Super progress

“Our team is roughly 85 per cent with completing all of the engineering design efforts for the RAAF Super Hornets and that leads to all of our drawing releases and manufacturing releases required to commence production on that first aircraft, with our production readiness review scheduled with the US Navy and the RAAF on September 11 this year,” Nichols said. With Australia’s aircraft to be largely identical to US Navy spec jets, most of that review process will focus on integration of the two unique features for RAAF Super Hornets, the integration of a VOR/ILS system and the calibration of the standby altimeter in millibars rather than inches of mercury.

Boeing says it remains on track to hand over one Australian aircraft a month from next July, through to July 2011. Deliveries are scheduled to allow the RAAF to achieve its planned IOC (initial operating capability) with 12 jets by December 2010, and FOC (full operational capability) with all 24 aircraft in December 2012.

The RAAF’s first and second aircraft – no2 is due to be handed over in early August 2009 – will undergo a short US Navy managed flight test program, with the first jet flying to the Naval Air Warfare Center at Patuxent River in Maryland (home of Naval Air Systems Command) to validate the VOR/ILS and electromagnetic environmental effects testing in the anechoic chamber, and the second going to China Lake in California (with the Naval Air Warfare Center) for software validation.

This testing will feed data into the RAAF’s airworthiness board certification, which will allow RAAF acceptance of the first aircraft – at NAS Lemoore, the US Navy’s west coast Hornet training base, where initial RAAF Super Hornet conversion training will take place – in late January 2010. This will then allow Boeing to deliver RAAF Hornets direct to Lemoore for RAAF pilot training from February 2010.

As currently planned the aircraft will be ferried to Australia in six waves of four jets, with the first due to depart NAS Lemoore in California, where initial Australian Super Hornet training will take place, from March 2010 through to October 2011. But, “There is current analysis being done by both Boeing and the US Navy to accelerate bringing those

As currently planned the aircraft will be ferried to Australia in six waves of four jets.

aircraft to Australia in that they’re looking to reduce the number of ferry waves to four waves with groups of six,” Nichols said.

“However, we’re looking at the feasibility of the logistics for ferrying six aircraft as well as the changing air refuelling capabilities that will be required for ferrying those aircraft to Australia. ” Under current planning the Super Hornets will be ferried across the Pacific with the RAAF’s new KC-30 tankers.

In parallel to aircraft production Boeing is working on ‘standing-up’ the Super Hornet training and maintenance facility being built at RAAF Amberley in December 2009, with the facility to be fully operational in time for the arrival of the first aircraft in March 2010.

Australia has committed to maintaining its Hornets under the US Navy’s FIRST – F/A‑18E/F Super Hornet Integrated Readiness Support Teaming – program, a long term performance-based logistics contract awarded to Boeing in December 2005.

“There is performance based logistics being established for Australia,” said Nichols, details of which will be included in a follow-on FMS (Foreign Military Sale, ie government-to-government) contract which will be placed with the US government. “Australia has bought into in total the Navy overall maintenance concept for maintaining their equipment on their aircraft.

There is some direct commercial activity that the RAAF is conducting with the engines with General Electric, that is a PBL (performance- based logistics contract) but overall they are common with the US Navy. ” RAAF Hornet maintenance will be centred on Amberley, but under the FIRST performance based logistics system components and assemblies will be shipped back and forth to various facilities in the US for servicing. “They (the US Navy and RAAF) are establishing plans for the efficiency and readiness (levels) that Boeing and the Navy have signed up to for keeping the RAAF aircraft ready. ” “For the Super, there is no defined depot level maintenance in its life,” elaborated Rick McCrary, Boeing IDS’s newly appointed VP business development for Australia.

“Operational level maintenance, which the RAAF will do, (will involve) uniformed care on the flightline, servicing the aircraft and taking care of normal turn-around stuff. Immediate level (work) is pretty small, but it is to do a local quick check if there were any fault found to make sure it was a ‘hard’ fault (ie a physical problem with a part, not an errant warning message). ” If there is a problem then that part “will be sent back in almost all cases to the OEM through the FIRST system.

“That is the beauty, Australia by joining that system has access to the total population of parts out there,” McCrary said. “We are motivated to have very few failures, because we’re required to replace those components when they do. ” Boeing has ongoing programs to improve the reliability of components with its vendors “to drive those problems out of the system”.

“Australia takes full advantage of that as part of the global system. ” With Australia’s maintenance covered by the FIRST program, and there being no formal Australian industry involvement requirement in the Super Hornet acquisition, there is no contractual onus on Boeing to place support or manufacturing work in Australia, but the company has committed to place work in Australia.

