Surveillance: Future land focus for Wedgetail | ADM July 2012

The sixth and final Wedgetail Airborne Early Warning & Control aircraft was delivered to the Commonwealth in May and, as work continues towards achieving Initial Operating Capability later this year, a wider focus on what are perhaps non-traditional roles is now under development.

The close relationship between Wedgetail and the Navy’s surface warships, in particular the future Air Warfare Destroyers, is natural, given the air defence requirements of the fleet. As a result, each AEW&C crew has a Navy Fighter Controller as part of its complement and significant interaction between ship and aircraft is already a reality.

However operations with Land assets are not as well developed and thought is now being given to how this will play out in the future. At the present time, most of the effort is working towards IOC but, once this is achieved more focus will be on development of the Wedgetail platform, including future operations with Army.

Some work has already been done in this regard and its importance is well understood within No.42 Wing at Williamtown, but further platform development will be required to achieve the same level of interoperability as Wedgetail enjoys with Navy.

Two further phases of the Wedgetail AEW&C program, Air 5077 Phases 4 & 5A/B, will address the future development and sustainment of the system and additional communications capability to allow data sharing with Army Command & Control assets is on the agenda.

Navy co-operation

Each Wedgetail crew is made up of two pilots, five RAAF Air Battle Managers, one Airborne Electronics Analyst and one Navy Fighter Controller (FC).

Having a Navy FC resident within each mission crew provides Navy specific advice to the Mission Commander in the planning and execution of maritime missions. Navy’s significant commitment of ten FCs to 2 Squadron was realised in June 2012 and, with inclusion of a Senior Naval Officer in 42 Wing, demonstrates a robust joint approach to the development of deep specialist Air Battle Management experience across the two services to underpin future maritime air defence capability.

“The Navy personnel are an integral part of the crew,” explains Officer Commanding No.42 Wing Group Captain Tracey Friend. “If they are not available, the crew does not fly.”

In the May issue of ADM, Head of the Wedgetail program for DMO, Air Vice Marshal Chris Deeble explained how Wedgetail and the Air Warfare Destroyers will be ‘joined at the hip’ and said he couldn’t envisage future operations without either.

Navy’s upgraded FFGs and Anzac frigates are already spending a significant amount of training time exercising with Wedgetail, to hone maritime air defence tactics and procedures whilst providing a significant amount of multi-sensor information via voice and data link for fusion into the Recognised Air and Sea Picture.

Each aircraft has 10 identical mission stations, with some capacity to carry additional Subject Matter Experts. This may include the carriage of a Navy Air Warfare Officer or in the future may be occupied by an Army Liaison Officer or similar for joint operations including land forces.

Potential for land co-operation

Wedgetail is equipped with a Joint Tactical Distribution System (JTIDS) which is capable of transmitting and receiving both Link 11 and Link 16 data. It also has an extensive communications suite, which covers voice communications across the spectrum from HF to UHF, as well as SATCOM. It cannot however directly share data with either of Army’s two new battlefield helicopters, Tiger ARH and MRH 90.

At the present time, data has to be passed to an Army Command & Control post before it can be shared with assets such as the two helicopter types, and vice versa. Joint Project 2089 is the ADF’s Tactical Information Exchange Domain (Data Links) program which, over time, is designed to bring all assets on to the same page, as far as networked operations are concerned.

Existing phases of this project are installing a Variable Message Format capability on Air Force Hornets (Super Hornets have this capability from the outset) and Navy Anzac ships, to enable real-time data exchange with ground units when performing close support and Naval Gunfire Support (NGS) missions.

A future phase of JP2089 will consider upgrading Tiger, and perhaps MRH 90, with a VMF capability, but there is no publicly released timeline for this to occur. Wedgetail is also not yet equipped with VMF, which is a text-based message set, but may acquire the capability at a later date.

In the meantime, ways of expanding Wedgetail’s capability by plugging in laptop computer-based systems are being explored. This was significantly demonstrated during flight test by Boeing, when it successfully and simultaneously controlled three ScanEagle Unmanned Aerial Vehicles during 2009. With UAV capability now firmly established as an indispensable Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) asset in the modern battlespace, the implications for operation with Army’s Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems capabilities are obvious.

Some work with regard to Land operations has already been undertaken by No.42 Wing, which has an Army Ground Liaison Officer on staff and work is being done to plan the way ahead for future integration.

Future capabilities

With respect to this integration with Land forces, Wedgetail has already demonstrated its ability to pass a Local Air Picture via Link 16 to an Army Air-Land Integration (ALI) Cell and has passed control information via J-voice (a secure and ECM-resistant voice capability within Link 16) and UHF radio means.

However there is still some way to go and much work to be done. The 16th Air Land Regiment, through its ALI Cells and Ground Liaison Officers, will assist RAAF in developing its links to Army.

