Newsdesk – Military

The aircraft and the associated support were in addition to the assistance Australia was already providing in support of the 20 Nomads being purchased commercially by the Royal Thai Air Force.

Volant Rodeo Victory:

A great team effort has won the RAAF allied teams’ trophy at the US Air Force international tactical air transport competition, Volant Rodeo, at Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina, last month. The 35-man team, comprising air and ground crew from 36 Squadron, Richmond Base, as well as air despatchers, airfield defence guards and army despatchers, used their H-model Hercules, to beat teams from Brazil, Canada, West Germany, Italy, Portugal and New Zealand.

They were fifth overall in a field of 37 teams, which included the cream of the huge US tactical transport fleet.

While a good deal of the exercises included flying and navigation of the low-level, find-the landmark variety, Volant Rodeo also emphasised aircraft maintenance, loading, security and combat control by ground personnel.

The idea is for teams to keep their aircraft secure and operating under all types of adverse conditions while they carry out timely and accurate delivery of a variety of military loads.

Seahawk Production Ahead of Schedule:

Production of the Sikorsky Seahawk, recently announced as one of the final contenders for the RAN, is getting underway in Stratford ahead of schedule.

Sikorsky says that deliveries to the U.S. Navy are now two months ahead of the contract requirements. To date, six production-model Seahawks have been delivered before the due date, and under budget. The United States Navy has placed orders so far for 45 Seahawks at a cost of $344 million. Total orders are anticipated to be more than 200.

Another Six ‘Ecureuil’ Helicopters for the Royal Australian Air Force:

Australia’s Defence Secretary has told Parliament of his intention, to procure another six Aerospatiale Ecureu1I A’? 3508 helicopters for the Royal Australia Air Force (RAAF). These machines are ident1cal to the 18 ordered in August 1982 (12 for the RAF and 6 for the Royal Australian Navy) and will be used primarily for point-to-point links, search and rescue (SAR) operations and pilot training.

Equipped with an IFR instrument panel (single-pilot) featuring an autopilot autonomous navigation, Tacan, the ‘Ecureuil’ will also be fitted with a winch and emergency flotation gear.

To date, over 1000 AS 350 ‘Ecureuil’ helicopters have been ordered by 262 customers in 34 different countries.

Harpoon for B-52:

A Harpoon missile has been successfully fired from 8-52 aircraft flying at 30,000 feet. This concluded a series of three test launches in the B-52 Harpoon Weapon System Demonstration Program conducted by the US Air Force and sets a new altitude record for Harpoon. The B-52/ Harpoon feasibility tests were designed to illustrate total force capabilities for maritime operations and to demonstrate support for the US Navy in sea control.

During B-52test launches, the harpoon illustrated its reliability as a sure kill weapon in both high and low-altitude tests at over-the-horizon targets. Target update information was provided to the B-52 by the Airborne Warning and Control system (AWACS) aircraft in support of the second launch.

In all Air Force operations to demonstrate the B-52 capabilities, operational crews and aircraft were used. The Air Force plans that two squadrons of 8-52 aircraft with Harpoon m1ss1les for contingency operations will be operational by December 1984… The Harpoon anti-ship missile, now in its ninth production year, is fast becoming the world’s most widely deployed anti-ship weapon. It is presently on 250 ships, 55 submarines and 195 aircraft. Thirteen allied nations around the world (including Australia) equip their navies with Harpoon.

Japanese to Update Phantoms:

Japan is to update around 100 of its MDC F-4EJ force with new Westinghouse APG-66 radar (as used in the F-16A), a new fire control system, HUD, INS and IFF equipment in an effort to keep the type operational through till the late 1990s. Flight test of a prototype will commence in 1985 and retrofit will take place at the rate of three dozen aircraft per annum. Meanwhile, Pratt & Whitney has teamed with Boeing to modify an F-4E to Super Phantom specifications using updated avionics and the new PW1120 turbojet in place of the standard General Electric J79s. Engine development has been timed to Israel’s Lavi fighter so Pratts expect the earliest they could have a flight demonstrator operational would be late 1985. Boeing will carry out the airframe work and it is hoped that ultimately upwards of 1000 Phantoms will be retrofitted.

British Forces Buy Big From Westlands:

Westland has received orders for an additional 15 Lynx and Sea King helicopters for the RAF and Royal Navy. The latest order is for 3 Sea Kings and 12 Lynx worth a total of $A40 m. The latest batch of aircraft brings the number of helicopters the British government has ordered from Westlands in recent weeks to 31. More than 270 Sea Kings and 310 Lynx have been ordered to date.