“There’s no formal program, like there has been in the past,” Boeing Super Hornet program VP Bob Gower told Australian Aviation at July’s Farnborough Airshow. “This is more out of commitment, because Australia is committed to Boeing.

“For us, you will see effort to go put support work in there, and then we have a concerted effort to make sure Australian companies are

“They have made the expectation clear to Boeing that they expect us to put work down there. ”

included in the bid process, especially in the support arena,” Gower continued.

“The aircraft will be in service for 40 years so there is a lot more revenue stream (potential) in the support side. ” “They (the RAAF and the Australian government) have made the expectation clear to Boeing that they expect us to put work down there especially in the support arena, and we’re working to do that. ” Gower said Boeing will be working to ensure Australia can support its own aircraft, “but also to be able to support some aspects of the US fleet, especially with the performance-based logistics approach. ” He described awarding potential work to Australian companies as a “matchmaking process” against the Super Hornet procurement plan.

“Australia has been very good to Boeing, and we need to be very good to Australia in return, and we have,” Gower said, pointing to Boeing’s placement of large amounts of commercial airliner component production in Australia.

Boeing will no doubt be mindful of placing a reasonably amount of work in Australia to help efforts to sell a possible second batch of Super Hornets, or possibly the EA-18G Growler electronic attack variant to the RAAF, both of which seem more than outside possibilities.

“The White Paper creates opportunities for us,” said Gower on potentially selling more aircraft to Australia. “I like the capabilities we have, Australia now clearly understands the capabilities of the jets so I think they are going to be in a position to make an informed decision about what’s the right product or the right mix going forward. I feel good because they very clearly understand the capabilities of the F/A-18F.

“The way we work this is we provide a lot of information to the RAAF and then we’re really now in the stage of waiting for them to do the analysis and make the decision,” Gower explained. “There’s no proposal in and we haven’t been asked to provide reams of cost data. ” The RAAF has also evaluated the capabilities of Growler under the second phase of the yet-to-be-published Air Combat Capability Review, which was completed earlier this year but whose findings will be released as part of the forthcoming Defence White Paper process.

“Boeing does not have a marketing licence to market the Growler to Australia, so we did not participate in US government top-level briefs that have been conducted on the Growler capability to the RAAF,” Carolyn Nichols said of Boeing’s current position on the Growler for Australia.

“We see it as real potential opportunity, both for additional Super Hornets or potentially even Growlers if they decide to adopt that mission or to even have a dual role capability because the Growler still has nine weapon stations on it, instead of 11, and it also has the heart of a Super Hornet as its base,” Gower said.

For now the procurement process for the current buy of 24 aircraft continues, with most recently the US Defence Security Cooperation Agency notifying the US Congress of a planned FMS buy of “follow-on support . . . and associated equipment and services” including 10 AIM-9X Captive Air Training Missiles, 10 AN/ALE-47 counter measures dispensers, eight AN/ALQ-214 integrated defensive electronic countermeasures systems, and 10 AN/ALR-67(V)3 radar warning receivers, avionics software, engine spare parts, technical ground support equipment, supply support, technical publications, and personnel training and equipment. The total value of this FMS purchase could total US$1. 5 billion if all options are exercised. That cost figure raised a few eyebrows, but is not new money, and rather is accounted for under the total RAAF F/A-18F acquisition budget.

“The follow-on contract is for additional spares for supporting the Super Hornets,” Nichols explained. “The original contract only defined initial spares for standing up the squadrons, however we’ve gone back and done more analysis, we also have a better understanding of how the squadrons are going to fly the aircraft so there has been follow-on buys of spares. ” The FMS request for the first batch of Super Hornet weapons was announced last October and included 50 AGM-154 JSOWs (Joint Stand-Off Weapons) and 43 AIM-9X Sidewinders (the same FMS request also included 18 ATFLIR targeting pods and 90 JHMCS helmets). There has also been some RAAF interest in fitting the JASSM stand-off missile currently being acquired for its ‘Classic’ F/A-18A/B Hornets to the F/A-18F, but as the JASSM is not in the US Navy’s inventory, Australia would have to fund the integration effort.

“There is some interest integrating JASSM on the RAAF’s Supers,” said Nichols. “The RAAF has an interest in JASSM, I know (Deputy Chief of Air Force) Air Vice-Marshal Brown has communicated that . . . I believe it is going to be on their roadmap, it’s not defined today but it is being discussed. ” In the meantime the Super Hornet production program continues to tick over. To date Boeing has delivered more than 360 Super Hornets to the US Navy, within budget and at an average of 60 days per aircraft before the contracted delivery date.

The AESA radar equipped Block 2 Super Hornet “is an aircraft that is really just about optimised from a cost and capability perspective,” observed Rick McCrary. It’s “down the learning curve, up the capability curve and so Australia is really buying at the right time. ”