRCDRE Augustin.

“There are some minor structural modifications but they have been pre-drilled.

There’s a new fairing cover on the wing and an electronic equipment pallet to install in the gun bay, but the provisions are already in place and it will slide right in.”

A sufficient number of ALQ-99 pods for 12 aircraft will be bought and, although they attracted some criticism, there is no alternative until the Next Generation Jammer (NJG) enters service sometime next decade.

“There has been some speculation about the capability of the pods, but they have been constantly upgraded through their life. As technology and threats changes they constantly evolve,” AIRCDRE Augustin explained to ADM.

“One of our mantras with Super Hornet has been to stay as close to USN configuration as possible, ensuring lowest ownership and operating costs and, as a general principle; we’ll follow along those lines. It all depends when the NGJ comes on line in the US, but we’ll have ALQ-99 for a long time.”

“We’re adopting a crawl, walk, run approach to Growler because we’ve never operated an electronic attack capability before,” GPCAPT Gordon said. “This is a joint capability, it’s not just about supporting Super Hornets or Joint Strike Fighters. It will be just as valuable to naval ships and soldiers as it will be to aircraft.”

Joint Strike Fighter progress

The current production profile is for the first two Australian aircraft, AU-1 and 2 to come off the production line and make their first flights in 2014. After acceptance testing first by the US Government, then by the RAAF Airworthiness Board, they fly to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona for the initial training of RAAF pilots.

However, the decision to defer the remaining 12 aircraft in the first batch of 14 (Air 6000 Phase 2A) for around two years makes the delivery of the first aircraft to Australia somewhat difficult to predict.

The previous schedule had all 14 aircraft here by 2017 so, applying the two year delay, it will now be – subject to Government approval – around 2019 before they arrive. These aircraft represent Stage 1 of Phase 2A and another 58 aircraft are to be acquired under Stage 2 but this timing is again subject to Government approval.

“Once the buy-profile for the next 12 is approved we will begin ordering the long-lead items for them. Each of the LRIP batches are ordered year by year, so they will start ordering aircraft three years out from their intended delivery time,” explained Air Vice Marshal Kym Osley, Head of the NACC program. “The buy profile was previously for the aircraft to be built in LRIP 6 to 9, so it’s probably safe to say they will now be in LRIP 6 through 11.

“We are looking at IOC in about 2020 as our planning date at this point in time, again subject to Government confirmation. Based on that, we would expect our first two to arrive in Australia in late 2018/early 2019,” he said. “The next 12, and others bought under Stage 2 will ferry to Australia in the period 2019-2020. We plan to stand up the first squadron (IOC) at the end of 2020. By the same time, No.2 OCU will have transitioned from the F/A-18A/B to stand up as the F-35A training unit at the end of 2020 and will begin training operations in early 2021.”

AVM Osley says he is pleased with the Joint Strike Fighter Project Office (JPO) and Lockheed Martin’s strategy to accelerate testing and reduce risk in the wake of the Technical and Integrated Baseline Reviews held in 2010 and 2011, but there is still risk in the program. Production is now 42 days behind the revised schedule, largely due to a three-month machinists’ strike at Fort Worth and the latest software, Block 2A, was released about five months later than planned.

AVM Osley says the JPO sees about six months’ risk on the release of Block 2B software but, given the current timeline, there will still be a buffer of between 12-18 months before Australian IOC in 2020.

While flight testing overall is ahead of schedule, the F-35A is slightly behind, due partly to a lack of USAF tanker support and the requirement to modify one aircraft with a spin recovery parachute for high angle of attack trials.

“Other than software we’ve still got a couple of watch items: The Helmet Mounted Display is one and cost is the other,” said AVM Osley. “We’re already getting initial indication that cost is below the Congressional estimate and basically trending in the right direction. Our first aeroplanes are in LRIP 6 and we’ll get an indication of the final negotiated price early 2013.”

There are four issues with the current Configuration 2 HMD, manufactured by Vision Systems International: ‘Green glow’ caused by light leakage through and around the Light Emitting Diodes; jitter, where an object oscillates slightly; latency, where the background image provided by the DAS system lags when the pilot turns his head; and night vision acuity, due to the ICE10 low-light camera used.

All issues are either in remediation or will be rectified by a later helmet configuration but, for risk mitigation, BAE Systems is developing a version of the helmet currently used by the Eurofighter Typhoon.

“From an Australian perspective, a lot of the operational issues identified can be easily overcome through operational adjustments or slight changes to our procedures,” AVM Osley said to ADM. “But in any case the helmet won’t come to Australia until much later this decade, after all these issues have been improved either through software ‘tweaks’ or the new Configuration 3 helmet currently under development.”

On the positive side, the increasing numbers of aircraft at Eglin AFB, Florida and subsequent exponential increase in flying hours is providing more reliable reliability, performance and sustainment cost data.

“At the moment it is all looking reasonably good and we’re also seeing some realistic stealth figures which indicate stealth capability is exactly as promised,” he said.