Australia’s
F/A-18 Hornets seem set to fly a bit beyond their planned 2020 retirement date
which is looking increasingly likely to be pushed out a few more years because
of delays with the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program.
That would be the third life extension of the RAA F’s “classic”
Hornets. Initially it was envisaged these aircraft would reach life of type in
the period 2010-15 and in the best of all possible world’s, the RAAF would now
be taking delivery of their first new JSF aircraft.
Then in decisions in 2006 and 2009, the government pushed
retirement time out to the 2017-20 period.
Now it’s looking more like 2020-25 which would mean the oldest
Hornets, which entered service in 1985, will have been flying in defence of our
nation for as many as 40 years, not quite as long as F-111 with 40-plus years
but a fair effort nonetheless.
This and much more is revealed in a pair of recent reports from
the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO). Anyone with any exposure to ANAO
reports will appreciate that, although authoritative, these are often turgid to
the point of unreadability. Not these two which deliver concise roundups of
longrunning defence programs of considerable complexity.
Usually audit reports also administer defence a sound slapping
for procurement failings but on this occasion they made no recommendations for
improvements, finding defence management of both the older Hornet fleet and of
the process for acquiring JSF had been sound.
Report one gives a comprehensive snapshot of the status of the
RAA F’s 71 “classic” F/A-18 Hornets, observing that it’s now in a period of
transition similar to what was experienced when the Canberra’ bombers made way
for F-111’s and the Dassault Mirage made way for Hornets.
The key date seems to be 2020, the nominal time for classic
Hornet retirement as the JSF enters service. Nothing is quite so simple and the
ANAO says that date will likely need to be extended, principally because JSF
isn’t ready, a situation reflected in the government’s decision in the May 2012
budget to push the JSF acquisition schedule further out.
That brings with it a range of challenges to do with operating
ageing airframes. By 2020, the oldest F/A-18 aircraft A21-1, delivered in
November 1985, will have been in service for 34 years and the youngest,
A21-118, delivered in December 1988, will be 32.
F/A-18 Hornets have a nominal safe airframe life of 6,000 hours.
Flying 13,000 airframe hours per year across the fleet takes the fleet life of
type to around 2020. That’s been thrice extended from the originally envisaged
2010-15 period.
To further conserve that diminishing life, fleet hours will be
reduced to 12,000 hours a year from 2013-14.
Defence is also facing rising costs of keeping the F/A-18
Hornets airborne, averaging $118 million a year for the last decade but now
heading towards $170 million. ANAO said defence faced increasing risks as the
Hornets aged with increasing appearance of airframe corrosion and fatigue.
When F/A-18s entered service, they placed the RAAF far ahead of
any regional air force, a traditional and enduring determinant of Australian
defence capability. However, it was always envisaged they would need to be
progressively upgraded to maintain that superiority and that’s what’s occurred.
The classic Hornet of late 2012 is a very different aircraft to what entered
service in the mid-1980s.
It hasn’t been cheap – the ANAO estimates $3.245 billion by 2015
– but RAAF classic Hornets, although not especially stealthy, remain a potent
capability particularly when supported by Wedgetail airborne early warning and
control aircraft and the RAAF’s new tankers.
But all good things reach an end. The ANAO said the Hornet fleet’s
structural integrity is the key to it remaining in service until 2020 or
beyond. The most critical structure is the aircraft’s highly stressed centre
barrel, the complex assembly which connects wings, engine and landing gear.
At one stage the RAAF proposed replacing centre barrels on 49
aircraft at a cost of $11 million each. But when the DSTO assessed the centre
barrels, they weren’t quite as fatigued as believed. That was based on the
judgement that the fleet would retire in 2020, which now may no longer be the
case. Just 10 centre barrels were eventually replaced, each requiring more than
a year of work.
Defence is well across all this and will report to the
government later this year on options for maintaining air combat capability during
the transition period. Defence Minister Stephen Smith has repeatedly alluded to
the important decisions likely to emerge, including the prospect of more Super
Hornets to ensure there’s no air combat capability gap.
Of course if JSF was to shrug off all its problems, that wouldn’t
be necessary but that’s not immediately likely. ANAO concluded we are actually
doing as well as we could as a junior partner in a US-led multinational program
which at US$400 billion is the most costly and ambitious defence acquisition
ever undertaken.
ANAO said for a comparatively modest investment of US$205
million to join the System Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase of the JSF
program and US$643 million to join the later development and production phase,
Australia had secured level three partner status.
That gave us access to a comprehensive range of data to inform
the acquisition process and also access to the finished aircraft at partner
nation prices. ANAO, whose officers travelled to the US to discuss the project
with officials of the US government and Lockheed Martin, said Australia’s deep involvement
in the project gave us considerable insight into progress, the risks and what
was being done about them.
But despite that, it concluded, significant risks remain,
particularly in the all important and traditionally problematic domain of
software system integration and those will require close management.
The ongoing test program, conducted concurrently with aircraft
manufacture, has found various problems in early production aircraft – an issue
called concurrency – but the ANAO said that wasn’t such a big deal for
Australia. That’s because the principal developer, the US, is bearing the bulk
of the costs and the risks. By the time Australian aircraft are coming down the
line in significant numbers, concurrency issues are likely to have been fully
resolved.