Fokker Maritime With teeth:

Fokker has embarked on a programme to give their F.27M Maritime a degree of offensive capability. British Aerospace attempted a similar move in 1982 with their so far unsold 748 Coastguarder. The revised F.27M will be able to carry two fuselage-mounted sea-skimmers of the Harpoon, Exocet or Sea Eagle class in addition to pods of unguided rockets and ECM pods. The underwing fuel tanks and searchlight are retained. The aircraft will also be equipped to launch and monitor sonobuoys in the ASW role and _ will provide more authority to those nations likely to meet armed intruders in the EEZs.

Navy Lynx 3 Launched:

Westland has announced a new, more powerful Naval helicopter, the Lynx 3. Building on Westland’s leadership _ in this field, Navy Lynx 3 is designed to maintain Lynx superiority over the ever increasing surface and submarine threat advancing the capabilities of Navy Lynx with the most modern weapons and sensors.

At 12,000 lb (5445 kg) Navy Lynx 3 can carry a greater range of weapons and sensors including active and passive sonobuoys: dunking sonar, magnetic anomaly detector and 360 degree radar and provides an increase in range and time on station.

It can be fitted with the new Stingray, Mk 46 and Mk 44 torpedos and depth charges. Combat-proven Sea Skua missiles can be used against fast surface vessels and it is able to defend itself with Stinger air-to-air missiles or 20 mm cannon.

Capable of anti-surface vessel strike antisubmarine warfare, electronic surveillance measures, search and rescue as well as casualty evacuation, Navy Lynx can also carry nine equipped troops when used in the troop transport role.

It maintains the familiar Lynx deck recovery agility, using the harpoon deck lock and negative thrust and has the same easy storage qual1t1es as Navy Lynx. with folding tail cones and rotors.

General Electric F404 Engine Given Maximum Navy Incentive Award:

General Electric’s F404 fighter aircraft engine – powerplant for the RAAF F/A-18 Hornet aircraft – has significantly exceeded all Reliability and Maintainability (A & M) goals established by the U.S. Navy, during 500 flight hours of Accelerated Service Testing (ASl) flown on one aircraft and the same two engines. This unprecedented performance by a new aircraft engine has earned General Electric a maximum incentive award from the Navy of $1.35 million.

This R & M evaluation was the last of three. Together they have earned General Electric over 98% of the possible total award. The latest award was based on performance for six maintainability goals and the engine’s mean time between failure rate.

Only 418 maintenance man-hours per flight hour were required, six times better than the goal. The goal for the mean time to repair at the organisational maintenance level was 2.8 hours, but no repair was required during this evaluation. The goal for the maximum time for any engine repair at the intermediate or organisational levels was 24 hours; only eight hours were required, three times better than the goal.

Modified Eagle Extends Operating Range:

The U.S. Air Force has tested a McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle modification that can extend the operating radius with large external weapons loads up to 40 per cent, depending on its configuration.

The modification to the F-15 involves a unique attachment of weapons on the F-15s conformal fuel tanks. These tanks are aerodynamically shaped devices that hug each side of the fuselage and add 9000 pounds (1385 gallons) of fuel to the aircraft.

The weapons are attached to rows of stub pylons on the lower corner and bottom of the conformal tanks. For mission payloads of many weapons. the stub pylons replace conventional multiple racks. The racks cause more drag and use external fuel stations, both of which limit the aircrafts range.

The design is known as “tangential carriage”. Up to 12 1000-pound bombs or four 2000-pound bombs can be carried on the stubs.

Wind tunnel testing of tangential carriage, now confirmed with flight tests, showed an F-15 loaded with three external fuel tanks, twelve 500-pound bombs, four missiles and two infrared sensor pods, could fly 50 per cent farther than 1s now possible. McDonnell Douglas has been testing advanced air-to-ground versions of the F-15 fighter since 1977. McDonnell Douglas, together with Hughes aircraft and other subcontractors has invested over $US50 million in these efforts. In addition to improved woeapons carriage, there has been extensive work with advanced crew stations high-resolution radar and forward looking infrared sensors. These improvements provide Eagle aircrews with photo-like imagery of tactical targets at very long ranges.

McDonnell Aircraft has delivered over 800 F-15s to the U.S. Air Force. Saudi Arabia. Israel and Japan.

In 1982, the F-15 had the lowest loss rate for a tactical fighter aircraft in the Air Force – 4.5 planes per 100.000 flight hours The Eagle also led in fully mission capable rates. with F-15C and F-15DC ready to fly and fight over 70 per cent of the time.

