Defence Update

He has left his post as Director-General of the Tactical Fighter Force project in good shape, apart from an inevitable hiccup, having taken over as Director-General from Ted Radford, (now Air Vice Marshal and AOC of Operational Command) just after the Government’s delayed approval for the order came in October, 1981.

Roser saw the project move from detailed planning and putting the infrastructure in place as regards the Air Force and Australian industry requirements to lhe activation of No. 2 Operational Conversion Unit (20CU) and preparation to re-equip No. 3 Squadron with Hornets starting in mid-1986 at Williamtown Air Base near Newcastle. The air base is gradually being modernised and expanded at a cost of $100 million to accommodate two operational squadrons and 20CU.

H. J. F. Roser, who has the unique distinction of being a senior Australian military officer who was born in West Germany (his parents brought him to Australia when he was 12), joined the RAAF in 1955, and has since flown with all the RAAF’s fighter squadrons. He started with No. 23 Squadron (a Reserve unit) flying Meteors at Amberley. Later he flew Sabres with No. 76, No. 3 and No. 77 Squadrons before becoming C. O. of No. 75 Squadron flying Mirages in 1974-76. Roser had a tour with the United States 12th Air Force flying F-4 Phantoms in Vietnam in 1969-70.

With the F/A-18 project he believes the stage has now been reached when there is reasonable stability in the industry involvement work program.

He regards the Hornet as a superb’ aeroplane that will see Australia through well into the next century. “A few people backed the wrong horse, but the F /A-18 program has succeeded beyond what we had a right to expect,” he said. While the project costs have about doubled (from an initial estimate of some $2. 4 billion) but due to inflation and particularly the depreciation in the exchange rates, the costs in real terms have actually decreased. The fly-away aircraft costs expressed in US dollars of a US F/A-18. has come down by 17% since 1982 to $US18. 7 million and that benefit has been passed on to the RAAF’s acquisition. Bruce Searle, 45, who has flown fighters and F-111s (He was C. O. of No. 1 Squadron at Amberley) has been running the RAAF’s F/A-18 project sub-office in Washington for three years. He took over as Director of the TFF Project on December 9. Group Captain Dave Rogers has replaced Searle in Washington. Searle’s task now is to keep the program on target. Seven dual-seat F/A-18 fighters are in service, and the Australian assembly line at the Government Aircraft Factory at Avalon, Vic, actually produced the first single seat interceptor ahead of schedule before the end of 1985. The program called for the delivery of 15 single seat fighters during 1986 but the production run so far has gone better than expected.

This is a benefit to the RAAF because it means additional Hornets can be put into the OCU at Williamtown to train instructors and convert pilots from other jets, mainly Mirages, to the F/A-18s.

The first two dual-seaters were handed over in the United States in late 1984 and ferried to Williamtown in that historic, marathon, non-stop trans-Pacific 15-hour flight on May 17, 1985. Those aircraft are numbered A21-101 and A21-102. They flew 6672 nautical miles (12,364 km) from Lemoore Naval Air Station in California to Williamtown aided by inflight refuelling by USAF McDonnell Douglas KC-1o tankers.

The first Australian assembled Hornet – A21-103 was handed over to the RAAF at Avalon on May 4, 1985, and flown to Williamtown. Further deliveries from Avalon followed in July, September, October and December, with a single seater, number A21-1, also coming off the line in November ahead of schedule. The production and assembly schedules in the US and in Australia were established for a slow build-up in the learning curve.

Meanwhile Wing Commander Bruce Mouatt has been named as C. O. of No. 3 Squadron. Which starts re-equipping with Hornets in the mid-year, and is one of six pilots about to undergo the first pilot replacement conversion course at 20CU. This will run from mid-January to May. Two more courses will be conducted this year.

