Hitting its straps

“Its maturity was certainly rough,” Commanding Officer 37SQN, WGCDR Matt Hegarty told us. “I’m a long time C-130E and then C-130H pilot, and it was always interesting to observe what they were doing with the ‘J’. In the end, the perhaps less-than auspicious start in life had as much to do with the fact that we were still understanding, and not just in the RAAF I might add, how to operate this airplane. A major part of the teething period was us getting our head around how we were going to operate a two-pilot cockpit with significantly advanced avionics.

It is still the wonderful old and ubiquitous C-130 which does the same old job and it many respects does it much better, but there are some fundamental differences with the way we operate, train and maintain it.”

Tls

“The previous C-130J support arrangement was a standard arrangement which had basically been bolted on to the previous C-130E and H contracts,” GPCAPT Michael Brown, Officer Commanding the Air Lift Systems Program Office (OC ALSPO) added. “It took a while for us to understand the differences – we were a little late identifying the real issues. But the J is different, and it became evident that it needed a dedicated and complete TLS (through life support) contract comprising deep maintenance, component repairs, and engine support.”

Such an arrangement was eventually realised with the March 2009 signing of an agreement with Australian Aerospace and partner, Lockheed Martin to provide the TLS for the C-130J, along with an existing engine support arrangement with Hamilton Standard. Australian Aerospace has taken over the former 33SQN 707 hangar at Richmond, and has configured it with a C-130 heavy maintenance dock.

“We went to the market and after receiving several bids and entering into negotiations, we signed the TLS contract at Avalon in 2009,” GPCAPT Brown continued. “There’s been a 12 month transition which is quite aggressive and gave us less overlap, and it’s going to be a long-term, fixed-price, risk-sharing relationship with industry on the TLS with agreed outcomes. It’s a real partnership, and has been formulated with a strategic approach in mind.”

The new TLS contract has also given ALG a stronger contractural link with Lockheed Martin and thus greater reachback into the original equipment manufacturer’s (OEM’s) facility at Marietta where the aircraft is built. In line with the company’s strategy to substantially increase its Australian support footprint, Lockheed has also increased its number of people including field service representatives (FSR) at Richmond, many of whom are former RAAF C-130 maintenance personnel.

“The new TLS agreement has been a big change for us,” said WGCDR Hegarty. “It’s still early days but my initial impressions are very good – they’ve really gone out of their way to make this work for us.”

Upgrades

The C-130J is a predominantly software driven aircraft, a factor which also contributed to its early availability issues when compared to its analogue predecessors.

As part of the ownership experience, the ADF signed on early to the C-130J Joint User’s Group, or JUG – a group of C-130J operators which was formed with a view to sharing costs on the development of software and hardware upgrades for the aircraft.

“The JUG has a senior steering committee and we have annual meetings and monthly phone hookups to discuss the upgrade path of the aircraft,” GPCAPT Brown said. “Within that there are sub committees such as the sustainment working group, the maintenance working group and the operations working group. Our goal is the harness ideas for continuous improvement of the aircraft, and to agree on common configurations in order to share the NREs (non recurring expenses).”

Put simply, the JUG nations will agree on a budget and a ‘wishlist’ of items they would like incorporated in a block upgrade, and submit this to Lockheed Martin. The OEM will then come back and advise what items on the list can be incorporated within the budget, and the costs are divided up amongst the JUG partners based on the number of airframes they each operate.

While there has been some disparity in recent years with some JUG partner rushing in ‘sub-block’ improvements outside of the normal block upgrade process, all JUG partners are expected to be operating with the latest Block 6.1 operational flight program (OFP) by early 2011.

“At the squadron level, my own involvement in the JUG process tends to be only about providing input to people such as ALG and Training HQ,” said WGCDR Hegarty. “But the JUG tends to be more about the long term development and less about physically operating the aircraft. The operations working group activities are probably more to my interest, as they focus not so much what we’re doing with the aircraft in the future but on how we operate the aircraft in its existing format. That said, we’re consulted to a limited extent on future upgrades –but when AFHQ and ALGHQ put together their wish lists, they’re talking about making mods to the aircraft in 2015.”

Thus the five year block upgrade delivery lead time can be a bit of a frustration to aircrews will likely not be flying the aircraft when it is delivered, and who may have identified problems which need addressing sooner. “More often that not we’re dealing with a ‘here and now’ problem, and if we get that problem recognised and onto the wishlist to be dealt with in five or six years time, it may not exist then and instead we’ll be dealing with another set of problems with which we have no rapid mechanism to deal,” WGCDR Hegarty continued. “But these are very complex airplanes and there are a lot of people and politics involved. The downside of the JUG is that, when you’ve got a lot of these people together and it makes it ultimately cheaper and easier to facilitate, you’ve got to get everyone to agree on what comes with a change.”

The key differences in Block 6.1 will be the inclusion of a terrain avoidance and warning system, and software changes in the Communication, Navigation Identification Management Unit (CNIMU) to address obsolescence issues.

