Newsdesk – Military

Top Book Offer:

Reading is one of the delights of intelligence. Nobody famous said that and I am certain nobody would really seriously argue with it either. If you enjoy reading, and moreover have an interest in books emphasising the military and in particular aviation then the latest offer by Book Club Australia will be of interest to you. Operated by the established Doubleday organisation, BCA offers a large quarterly selection of high-quality military-style books at reduced prices. Once more, you receive three books for only two dollars each as a special introductory offer. The full story of this worthwhile organisation is outlined in a full-page advertisement in this issue. Incidentally, we are not printing this ‘plug’ to keep the advertiser happy, rather we feel personally that this Is an excellent opportunity if you enjoyed reading fine books, in fact, the editor joined up last August when he saw the Club advertised in Time magazine.

Aussies in the Sinai:

Australia has agreed to deploy ten RAAF UH-1H Iroquois helicopters from No. 9 Squadron based at Amberley to support the multinational peacekeeping force based in the Sinai. The detachment will be made up jointly of members of the RAAF and Army, while RAN helo pilots will also participate. Responsibility for the support of personnel and spares will be the task of No. 37 Squadron with their long-range C-130E which will bring back memories that RAAF personnel formerly engaged with the UN mission at Somalia in the late seventies

Lockheed Get the CX:

In support of the Rapid Deployment Force (RDF), USAF will purchase 50 Lockheed C-5N airlifters. This decision comes as a surprise as it was only last October that the US Defence Department decided that the CX winner was McDonnell Douglas’ C-17, an all-new four-engine aircraft designed around the specific requirements of the CX proposal. The Lockheed C-5N is basically a revamped and modified Galaxy featuring the strengthened wing box, and simplified undercarriage and supplied at a fixed unit price under a contract that absolves DOD of any cost overruns. Delivery of the first C-5N is expected to take place in 1985.

Pratt & Whitney Propose Re-engined B-52G:

Pratt & Whitney has made a thorough presentation to the US DOD on reengineering the 173 aircraft B-52G cruise missile carrying bomber fleet. The candidate engine is the PW2037 destined for Boeing’s 757 transport, this would increase installed thrust from 110,000 lb to 150,000 lb in addition to reducing maintenance manhours and making the aircraft appreciably quieter. The B-52, and the KC-135 fleet, both powered by the JS? turbojet is beginning to present Strategic Air Command with environmental basing problems in certain areas due to the type’s large noise footprint. Pratts have estimated that each modified aircraft would burn 700,000 gallons less fuel per annum equating to a 40% reduction in mission fuel burn extending endurance and eliminating the requirement for tanker support. This alone would save hundreds of millions of dollars annually as the J57-equipped KC-135 is one of the least fuel-efficient aircraft in operation today. A 15% reduction in runway requirements is also offered allowing the aircraft to deploy to bases previously taboo to the big jet. Pratts also points out that the level of maintenance required for the PW2037 equates to $56 per flight hour as against $132 for the J57. The projected cost of re-engining the 173 aircraft would be $4.2 bn based on a cost of $24 m per aircraft, saving over a twenty-year period would total $8.4 bn for a total net gain of $4.2 bn. This saving does not take into account the money saved through not operating as many tanker flights and the elimination of several overseas SAC bases.

Hawkeyes Help the Shuttle Launch:

NASA are utilising the radar capabilities of USN Grumman E-2C Hawkeye AEW aircraft in their Shuttle launch programme. For the second launch of Columbia last November a screen of two E-2Cs was deployed to provide continuous monitoring of the airspace surrounding the Kennedy Space Centre out to a radius of over two hundred miles. The primary mission of the Hawkeye in this instance is to accurately track the separation and trajectory of the two solid rocket boosters upon separation from the Orbiter and to provide tracking if the Shuttle crew are forced to eject. Surveillance escort by the E-2Cs will now become a regular feature of all future Shuttle launches.

Westland Lynx Cracks 2000 Hours:

The first Westland Lynx helicopter delivered to the Royal Navy has completed 2000 flying hours in just over five years. The Lynx is being considered by the RAN for its FFG frigates as an anti-submarine, antisurface, search and rescue and general-purpose helicopter. The Royal Navy Lynx of 815 Naval Air Squadron at Yeovilton in Somerset entered service in September 1976. The Lynx is in service with seven navies worldwide. While the Navy Lynx is a specialist weapons system designed specifically for operations from small ships, the aircraft is only one member of a family of helicopters covering battlefield, utility and civil passenger transport roles. All these aircraft share a minimum of 85 per cent common dynamic components. The British Army has ordered 150 Battlefield Lynxes, of which more than 100 have been delivered.