Four of the six pilots doing the early 1986 OCU course are destined for No. 3 Squadron. The other two will be instructors with 20CU. The four for No. 3 Squadron are Wing Commander Bruce Mouatt, the Executive Officer, Squadron Leader Ross Fox, Flight Lieutenant Mark Pearsall and Flight Lieutenant Fred Haes. All are reasonably experienced Mirage pilots.

Pearsall was a Skyhawk pilot with the Royal Australian Navy who transferred. Another former Fleet Air Arm pilot now with the RAAF is Flight Lieutenant Mark Binskin who trained on Hornets in the US and is now a “display pilot” on the F/A-18s.

The two instructors on the first OCU course are Americans on exchange from the US Navy and the USAF.

The OCU courses will train all the pilots for the three squadrons of Hornets, and will then fill a basic conversion role for subsequent pilots and also carry out FCI (Fighter Combat Instructor) training.

Pilots with reasonable jet experience will do about 75 hours of conversion training on dual and single-seat Hornets at 20CU while younger pilots who have not long graduated and are to make the first “tour” with an operational squadron will do a slightly longer course.

The pilots under conversion training at 20CU start with some ground training, including lectures and tests on a computer-based training system (CBTS) which also is used to instruct ground crews. The CBTS already installed has a video display and keyboard through which information can be dialled up on to a TV screen. An Operational Flight Trainer developed to special RAAF specifications, is being built by Sperry at Reston, Virginia, but delivery is running late. This means that simulator training on the first OCU course this year will not be available for a month or two.

In a recent interview with Air Commodore Roser, Group Captain Searle and Wing Commander Mouatt, it was pointed out that the reason why the OFT was running behind schedule was that the RAAF had asked for a more advanced simulator than that used by the US Navy, with the inclusion of a coloured visual system and additions for radar and electronic warfare training.

Another system will introduce pilots to the revolutionary F/A-18 cockpit. This is the HOTASTA (a Hands-on Throttle and Stick Training Aid) which is a relatively cheap and simple device to enable pilots under conversion training to carry out mechanical cockpit functions before moving to the more complex tasks in the simulator and the actual aeroplane. With HOTASTA the pilot is learning all the various controls and how to use the various systems,· and can practice those deeper skills.

The ground crews also will train on SAMTS (Simulated Aircraft Maintenance Trainers) which are computer-based simulation aircraft systems like flight control, dual systems, videotape presentations and actual maintenance activities. This replaces training on actual aircraft components which are expensive and difficult to represent accurately. “You can make each SAMT play as though it was a real aeroplane, but it will only deal with one valid system,” explained Searle.

How much time will the pilots actually spend on the ground and in the air? Once the simulator is available, there will be about 35 hours of simulator time, said Wing Commander Mouatt. “So it’s about half the course, but progressive throughout the course after a couple of weeks on ground school and the CBTS,” he said.

When W/C Mouatt and the other three No. 3 Squadron pilots complete their OCU course in May, they’ll start to organise for the re-formation of the squadron with Hornets.

The scheme of things is that No. 3 Squadron currently flying Mirages at Butterworth air base, Malaysia, will return to Williamtown in the mid-year, preparatory to reforming with F/A-18s formally from August 1986. When No. 3 Squadron pulls out of Butterworth it will be replaced for two years by a temporarily re-formed No. 79 Squadron to fly 12 Mirages in the Malaysian Singapore region until a total withdrawal in mid-1988. After that the Hornets and F-111s will deploy regularly to Butterworth for exercises.

It will take nearly 12 months for each of the three RAAF fighter squadrons to progressively re-equip and work up to full operational status.

After No. 3 Squadron re-equips with 16 Hornets (15 single-seaters and one dual) No. 77 Squadron, now based at Williamtown will start to re-equip in June, 1987. Finally No. 75 Squadron based at Darwin will re-equip over a year from mid-1988, and shift to the new air base at Tindal near Katherine.

By the end of this year, Mouatt’s squadron should have eight Hornets with the rest to come in the first half of 1987. Pilot strength will be built up to 1O by the end of 1986 to a full complement of 18 by mid-1987.