“There are a lot of things we’d like to see done to the aircraft, and I think all of us would say that,” added WGCDR Hegarty. “If we did nothing and just kept it maintainable, I think we’d be happy for the next five years, but you can’t do that because you get too far behind the upgrade path and the next time you want to make a change, you’re not in a position to do it rapidly. The surety that you need that is currently available under the JUG program – that is the key advantage of staying with that, as expensive and occasionally painful as it.

Once you step off that path for integration and upgrades, you’re in no-mans land, and if you’re only operating 12 or 14 of aircraft, it can be a very expensive business to get even minor changes made. You risk becoming an orphan operator if you fall too far behind.”

The Commonwealth signed off on the C-130J’s Block 7.0 upgrade in March under Project Air 5440 Phase 1, committing $45 million in funds for the RAAF’s share of the cost of upgrading the global fleet of roughly 200 aircraft.

Deployed Js

The C-130J is now the only RAAF Hercules type regularly deployed to the Middle East Area of Operations (MEAO), with three aircraft based at the ADF’s new transport hub of Al Minhad Air Base in the UAE – the final C-130H deployment was completed in 2008.

“The C-130H is no less capable than it’s ever been, so that’s certainly not in question,” stressed WGCDR Hegarty. “This is about the fact that we operate a greater number of C-130Js than ‘H’, and it’s more cost effective and efficient to deploy one type rather than switching between the two. With the H’s planned withdrawal date coming up, we’re concentrating on using the airplane we’ll be continuing to use into the future.” The C-130H fleet has been drawn down to a core fleet of between seven and nine aircraft in recent years, and is currently planned to be withdrawn from service in 2013.

The single type deployment philosophy, along with the new support arrangements, has also helped to increase aircraft availability in the MEAO. “We certainly go out of our way to ensure that there’s a priority there for the MEAO based airplanes, but there’s some other things too,” WGCDR Hegarty continued. “Before that go to the MEAO the airplanes receive a fair bit of forecast and preventative maintenance, so when they get there they’re very much in an advanced state. And then on top of that the maintainers who are deployed with the aircraft have little else to do other than maintain them, and they do it particularly well.

“The only maintenance that’s done over there of any consequent level is what we call ‘P1’ servicing – the program schedule at the first level – plus there’s a number of things we do which are MEAO-specific preventative mx activities to cope with the additional dust, heat and humidity. Aircraft are chosen to deploy based on where they fall in the maintenance cycle. A forecast goes out more than a year in advance and the deployed aircraft are forecast in the same way we forecast maintenance servicings.”

The RAAF are not the only deployed J models in the MEAO, with the USAF and UK regular visitors to bases commonly used by 37SQN, along with occasional visit by Italian and Danish C-130Js too. A limited number of commonly required spares and consumables are forward deployed to ensure the continuous operations of the aircraft, but “horse-trading” with other C-130J operators has been known to take place if a breakdown occurs away from home base in order to get the aircraft home.

“The J has been going really well in the MEAO, especially over the past 12 months,” said WGCDR Chris Hersey, 37SQN’s Executive Officer – Maintenance. “There are the normal peaks and troughs you get with aircraft availability issues, but on average it’s been pretty good.

We’ve got about 35 guys over there for the three aircraft. One of the interesting things is, because we’re now co-located with the (RAAF’s) P-3s, we’re now looking at working closer with them. We’ve started some combined training with them and I’ll be there soon with my counterpart from 92WG and we can further explore those things.”

More Js?

The 2009 Defence Capability Plan (DCP) calls for a rationalisation of the RAAF’s C-130 fleet under Phase 1 of Project Air 8000, with the Defence White Paper suggesting an additional two aircraft may be ordered to complement the current 12 when the C-130Hs are retired.

But the schedule for a decision on such an acquisition has been pushed back by nearly two years to in the latest iteration of the DCP released earlier this year. Defence sources have claimed that this may have been because production slots with Lockheed Martin, which is currently fulfilling a large USAF Special Operations Command order, were at a premium.

But other sources have also expressed concern at the prospect of acquiring and integrating additional airframes which would be 15 years younger than the current fleet. Whilst identical in many ways, the latest build C-130Js have different cargo handling systems in the rear of the aircraft and other discreet differences.

“There’s not much consultation on Air 8000 at the squadron level and I don’t know that there needs to be either,” said WGCDR Hegarty. “We know what we have to do and what we have to do it with, and we’re not being asked to forecast the ‘what ifs’. That said, we’re certainly free to provide input and we do from time to time when we talk to people in Canberra.”

Indeed, its has been suggested that the current process to more effectively utilise the RAAF transport fleet’s rate of effort (ROE) through the Strategic Reform Process (SRP) and other initiatives at the ALG level (see AMCC story, page??? this issue) may mean the extra C-130Js may not be required. The current C-130J fleet, in conjunction with a new battlefield airlifter due from 2015, the larger C-17s, and Army’s new CH-47F Chinooks may be sufficient.