Sustaining an industry base

Whilst Boeing is a big company and competitors could rightly claim that keeping a government subsidised trickle order of C-17s going in order to retain such an important manufacturing capability could be seen as a government handout, there are simply no competitors! The 55 or so remaining C-5A Galaxy airlifters currently in service with the USAF which were built in the 1960s are barely achieving 50 per cent availability rates due to ageing hydraulics, inefficient TF39 engines and other systems. Although they will receive the comprehensive digital Avionics Modernization Program (AMP) upgrade, the C-5As are not slated to get the new CF6 engines and other associated upgrades that are currently being retrofitted to the 20 year younger C-5Bs.

The C-5Bs have marginally better availability, and with the avionics and commercially derived engine refit and a redesignation to C-5M, are expected to approach an availability target somewhere above 80 per cent. Meanwhile, the C-17s, the oldest of which are approaching 15 years in service and have been flown hard, continue to record airliner-like availability figures in the mid to high 90s.

While a C-17 cannot hope to carry the load of a C-5M, it can carry it right into a forward operating base rather than a large transport hub. There is simply no alternative available to the USAF for carrying outsize strategic airlift into forward operating bases, so surely it’s in the US’s best interest to keep a low rate of say, eight to 10 aircraft going per year so it can retire the C-5As and then eventually the early C-17s as they become due. Quite simply, it’s unlikely any US manufacturers are likely to have the resources to develop and produce a new airlifter in this class for at least another 20 years.

India makes an interesting contrast. Whilst it’s indigenous design and development capability is still somewhat immature – witness the amount of time it has taken to develop the HAL Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) – it has successfully licence produced a plethora of Soviet and British designs such as a variety of MiGs, SEPECAT Jaguars and SUD Alouette helicopter derivatives over the past few decades, to the point where it now has developed a sovereign capability to support and even improve many of these and other aircraft types without needing to go back to the OEMs, an important capability for a large non-aligned nation surrounded on two sides by less than friendly neighbours. Indeed, part of its requirement for the current MMRCA competition for at least 126 new fighters is for the majority of these aircraft to be assembled and fully supported in India with increasing local content, a requirement that the US companies bidding AESA radars and other advanced systems may struggle with.

Australia gave away its last real aircraft manufacturing capability in 1991 when the RAAF’s Hornet program was wound down. All but the first four of the RAAF’s 75 F/A-18A/Bs and their then state-of-the-art F404 engines were built at a hefty premium at Avalon and Fisherman’s Bend from increasing local content between 1985 and 1990 under the guise of establishing a second production line and a major support facility for F/A-18s worldwide in Australia. Of course, it’s now history that even before the end of production government support for this was wavering, and the production facilities and tooling were subsequently mothballed and dismantled.

More recently, Qantas Defence Services (QDS) in partnership with Airbus Military has established a comprehensive commercial to military conversion centre at Brisbane, one of only a handful of such centres in the world, and is hoping to pick up extra work once the RAAF’s five A330 MRTT tankers have been converted. But unless they can tag on to one of a number of small foreign MRTT programs or the USAF KC-X program, assuming the A330 eventually gets up in that drawn out shambles, further opportunities are limited.

And initially through the RAAF and then Rockwell/Boeing, Australia had also developed an important national asset over the past decade and a half in the F-111 support facility at Amberley where the wings, engines and many other large components of this amazing aircraft have been virtually remanufactured and zero-timed in an effort to keep the ‘Pig’ flying. But with the F-111C’s pending retirement, this facility is now being wound down and will give way to little more than line maintenance and FedEx packaged spares for the forthcoming Super Hornets.