Vigilant air

The system will see most of the ADF’s key airborne and ground based sensors tied together with those of the civil Air Traffic Control network to provide a state-of-the-art air defence C2 system that will in future, form the core platform of the RAAF’s planned Network Centric Warfare (NCW) capability.

But from that planned 2007 rollout, the project has slipped by almost four years due to complexities in the design and development of the system. “From a Boeing perspective, we certainly don’t like having projects on the concern list,” Steve Parker, Boeing Defence Australia’s Vice President and General Manager of Network & Space Systems told Australian Aviation. For Vigilare, we have had challenges in regards to execution, as well as a number of commercial issues too. The DMO has gone on the record as saying there were interface issues, but the DMO doesn’t control all the interfaces so they were put in a sticky situation themselves where they either couldn’t guarantee the interface data or couldn’t provide it on time.”

The 2006/07 Defence Annual Report states that “delays have resulted from an underestimation of the effort required and delayed delivery of required interfaces by Defence. Mitigation action is under way to address delivery delays and the contractor is applying greater resources to complete the work. Because of the overall complexity of integration and the large number of unique interfaces involved, the project risk remains high.”

Parker added that, when the company won the contract, it probably didn’t understand the level of complexity involved in developing such a system in the Australian environment. “I think that would be the same for the DMO as well,” he explained. “But we stand by our commitments – we don’t walk away from things. It was about coming back and determining what the issues were and applying the appropriate corrective actions, because we know this is one of the most important programs for the RAAF.”

The system passed the Critical Design Review (CDR) milestone in July 2008 which allowed it to enter into an integration and test phase, and Boeing began installing elements of the system at Tindal and other sites in May 2008. In October last year, Boeing and the DMO signed a Deed of Settlement, Release and Amendment that resolved many of the long standing commercial issues surrounding Project Air 5333. The then Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement, Greg Combet said in a release that the Deed included “sharper commercial obligations between the parties for improved schedule and performance aspects, revised business rules to streamline future decision making, as well as providing for an incremental delivery regime for earlier capability acceptance by the RAAF and more efficient project execution by Boeing Australia. The Government will continue to closely monitor the progress of Vigilare but is pleased that the project is now moving forward again. I would like to congratulate Boeing and the DMO on their constructive work over the last year in resolving these issues.”

“Like all projects, it was really about having a realistic schedule that takes into account the risk on these types of programs,” said Parker. “We had to make sure we had the right team in place, to make sure we were working closely with our suppliers to resolve issues, and putting in place a thorough integration and test plan for our software builds, with a focus on datalink integration, and we’ve done that now. We’ve also worked very closely with our customer and we’ve really seen our performance turn around over the last 12 months, while we will still face challenges, the entire team is really working well together.”

But whilst there may be light on the horizon for the project, there are still schedule and developmental risks that remain. The 2009/10 budget papers state that “The major technical risk continues to be integrated tactical data links development, specifically Link-16 capability. The risk is being managed through increased access to datalink expertise, in-country test equipment and close liaison with the ADF tactical datalink authority. Due to the overall complexity of integration and the large number of unique interfaces involved, the project remains a high-risk project until system testing is largely completed. The major schedule risk is integrated logistics support. As part of the capability transition to the Air Force, training and technical publications are required to induct the Air Force operational and maintenance communities onto the new Vigilare systems. The current work-scope associated with integrated logistics support provides Boeing with a challenge to meet the deed revised delivery dates.”

What Is Vigilare?

Vigilare pulls together data from a multitude of sensors including ground based sensors such as the two JORN over the horizon radar arrays in QLD and WA, the nine RAAF air traffic control radars, the mobile TPS-77 radars operated by the No 3 Command Reporting Unit (3 CRU), and data and filed flight plans from 18 civilian ATC radar sites. Other data will come from airborne platforms including Wedgetail AEW&C, AP-3C and future P-8 maritime reconnaissance aircraft, F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet fighters, and future unmanned Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) vehicles; as well as data from naval vessels like the three powerful Aegis combat system-equipped Hobart class Air Warfare Destroyers (AWDs) which are due to enter service late next decade.