Overall squadron strength will be a little over 200, which Mouatt considers is a “lean, neat and compact” size,

Once fully operational the squadrons will fly about 4000 hours a year. Their major maintenance support will come from No. 481 Squadron at Williamtown, which also provides support for 20CU and No. 77 Squadron. There also is a base squadron. When fully operational at Tindal, No. 75 Squadron will have about 40 more personnel on strength because it will be required to do its own minor maintenance.

At full strength later this year, 20CU will have 10 instructors most of them trained in the US. The unit’s C. O. Wing Commander Bill Robinson led the ferry flight to Australia. Late last year his fully qualified instructors put two more instructors, and the QC of RAAF Base, Williamtown, Air Commodore Dick Bomball through Hornet conversion training. They underwent. Weapons training and air-to-ground bombing and gunnery. This was part of the preparation for the courses this year. Five Hornets deployed to Townsville in November and early December for bombing and gunnery exercises at Cordelia Rock north of Magnetic Island, and at High Range.

Williamtown, 30 kilometres north of Newcastle has been a permanent fighter base since it was formed on February 15, 1941 to provide air defence for the industrial and port activities in the area and stretching down to Sydney Harbour. Among No. 481’s major maintenance support activities are the assembly and ground running of the Atar (in the Mirage) and General Electric F404 (F/A-18) engines. Other units at Williamtown are No. 4 Flight Flying Winjeels, No. 3 Control and Reporting Unit and the Australian Joint Warfare Establishment. Another long-established unit, the Parachute Training School recently moved to the Naval Air Station, HMAS Albatross at Nowra.

Apart from early land acquisition costing about $6 million, the staged works program to expand and modernise the fighter base is estimated to cost about $96 million, and to date much of the work that has been completed has come in under cost. Phase A, which was critical work at a cost of $15 million, was required to cope with the arrival of the first Hornets last year. This began on November 1983. A further $33 million of work to enable growing Hornet operations to proceed, along with that of No. 77 Mirage Squadron, was finished late in 1985. Further work to accommodate 20CU and No. 3 Squadron began in July, 1985 and is scheduled for completion in 1987.

The program also includes new off-base married quarters. The total works program includes expansion of the existing equipment store, three nearly identical hangars and headquarters for No. 3 and No. 77 Squadrons, and 20CU, the F/A-18 simulator building and an integrated avionics software support facility. No. 481 Squadron is getting a new complex with engine maintenance workshop, general engineering and ground support equipment maintenance building, a workshop hangar and technical support buildings and an avionics and base calibration workshop.

The existing Field Training Flight building is being upgraded and includes the computer and workstation classroom for the McDonnell Douglas AIS 2 computer-aided instruction system. New engine test bays have been located well away from the main facilities. Engines can be run up either mounted in test rigs or in aircraft in the bays. Domestic accommodation on the base is also being upgraded and eventually, all the old hutted accommodation will go.

As is inevitable with new aircraft, problems can occur. The first to assail the F/A-18 program was cracking in the vertical tail attachment stubs or fittings because of the stresses on the tail due to the air flow. McDonnell Douglas worked out a strengthening modification by early 1985, and this was incorporated in the aircraft under assembly at Avalon and completed in July.

A second problem showed up under laboratory stress testing in April 1985 with cracking in the wing attachment bulkhead! (refer to Newsdesk) While the Australian project team quickly expressed concern about the possible effect on the 6000 hours specified life of the F/A-18s it was not until there was a second failure in September that the US Navy, as program managers, swung into action. The Navy told McDonnell Douglas to come up with a fix and at no cost to the customer. McDonnell Douglas has proposed a modification to the US Navy which will restore the good hour life of the aircraft. The modification is subject to further fatigue testing. The cracking presents no immediate problems for the RAAF’s Hornets, and they are operating to the full range of their capabilities.

Max Hawkins is the Editor of DEFENCE INDUSTRY NEWSLETTER. )