“Army cooperation with Wedgetail will become more focussed on the management of the Recognised Air Picture,” says GPCAPT Friend. “Army seeks to become a contributor to the Recognised Air Picture and will use Wedgetail as an intermediary and beneficiary.”

The imminent delivery of the SAAB Giraffe Agile Multi-Beam (AMB) radar system is one of the major reasons for this and will enable Army to offer an enhanced radar picture below the co-ordinating altitude, adding great value to the Recognised Air Picture. Giraffe is in operational service in Afghanistan, as a component of the Counter-Rocket Artillery and Mortar (C-RAM) system, another 16th Air Land Regiment capability.

With regard to the Recognised Air Picture, there are several areas that Army wants to develop Wedgetail capability in the future. The first is the ability to receive the Local Air Picture in the ALI Cell, via Link 16 and enable the ALI to access the Recognised Air Picture. Secondly the ability for Wedgetail to pass Giraffe AMB tracks provided by the ALI Cell to the Regional Operations Centre for fusion with other information within the Vigilare Network Centric Command & Control System. Thirdly, the ability to control Ground-Based Air Defence System (GBAD) assets within an Integrated Air Defence System.

“Wedgetail offers enhancements to existing C2 and ISR capabilities within Army and the JTF,” says GPCAPT Friend. “However there are some key areas that must be consolidated In order to take advantage of the platform’s increased operational capability: The use and exploitation of Wedgetail data through either voice or data methods; Communications relay using SATCOM, HF, VHF and UHF bearers; and as a C² node for a raid-style operation.”

Some of these requirements will take some time to be realised however, as Army decides what its Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) structure will look like in the future.

The 6th Brigade was raised in March 2010 to oversee Army’s Command Support and ISTAR units and is still in the process of defining its needs and shaping its capabilities.

There is also the future amphibious warfare concept to consider. The Navy’s two Landing Helicopter Dock ships will come with a significant C2 capability of their own and how Wedgetail will interact with these vessels specifically, and Army amphibious operations in the more general sense, will not be fully understood for some time.

There are plans to have Wedgetail participate in a future Hamel exercise, which is the major exercise of Army’s Force Command.

When this eventually occurs it will no doubt further define Wedgetail’s capabilities in the land warfare environment and will show the way to the future.

When Wedgetail was first conceived, Network Centric Warfare was very much in the conceptual stage and, as the project has progressed, more and more uses for its data gathering and fusion abilities have become apparent. For the present time however, the focus of the Air 5077 Project Office, No.42 Wing, 2 Squadron and the AEW&C Systems Program Office has been on delivery, Operational Test and Evaluation and support of the platform as it works up to IOC.

At some point, in the not too-distant future, there will be some firm requirements for a Land capability for Wedgetail, but in the meantime everyone involved with the program is looking forward to IOC, which is on-track for the end of the year.

Towards IOC

The delivery of the sixth aircraft during May was a significant milestone for the program, not least because it came with what is believed to be the final software version developed under the acquisition phase of the contract.

The aircraft was delivered to Williamtown on May 2nd and, after testing, accepted by the Commonwealth on May 19th. It joined three other aircraft on the Williamtown ramp, with a further two away for deep maintenance with Boeing Defence Australia at Amberley.

Both Boeing and Air Force admit to some shortcomings in logistics, particularly with regard to spare parts holdings, but are working a plan to improve the logistics performance in line with the increasing flying rate. As a first of type, the operational experience gained by deploying the aircraft away on exercises is helping to shape the spares requirements for the future.

The continued training of air and ground crews, final software configuration testing and concurrent OT&E and certification of the mission system are just some of the other hurdles to be overcome before IOC is declared.

“We’ve still some work to do,” says GPCAPT Friend. “But the cats have been herded and we are now very close to IOC.” Once the software configuration has been validated the rest of the fleet will be upgraded, but a timetable for this has yet to be determined. An aircraft with the earlier software load left Williamtown in early June to take part in Exercise Red Flag in Alaska, in what will arguably be the most testing exercise in which the Wedgetail system has yet participated.

Because certification of the EWSP system is not yet complete, it will not be used in the Red Flag exercise, but the Electronic Support Measures system will be fully operational and the 2 Squadron crews will be tested under very realistic conditions.

Group Captain Friend says the final software configuration will get its biggest test under operational conditions in next month’s RIMPAC exercise off Hawaii, then Pitch Black, Australia’s premier air defence exercise, next month in August.

Beyond IOC there is Final Operating Capability, which will be achieved when all the initial training is complete and manpower levels are adequate, along with sufficient spares to support the FOC rate of effort, rather than any major capability additions.

“We are still developing mission crew concepts and how we’re going to fight the jet,” says GPCAPT Friend. “In terms of sheer operations it has been a challenge, but we are as prepared as we could have been to operate a capability we’ve never had before.”