“Information from all these assets will be available in the Vigilare System and a number of these assets can be directly controlled from the Vigilare operator’s console,” explained Lee Davis, Boeing’s Vigilare deputy program manager. “For example, an operator can pull up a TPS-77 radar control panel and change the radar’s parameters. Later, UAVs or Ground based Air Defence (GBAD) systems and can plug in either via datalink or radar interface, as well as other allied sensor networks.”

With this data, an air defence controller and the entire chain of command will be able to build a detailed air picture within the reach of all of these sensors, and replace the current systems operated 3CRU at Tindal and Williamtown. “The key missions for Vigilare are surveillance, battlespace management and training,” Davis added. “The Regional Operations Centres (ROCs) support these missions through providing facilities for air surveillance operators to process all of the surveillance data, and hand that information off to fighter controllers who task aircraft for missions and manage those missions. And with the Vigilare system, a lot of the mission management will be migrated over to tactical datalinks rather than traditional voice operator interactions.”

The ROCs at NORTHROC and its RAAF Base Williamtown equivalent known as EASTROC are tactical level Air Operations Centres (AOCs) which in turn feed into the strategic level AOCs at RAAF Base Glenbrook and at the Joint Operations Centre (JOC) near Canberra.

The Vigilare system hardware is comprised mostly of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) servers and consoles which are interfaced to military and civilian communications nodes. “Physically, Vigilare is an equipment room full of racks and servers, and in the operations rooms its consoles,” explained Davis. “We have a fully integrated anthropometric design of an interface to the operators at the operator console. It’s a node concept – the console layout has a comms suite in the middle, and the display screens on top showing the tactical display.

“That infrastructure is connected to remote communications elements which enable voice operations. We have two fixed communications facilities and two transportable shipping containers full of radios which can be deployed anywhere in the world and connected back in via satellite. We also have Link 16 and Link 11 remote sites and we have a JTIDS (Joint Tactical Information Distribution System) terminal at Tindal, Darwin and Williamtown. So an operator sitting in NORTHROC can be connected to a Link 16 site at Williamtown and can be controlling aircraft in the Williamtown area, likewise a controller at EASTROC can be controlling aircraft off Darwin.

Link 11 is an older datalink standard developed in the 1960s and 70s which is primarily used today between ships and aircraft operating in the maritime environment such as AP-3C Orions and Navy’s Seahawk helicopters, and is limited to tens of messages at a time. But Link 16 is a newer standard developed in the 1990s which is more advanced, has a much richer interface, and can handle thousands of messages simultaneously. The RAAF’s F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets, Wedgetail, and the Navy’s AWDs all or will all be Link 16 capable. The system also introduces AADSLINK which is an Australian customisation of JREAP (Joint Range Extension Application Protocol) which will enhance the ability of Link 16 capable platforms to connect over an IP interface to ground based sensors such as JORN or Vigilare to a mobile ROC.

“From a managing the air battle perspective, the system has a lot of visualisation extensions to allow the operators to manage missions and engagements on the screen, to maintain that engagement through to close, and allow the operator to interact with that engagement and to change parameters and to have that information reflected in the cockpit,” Davis explained. “That is one of the things the air force will need to work through in the first few years of having Vigilare and the Wedgetail and Super Hornets, that is to take that cultural shift from doing a lot of that via voice ops and making max use of the datalink capabilities in the system.”

“That is one of the things the Air Force will need to work through in the first few years of having Vigilare and the Wedgetail and Super Hornets, that is to take that cultural shift from doing a lot of that via voice ops and making max use of the datalink capabilities in the system.”

The next step will be the new Link 22 which is currently under development and will be fielded on the F-35 JSF, and Boeing engineers are already looking at how this and other future capabilities will be catered for in future developments of the Vigilare System.