IAI Offer Mirage and Skyhawk Updates:

If anyone has had combat experience with the A-4 Skyhawk and Mirage Ill it is the Israeli Air Force and IAI. That company is now offering modestly priced updates to these two types that go a long way in extending their combat effectiveness in the nineteen eighties. The Skyhawk update costs around $1.5 m and features several STOL mods including a brake parachute, dual disc brakes, new steerable nose wheel and lift dumpers. This makes better use of the concept that your beautiful eight thousand food macadam runway may well be minus a few sections after the foggers make their first pass. The modified A-4 also features the traditional IAF extended tailpipe able to absorb SAM-? hits and various combinations of chaff/flare dispensers. Additional underwing hardpoints are installed as are twin 30 mm anti-armour cannons. The Mirage Ill update costs around $1.7 m and features a Head-Up Display, WDNS-141 nav-attack system and a new stability augmentation system. Visually the aircraft is recognisable by the addition of canards (from the Kfir), wing leading edge dog tooth and additional hardpoints beneath the intakes, ideal for ECM and LST pods.

Inaudible Sounds Make RAAF Flying Safer:

Sounds too high pitched for human ears but loud and clear to electronic detectors are helping Defence scientists win their battle for safer military flying.

Research at the Department’s Aeronautical Research Laboratories in Melbourne is leading to the development of a new technique for in-flight monitoring of the tiny cracks that develop in metal components subject to the enormous strains imposed on Service aircraft.

Mr I. G. Scott, the ARL scientist in charge of research into non-destructive inspection, believes that Australia is at least three years ahead of any other country engaged in similar work.

Scientists call the sounds made by microscopic cracks in metal ‘acoustic emissions’.

The intensity is too low and their frequency too high for human ears, but they can be detected by a piezo-electric device known as a transducer.

As a result of Australia’s membership of the Technical Co-operation Program (in which Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States share defence research work), the US funded the manufacture of special equipment for the ARL team investigating acoustic emissions.

The great advantage of acoustic emission monitoring is that it checks the growth of cracks during the aircraft’s normal flying.

Cracking can be located and repaired long before it becomes a potential danger instead of waiting for examination at a regular servicing check.

A second advantage is that monitoring can be carried out in the most inaccessible parts of the aircraft. In the tests on an RAAF Macchi jet trainer, two transducers were attached to the main spar during a major overhaul. Once the aircraft was flying again the transducers were out of sight, but their signals were being transmitted to a console monitor unit in the cockpit.

A refinement of the system is its use of a technique that allows only the sound signals coming from the area under inspection to be transmitted to the cockpit receiver. All other noises made by the aircraft in flight are cut out.

A fresh recording of acoustic signals is made on each flight. At the end of each flight the pilot describes what the aircraft has been doing, and as the experiment progressed different types of flying, such as navigation training, low flights, night flying and aerobatics, were categorised.

The ARL has now recorded and categorised about 1,000 RAAF flights from the base at Pearce in Western Australia. The RAAF gave the scientists every help, and as a result, the ARL team is confident that it will soon have a new and important weapon available against the hazards of metal fatigue.

Locating critical areas for metal fatigue is a normal process in aviation, and in RAAF machines such as the Macchi and Mirage, the potentially dangerous components are well known. Both aircraft have many years of service behind them, so the ARL development is especially important for the aircraft’s remaining flying time.

No parallel research to that carried out at the ARL has been reported in professional journals, but Mr Scott believes the Canadian Defence Force is engaged in similar work.

“But to my knowledge, nothing closely comparable to the work in Australia is being done, and that places us at least three years ahead of other countries”, Mr Scott stated.

Super Tomcat Looks Good:

US Navy tests of their F-14D Super Tomcat powered by two General Electric F101 DFE engines have shown marked improvements over the standard Pratt & Whitney TF30-powered aircraft. The F101 produces 28,000 lb thrust as against 20,900 lb thrust for the TF30, this results in an increase in installed thrust of around 33% which allows the F-14D to operate without an afterburner in most situations necessitating the use of a full afterburner with the TF30 powered aircraft. The F101 also does not require engine trimming, something that uses up much time and fuel aboard fleet carriers with current F-14As. The USN tests covered thirty flights and indicated that the F-14D has a 34% increase in time-on-station for the same fuel payload and a 62% increase In combat radius for carrier-launched intercepts. The tests also indicated an overall 18% saving in fuel consumed through non-use of afterburner, elimination of trim and lower specific fuel consumption at altitude cruise while on CAP missions. The Navy is planning to retrofit the current F-14A fleet from 1987 onwards with the F101 and will most probably also undertake a 30-inch fuselage extension and a further avionics update at the same time greatly extending the life of type of the US Navy’s foremost air superiority fighter.