Aerodynamic Testing on Aircraft Weapon Trajectories:

Computer-aided wind tunnel research by Defence scientists on the tra1ectories of bombs and missiles when they leave an aircraft has reduced the time and money spent by the RAAF on flight trials of such weapons – and has made the process much safer for aircrew.

This program was one of several Defence Science and Technology Organisation projects at the Weapons Systems Research Laboratory (WSRL) at Salisbury in South Australia recently.

To counter bombs and missiles behaving dangerously, aircraft flight boundaries (combinations of aircraft height, speed, dive angle and manoeuvre loading) are determined within which the release of munitions from the aircraft is safe. Outside these boundaries dangerous situations may develop, such as weapon damage to the parent aircraft.

The WSRL program allows ‘stores separation’ tests in the air to be conducted within reasonable margins of safety and brings about substantial savings in the flying time needed.

The WSRL team tackles the problem of forecasting the effects of airflow field distortion caused by the munitions, using their own specially devised system of wind tunnel testing.

The process begins with the design and building of stainless steel models of aircraft and weapons one twenty-fourth of their actual size. Inside each model is a highly miniaturised electrical measuring instrument which records the forces which the munitions will encounter as they drop through the distorted airflow produced by the aircraft.

A computer calculates the trajectories of the bombs or missiles in response to all the force factors concerned and controls the positions of the model bombs and missiles relative to the aircraft.

The testing of Harpoon missiles, the 500-pound laser-guided bomb and the Karinga cluster bomb for carnage in various conformations by the F111 strike aircraft. Flight trials to date have confirmed WSRL’s predictions. Each task takes from nine months to a year to complete. Tests for the F111-Harpoon configurations provided a typical program. The work involved the preparation of detailed shape data for the models and their construction by WSRL craftsmen. the design, manufacture, gauging and calibration of the tiny force measurement instruments to go inside the models, extensive programming of the computer and finally the actual wind tunnel testing, which lasted four months

Egypt Signs for Grumman E-2C Hawkeye:

The Egyptian government has signed a $US689 m contract with Grumman Aerospace for four E-2C AEW aircraft. The contract covers firm orders for two aircraft, the first of which will be operational in 1985, and options for two more aircraft The contract covers a complete training, maintenance and support package. The package will be financed by US Foreign Military Aid credits.

Turkey Selects the F-16:

The Turkish Air Force is to re-equip with 160 General Dynamic F-16As over a ten-year period. Forty aircraft will be purchased direct from the US production line to speed delivery while the remainder will be locally assembled in Turkey by Tusas Primary market competitor against the F-16 was the F-18. Greece 1s also in the final stages of the afighter selection programme and the fact that Turkey has opted for the F-16 could well sway Greece to select the F-18 or a combination between the Tornado and Mirage 2000. Due to the intense rivalry between the two nations, it 1s generally felt that whoever won the initial order would lose the second contract regardless of the offer being made.

RAAF Point Cook Airshow Raises Funds for Museum:

The immensely successful RAAF air show held lastSeptember at Point Cook has raised no less than $35,000 for the RAAF Museum While unable to become airborne. Neptune and Canberra raised pulses amongst the 100,000-plus spectators with their nostalgic high-speed taxys. The money will be put towards a number of programmes the Museum has underway.

New Helicopter Distance Record:

A US Army Sikorsky UH-58 Blackhawk has broken the existing distance record with a 12-hour flight covering 1558 miles. The Blackhawk was configured with a standard ESSS (External Stores Support System) system which allowed carriage of two 450 gl inboard and two 230 gl outboard fuel tanks. When the Blackhawk landed at Fort Rucker in Alabama it st111 had 1000 pounds of fuel remaining. ESSS has been developed to allow Blackhawks to ferry unsupported by ground crews between the US and Europe in the event of hostilities. The ESSS facility. which essentially are mini-wings strengthened for carnage of either fuel tanks, weaponry. or miscellaneous items such as recce scout bikes. ECM pods, etc. provide the basic Blackhawk with a considerable multirole capability.

New Low-Level Air Defence System:

British Aerospace has launched what 11 describes as an ‘affordable weapon system’ for the defence of vital assets such as airfields against low-level air attacks. The new Rapier L.aserfire system had been designed to give potential users an effective area defence capability at a price comparable with the manportable point defence systems and their upgraded derivatives The system has been designed to meet strict cost targets for its procurement and long-term use. The advantages of modern high technology together with the low-cost Rapier missile result in a cost effective system with fully automatic operation, clear day and night operational capability, and high system reliability and availability. Rapier Laserfire detects and destroys fighter ground attack aircraft and helicopters and is effective out to at least five kilometres in range and three kilometres in altitude against both approaching and crossing targets.