“There are a large number of interfaces to facilitate both existing and future systems,” Davis said. “From the RAAF’s perspective, there is a lot of capability available from the start, but there’s also a lot of C2 capability that can be further enhanced with systems coming down the road. The architecture is in place to manage those multiple network capabilities long term.”

Importantly, Vigilare also has many training and review applications which are able to be run concurrently with the live system. “We can be training operators at the same time as we’re running real missions,” Davis said. “The system allows an operator to filter live and simulated data, and all training data can be purged if required. The system also has a fully integrated record and replay capability which has two modes. In what we call role replication or video replay, the system basically just replays the video footage of what just happened. But a new capability is an interactive replay mode where the operator can actually interact with the replay at certain cue points, and even change things to some ‘what ifs’ to see what would have happened if they’d done something else.”

Going International

The Vigilare system was developed at Boeing’s Systems Integration Laboratory (SIL) in Brisbane where the company runs a virtual replica of the final operational RAAF system. The company intends to maintain this system in Brisbane as a development model for its Australian customer, but also as basis from which it can develop a product line of Vigilare like systems which it can market overseas.

“We’re seeing interest in the system from the UAE and other Gulf states, North and South American countries, and some Asian countries,” said Steve Parker. “That said, our focus is on getting Australia’s system completed and ensuring that it meets the needs of the air force. Internationally, the system’s marketing name is Network Centric Command and Control System, or NC3S, with each subsequent country having its own project name like Vigilare for Australia.

“One of the strengths we’ve got is it’s not a US developed system and the majority of the systems components are not controlled out of the US, so we have reduced ITARs (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) issues. Most of the system is ITAR free, and because we’ll probably need to integrate with some different systems I think that will be a big strength for us in the international market place.”

To this end, Boeing has enlisted the support of the DMO’s Defence Export Unit (DEU) to assist in the marketing of this and other exportable products from Australia. “We’ve got a lot of Australian content in Vigilare and we’ve been pushing this through the DMO and Government,” Parker continued. “We’re telling them that it’s a system that’s been designed and developed in Australia, it’s ITAR-light, and we’ve got a number of great SMEs (Small to Medium Enterprises) here with cutting edge technology working with us. The US Government gets behind the US products, and we need the Australian Government to get behind these products. We meet with the team and Defence Export Unit (DEU) fairly often and they’ve been very very helpful so far, and I think it’s been a great initiative by the DMO and Dr Gumley.”

Moving Forward

Boeing says it is unlikely to sign a firm fixed price contract for such a large scale developmental project in Australia ever again. “I think both industry and defence understands that these types of programs are, in their very nature, highly complex,” explained Parker. “In the US, development programs are predominantly cost plus, and reimbursable with appropriate fees. I don’t think industry biting off these types of programs that are so high in risk and uncertainty, and where we don’t control the interface data does anybody a service, not least the end user, so we’ll certainly be looking at how we contract things in the future.”

The system will go into a factory acceptance testing phase in Brisbane later this year following which on site acceptance testing will commence at NOTHROC. If all goes well, an operational test phase will commence in second quarter 2010 prior to certification of the system and some planned training events before handover to Air Force. Once NORTHROC is operational, the team will move on to EASTROC and deliver that system in the second half of 2010. Once delivered, Boeing will place a number of field service engineers who know the system inside and out at both sites to support the transition into service.

“It’s the C2 system that brings it all together and makes it network centric – it’s a real force multiplier,” said Davis. “Unless a defence force has this type of system, they’re just not going to get the best out of their networked assets. Like today you see with Australia, we have a Link 16 equipped classic Hornet, but we can’t get the best out of it and it’s not totally networked in yet.”

“At the end of the day, we want to get this system out as quick as we can to the air force, that’s our number one priority,” said parker in closing. “We need to continue to work closely with our DMO customer, because they have a customer of their own in the Air Force.

Ultimately it’s important to understand the complexity and cutting edge nature of some Australian defence programs when you hear about late programs in the press, because when delivered they standout as some of the best systems available in the world.”