Enhanced Harpoon:

McDonnell Douglas is developing a new flight trajectory for the Harpoon anti-ship missile. If the Harpoon, and indeed the entire family of sea skimmers, had an Achilles heel it was the popup manoeuvre performed in the terminal stages of the mission flight. Regardless of the method of launch, the Harpoon tracks to the target hugging the wavetops, about a kilometre from the target the missile rapidly climbs to around 1000 ft before diving on the target. It is in this final stage of trajectory that close-in weapons can eliminate the Harpoon. The Soviets have a close-in galling cannon similar to the GD Vulcan Phalanx while their new SS N-6, a maritime version of the potent SA-1O SAM is designed primarily with small high-speed low-level targets in mind. McDonnell Douglas will test fly the modified Harpoon later this year and is confident that by being able to fly an ultra-low-level fight path for the entire mission the missile will become even harder to counter.

Hawk Almost A Winner:

The selection by the US Navy of the BAe/MDC Hawk as the winner last December of that service’s VTXTS undergraduate jet training system has been overturned by Congress in an effort to promote the purchase of a US-designed system. Navy opted for the Hawk in preference to competing designs but will now have to re-open the contest to allow direct final phase competition from a competitor, most probably Grumman. The $US 2.2 bn contract would have provided delivery of between 280 and 330 Hawks with the first such aircraft entering USN service in 1987. Work share was 55:45 between McDonnell Douglas and British Aerospace with Sperry providing the vast simulator backup. If Hawk does regain its victory in this important competition BAe will be in a far stronger position later this decade to sell the Hawk to the RAAF who by 1990 will be equipping with a Macchi 326 replacement.

USAF About to Select New Trainer:

As you read this, the USAF should have just decided upon a replacement for the Cessna T-37. Candidates for the 600 aircraft order come from Cessna, Fairchild and Rockwell. Cessna has offered a largely remanufactured version of the existing T-37 using ejection seats, a new wing and fuel-efficient twin turbofans. Rockwell launched their Nova when the B-1 bomber was dead and buried and now may be deterred from the dual production responsibilities of two major programmes. Fairchild has actually built and flown a 0.62 scale model of their New Generation Trainer design to validate design capabilities. Gulfstream American has flown their Peregrine prototype for more than 80 hours with few problems and plans to pursue an export market regardless of the outcome of the NGT contest. Withdrawn from the competition were General Dynamics and Vought who had teamed with VFW of Germany with an Americanised version of the Fantrainer.

BA Get Pave Tack:

British Aerospace Australia Ltd. has been selected by Ford Aerospace Communications Corporation, as the support contractor for the Australian Pave Tack program. Pave Tack is an electro-optical target designator system currently in service with the United States Air Force and soon to be fitted to the RAAF F.111 aircraft. British Aerospace Australia Ltd. will manufacture the test equipment for the Pave Tack system and provide in-country support. Pave Tack is a very modern system employing thermal imaging and laser technologies. It will provide the benefits of advanced technology, not only to the RAAF but also to the Australian industry.

Contract Signed for Production of More Australian-Designed Barra Sonobuoys:

The Department of Defence is to buy more Barra sonobuoys for the RAAF and RAF. A $SO-million contract was signed recently in Canberra with Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd, as the prime contractor. Major subcontractors for the production of the buoys are Plessey Australia, the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation and Tubemakers of Australia. The Barra sonobuoy was developed by Australian defence scientists and industry and is regarded as the most advanced of its kind in the world. A sonobuoy is an expendable device dropped into the sea to detect sounds made by submarines and transmit the information gathered to computers in anti-submarine aircraft. It consists of a surface buoy and a sensitive submerged hydrophone array operating at selectable depths. Both the RAAF Orion aircraft, based in Edinburgh, South Australia, and RAF Nimrod antisubmarine aircraft use the Barra sonobuoy.

XV-15 Makes Record Flight:

A Bell XV-15 tilt-rotor research aircraft recently made a flight of 1,600 miles between NASA’s Ames Research Centre in California to Bell’s Arlington, Virginia, research facilities. The long journey was noteworthy as a landmark in the development of this type of aircraft. The XV-15 two of which are under test, was initially launched in 1972 under a joint US Army/NASA study, the US Navy and Marine Corps contributed additional monetary support in 1979 and ’80 to accelerate testing. To date the XV-15 programme has been noteworthy for its lack of problems and with the prototypes having exceeded 301 kts maximum speed and operated routinely over transit sectors of four and five hundred miles the future for this type of aircraft seems assured. Application for an aircraft that operates like a helicopter only with twice the cruise speed and range capabilities is obvious and Bell has a wide variety of variants in plan to take advantage of the technology embraced with the XV-15.