The Rapier Laserfire system fits on a single pallet which can be mounted on any medium sized military vehicle. This gives good cross-country performance and a rapid ‘introduction’ time to provide continuous air defence for mobile operations even in difficult terrain. When Rapier Laserfire is deployed to defend static installations, such as airfields, the system can be operated from the pallet on the ground. All elements of the weapon system, including the operator’s cabin, are mounted on a palletised turntable. The major elements of the system are a surveillance radar, automatic laser tracker, crew cabin with system controls and displays, a system computer, and four ready-to-fire missiles.

The surveillance radar, produced by Racal and jointly developed by British Aerospace, provides all-round detection out to 10 km and up to 3000 metres. The radar, which operates in the millimetric waveband, can detect and distinguish between aircraft and helicopters. The narrow beam width gives excellent multitarget discrimination and provides accurate designation data for the automatic laser tracker. The radar is designed to be difficult to detect and has a high resistance to ECM.

Following target detection, the laser tracker automatically locks onto the target to provide the laser line of sight. Indicators in the cab tell the operator when to fire. This is the operator’s only task in the engagement, all other functions are fully automatic, thus ensuring the rapid reaction time to destroy high-speed, low-flying aircraft. The highly manoeuvrable Rapier missile is commanded to fly along the laser sight line to impact with the target.

Aerodynamically, the Rapier missile can follow the high tracking rates involved when engaging high-speed crossing targets, to give excellent area coverage. This is in sharp contrast to the developments in existing self defence weapons which, in some cases, have introduced new early warning and improved tracking capabilities but cannot improve their coverage without radically altering the missile design. In periods of radar silence, the automatic laser tracker can be put on to a target by the commander using a simple visual sight. The engagement then proceeds automatically.

USAF Order a Shot in the Arm for Beech and Lear:

The USAF is proving a valuable, and timely customer of late for America’s GA industry. In the biggest order to date, for a CT-39 Sabreliner replacement, USAF has signed with Beechcraft for 40 King Airs and with Lear for 80 Lear 35s. The deal involves USAF leasing the fleet for five years with the option to purchase or renew for a further three year lease at the end of that period. The order will greatly assist both manufacturers who have seen their traditional markets erode over the past two years of recession. For Beech, this will bring the number of King Air variants they have sold to government and military agencies to 244 aircraft while for Learjet it will give them access to a new market where their aircraft could be used for a variety of missions in the years to come. In Australia, Learjets have successfully replaced fuel-inefficient Canberras in the high altitude mapping and target towing roles.

Interested in Mustangs:

If you get a kick out of that classic of the forties, the North American Mustang, then an international organisation you may wish to join is Mustang International. Based in the UK, Ml has branch affiliates worldwide, including Australia, and even publishes a quarterly Mustang magazine featuring updates on what is happening with the scores of P-51s in service and under restoration. If you are interested in knowing more about this organisation then contact Derek Macphail, Ml, P.O. Box 195, Nedlands, 6009.

RNZAF Accept First Updated Orion:

The ANZAF has placed its first updated P-3B Orion back into service following an extensive upgrade by Boeing. Significant upgrades includes a new integrated data-handling and display system, infra-red sensors, new surveillance radar and Omega and INS. The upgraded P-3B features five tactical consoles while much of the electronics is common to the latest state-of-the-art avionics as used in the USN P-3C Update Ill programme. With the first refurbished Orion back in the inventory, the RNZAF will now upgrade the remaining four aircraft itself using experience gained with working with Boeing on the first aircraft.

Northrop Accepts First Aust. Produced F/A-18 Assemblies:

Northrop has accepted the first batch of Australian-produced assemblies for the RAAF’s New Tactical Fighter, the FIA-18 Hornet.

Consisting of six engine bay doors and one aft nozzle fairing, the delivery of the assemblies represents a milestone in the Australian aviation manufacturing industry. Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation first began planning and scheduling the assemblies in mid 1982. This included tool design, manufacture and fabrication tooling.

Although completely manufactured and assembled in Australia, the assemblies were made from lead-in parts provided by Northrop. Eventually, total manufacture and assembly will be carried out at CAC. The release and acceptance of the assemblies represented a milestone for Australian aviation manufacturing because it involved a degree of high technology engineering not known in this country before.