Wedgetail initial delivery

The term ‘initial delivery’ denotes that the aircraft have been provided by Boeing to the RAAF for training purposes only at this stage while development of the aircraft’s immature radar and delayed ESM and EWSP systems continues, possibly as part of the liquidated damages arrangement for the program’s delays, but will not be formally handed over to their new owner until March 2010. Despite displaying their ADF serial numbers – A30-001 and A30-004 – the two aircraft have also retained their US ‘N’ number registrations and will remain on Boeing’s books and the US civil register until next March. Until then, Boeing must provide a pilot in command and a flight test engineer on all RAAF training flights.

“This ceremony marks the beginning of the future of air combat capability in Australia. It’s going to transform the way we do business,” AIRMSHL Binskin told the gathering. “It hasn’t been without its hard work – there was a lot of dedication from a lot of people from the mid 1990s right the way through. And today isn’t the end of the hard work that needs to be done, but I’m confident that by putting this in the hands of 2SQN with very good operators, very good maintainers and support personnel, we’ll get the most out of this capability over the next few decades, and it will be the best AEW&C in the world.”

“Today’s delivery is the culmination of years of planning hard work and dedication by everyone involved in Team Wedgetail – I can’t thank you enough,” added Maureen Dougherty. “By working side by side in the US and Australia in every aspect of the program, it helped us understand our customer’s requirements and needs, and it helped us focus our efforts and to sharpen them on what was most important.”

Boeing confirmed that the delivery schedule of the remainder of the six aircraft fleet will see the first Wedgetail delivered with operational EWSP and ESM suites from mid next year prior to initial operational capability (IOC) being declared late in 2010, with the last of the six aircraft, currently awaiting its Northrop Grumman MESA radar at Boeing’s Amberley facility, scheduled for delivery in early 2011.

“Development, test and evaluation are still ongoing with many hurdles still to be overcome, particularly with respect to radar, electronic support measures and integrated system performance and stability,” AVM Deeble said. “However with the initial delivery of two aircraft, Defence will now be able to conduct familiarisation training while Boeing completes the remaining test program and acceptance activities.”

The MESA radar, despite promising much in its ability to datalink high fidelity data to other aircraft and networks and to ‘stare’ at a fixed slice of airspace whilst retaining a 360 degree picture around the aircraft, is still suffering from a lack of maturity and robustness. Indeed, some reports have indicated the radar needs to be ‘rebooted’ at regular intervals with a resultant loss of situational awareness.

These issues will need to be overcome prior to the aircraft being declared operational, but AIRMSHL Binskin told Australian Aviation that he hopes to be able to field Wedgetail in major international coalition exercises from late next year as part of the system’s work up process. “The deployment capability will be somewhere between IOC and FOC,” he said. “We will use it as a part of Pitch Black just to start working it up, and once we’re confident in the capability and the integration and the ability to link the picture around, then we’ll look at going further afield.”

The $4 billion Wedgetail project has experienced delays of approximately 40 months from an original delivery schedule of 2006, costing Boeing upwards of US$1.8bn (A$2bn) in costs and penalties to date. Earlier concerns within the DMO that Boeing might walk away from the project have been allayed, in part due to the strong partnership between AVM Deeble and Ms Dougherty and their respective teams, but also because technologies developed for Wedgetail will flow on to other larger Boeing 737 military derivatives such as the P-8A Poseidon maritime reconnaissance and the follow-on EP-X electronic/signals intelligence (ELINT/SIGINT) programs. The company is also confident of gaining additional overseas orders for the AEW&C aircraft, possibly from the UAE and India, in addition to those already ordered by Turkey and South Korea.