Hughes Win AMRAAM Contract:

Hughes Aircraft has won the race to manufacture and develop the medium range fire and Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missiles. More than 21,000 Amraams will be built in the initial production order which will ultimately see the missile replace the AIM-7 Sparrow on USAF F-15, F-16 and the Navy F-18 and F-14. Amraam is a fire-and-forget Beyond Visual Range weapon and will allow pilots to depart the scene of firing if under threat, something that they cannot always do with current BVR missiles such as Sparrow. To enhance the BVR capability the combat USAF has placed a high priority on replacing the current IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) Mk12 by 1986 with the new NATO-compatible Mk15 IFF.

2,000th Transport Aircraft Delivered by Lockheed:

Lockheed Georgia Company ended 1981 with the delivery of the 2,000th transport aircraft.

The plane, an EC-130Q “TACAMO” communications aircraft, was handed over to the U.S. Navy.

Over the past 26 years, since rolling out the first production C-130 in 1955, Lockheed-Georgia’s engineers, have developed and produced 1,634 Hercules transports in ever-improving versions (including 88 commercial type L-1ODs); 285 C-141 Starlifter fanjet transports; and 81 C-5 Galazy heavy-weight airlifters, the world’s largest aircraft.

The three aircraft programs have generated revenues of more than US $12 billion and have brought work during peak employment for up to 33,000 employees for more than 100 Georgia counties. Subcontract work has extended throughout the US and to countries overseas.

Airship Fever Growing:

Airships have made a comeback in recent years, if not in metal, then certainly in concept. Great Britain is currently leading the world with its recently re-launched Skyship 500 while the US Coast Guard is looking seriously at a medium-sized airship with an endurance of ten days. The USCG would utilise the craft the drug enforcement, marine environmental actions, iceberg patrol and traffic control in high-density ports. Propulsion and power generation would be from turboprop engines initially with production airships later using new lightweight diesels currently under development by NASA. With an operational payload ranging between 7000 lb and 25,000 lb the design would also lend itself to use as a freighter. Either way, the airship looks like making a commercial comeback.

RAAF Reserve Aircrew Trial in Operation:

The Air Force had begun a trial scheme to reintroduce flying on the Active Reserve. But the Service is not looking for recruits. The trial, being conducted over 12 months, is one feature of plans to expand the RAAF Active Reserve to an Australia-wide strength of about 1800 by 1985. It involves the retraining of a handful of former Permanent Air Force aircrew now on the Reserve. In all, eight reservists will undergo refresher courses in areas where they previously worked as full-time servicemen. Then they will carry out flying duties on a part-time basis. So far two pilots – Flight Lieutenants Ian Woods and Jim Heagney- have successfully completed refresher courses. Both are now qualified for flying duties on Air Force Caribous as well as for flying duties with their full-time employers, respectively Qantas and Air New South Wales. After WWII, members of the Reserve were employed on flying duties in Citizen’s Air Force Squadrons. They operated aircraft, such as Vampire and Mustang Fighters, for some years until economic measures required them to be reorganised to serve in a support function only. Those involved in the new Reserve aircrew trial scheme will be flying aircraft of full-time squadrons. An Air Force spokesman said the results of the trial will be examined by the Service during the 12-month period and a decision made as to whether RAAF Active Reserve members will be employed on flying duties on a regular basis.

New Flight Simulator for RAAF

The RAAF is to acquire an operational flight training simulator for its P3C Orion antisubmarine aircraft. A $11 million contract has been signed with Singer Corporation, Link Flight Simulator Division, Binghamton, New York, for the supply of the simulator which is expected to enter RAAF service in March 1985. The contract involves Australian industry participation which will assist in the development of Australian expertise in simulation technology.

The flight training simulator will become an important adjunct to Orion flight crew training at RAAF Base, Edinburgh, South Australia. It will allow a reduction in Orion flying training hours with consequent savings in fuel and support resources.

Lockheed Wins Demonstration Contract for Tank-Busting Hypervelocity Missile:

The U.S. Air Force has awarded Lockheed one of two contracts to demonstrate technology for a hypervelocity missile (HVM) – a missile lethal to any tank likely to be fielded in the next 20 years.

Up to 40 HVMs would be mounted in two carriers aboard tactical aircraft such as A-1Os or F-16s. Each missile would be less than 80 inches long, 3.52 inches in diameter and would weigh less than 50 pounds.

“Hypervelocity” lies between Mach 3 and Mach 5, or up to about 5,000 feet per second (3,400 mph). At Mach 5, Lockheed’s HVM would drive its solid metal warhead through the toughest armour to destroy one or more of the tank’s vital systems.