Wedgetail

The review studied the results of MIT’s assessment and the OUD, and set a path forward for the delivery of test reports and their audit procedures, the processes by which the aircraft’s support contract will be negotiated and established, and the delivery schedule of the aircraft themselves.

Aoud

The Australian Operational Utility Demonstration was unusual in that it was undertaken before the aircraft had been delivered. But it proved invaluable in that it validated the capability of the Wedgetail’s radar and datalinks, and the aircraft was available for all its scheduled sorties.

“From my perspective and from the AEW&C perspective, this was our first operational demonstration of this first-of-type system, and I could not have been more pleased with the performance of the system in the NT,” Boeing’s program head, Maureen Doherty told us during a recent brief in Seattle. “We were engaged in every one of our scheduled sorties, and the team accomplished all of the objectives of those sorties.”

Doherty said the RAAF F/A-18 Hornet pilots participating in the exercise were extremely positive in their feedback on the Situational Awareness (SA) the Wedgetail brought to them. “The feedback that we received from the fighters who were given the SA that was greatly expanded from what they would typically see was extremely positive,” she said. “So, all in all, we thought this was an incredible experience. It helped us mature the system even quicker, to make sure we were ready for ‘prime time’, and the system behaved very well.”

“I think the AOUD was a great test run,” added the DMO’s Wedgetail program head, AVM Chris Deeble. “It’s very rare that in these sorts of programs that you get an opportunity to test drive the system in advance. We a great opportunity to see the flexibility of the system, the work with our fighters, and I think the feedback we got was that we provided some of the best picture they’d ever seen in terms of an AEW&C and AWACS type aircraft. When we started operating, the fighter pilots were still doing a lot of stuff over the radio, but when we started feeding them the Link 16 picture the radio went quiet very quickly. When we weren’t there they complained about the fact that they didn’t have the AEW&C system providing picture to then across those datalinks.”

In total, the Wedgetail flew five sorties out of RAAF Base Tindal as part of Arnhem Thunder, each of which was around eight hours in duration.

Mit Lincoln Labs

As we have previously reported, the DMO decided to bring in expert radar system experts from the MIT’s Lincoln Labs to provide an independent assessment of the system and its potential. The team from MIT studied many facets of the Wedgetail’s systems and provided a report to the DMO in May.

“First and foremost we wanted to know, ‘is the architecture fundamentally sound?’ That was huge – we all wanted that validation from an independent source,” explained Maureen Doherty “The second thing we wanted them to review, there’s a radar performance evaluation tool that we use to take the flight test data and do the verification of all the points in the envelope. The Commonwealth wanted to have an independent view of that tool, was it giving us accurate performance, and the answer was yes. The next area was, when you look at the spec, there was certainly different views of the environment for clutter, what was defined in the spec compared to the real world. They also identified some ideas that we might want to pursue collaboratively over time, things we might like to study and look at.”

“I think from my perspective it achieved the aims that we really wanted, we definitely wanted someone independent to look at it, someone very well qualified, and MIT LL definitely did that,” added AVM Deeble. “They also helped us look at the tools that we’re using to expand the performance of the system across the operating envelope. It’s very difficult with a radar like this to test it in every possible scenario, so these modelling and simulation tools are fundamental, and they helped us understand the validation of one of those tools and that’s important to allow us to sign off on the ultimate performance of the radar. Perhaps most importantly, they did identify some issues with side-lobes which effects clutter and false alarm performance. They helped us identify a path forward and, one of the real concerns we had potentially was that the system wouldn’t be able to get there and have further expansion. MIT LL confirmed the underlying architecture of the radar, that it is sound and does form the basis of further improvements. So a pretty good outcome overall.”

AV Deeble hopes to bring MIT back into work with the RAAF and the DSTO in further defining the potential of the radar for the future.

End Game

For the time being though, Boeing and the DMO project team are focussed on getting the first two aircraft, airframes 4 and 1, delivered in interim configuration in November this year, while the first of four ‘optimised’ aircraft will follow at roughly one month intervals from March next year. The first two aircraft will then be upgraded with the definitive BAE Systems-developed Electronic Support Measures (ESM) and Electronic Warfare Self Protection (EWSP) package at Amberley and re-delivered by the end of 2010.

“We’ve been very focussed on the initial delivery, and then in the final delivery of the capability we’ll support the ESM and EWSP and any other time-limited type items,” said Maureen Doherty. “That development is underway – we start software qualification testing of the ESM in August in Adelaide. The EWSP is further along – we’ve actually completed that testing and are just going through the documentation and final verification signoffs now.”

The aircraft’s Operational Mission Simulator (OMS), a replica of the Wedgetail’s cabin and mission consoles designed by BAE Systems, is nearing completion at Williamtown and should be ready to commence formal operator training in October. And 2 SQN’s first 29 maintenance trainers commenced their classroom training in late July and are working on computer-based and instructor training before they get their hands on the real thing from November.

“There’s also an in-service support contract that we’re currently negotiating and working with the customer,” said Maureen Doherty.

“That has been actually going very well, so we expect that to be postured to be able to be signed off in the next couple of months depending on the road the commonwealth decides to take. In the meantime we’ve been on contract for the mobilisation phase, which is the first phase of the support contract, since May, and working together to deploy some of our key people down to Australia to be ready to work together on the joint management framework and to also start the authorised engineering organisation activity in order to be ready to officially support the aircraft.”

AVM Deeble thinks it will probably take another two years to fully realise the operational potential of the Wedgetail’s systems, but was reluctant to put a capability percentage on the initial aircraft that will be delivered next year. “It’s very hard to put it in percentage terms,” he said. “In most cases it’ll achieve 95 per cent of specification, but in some cases we’ll exceed specification in some important areas for us operationally. I think it’s always that last two per cent you have to work on, and often that’s the hardest two per cent. As for side lobes and clutter performance, anybody who plays in the radar space will tell you that’s the hard yards you’ve got to do. But I’d say we’re going to get the majority of the operational requirements up front. I think it will compare very very favourably with other systems on the market – we’ve had aircrew that have flown on E-2s (Hawkeyes) and E-3s (AWACS) and what they’ve told me is that Wedgetail compares very favourably with those systems. This will be a great capability from day one.”

“This thing is so friggin powerful!” Maureen Doherty said enthusiastically. “We’re just playing with the edges of the specification now, and we’ll deal with it, but operationally, we’re proud to put our name on it.”