Gaining altitude

“We went to an airworthiness board on the 15th of April and it was probably one of the most successful boards that’s ever been done for air force.” Wedgetail project head AVM Chris Deeble told Australian Aviation. “The reason for that success is my team have been working many long hours building all the evidence that said this aircraft is safe to enter service. We’ve now achieved a special flight permit which will allow us to operate the aircraft over the next year and a half, and then at the end of that we’ll look at going for a full military type certification.”

Much of the Wedgetail’s certification goes way beyond that of a normal commercial 737 due to the extensive modifications to the airframe as well as the mission system. “That’s a pretty big endeavour really,” AVM Deeble added. “While they could leverage off some of the 737 work, it’s the ‘entertainment’ or mission system and other stuff that will go into our military type certification. So there’s more work we need to do to overlay over the top of that done by the FAA – it’s a major undertaking!”

To this end, the project team and RAAF will be undertaking an incremental strategy to build up the Wedgetail’s capability to an operational level. “We can build ourselves time and get stuff behind us and stop pushing a bow wave of activity forward – it’s a crawl, walk, run approach,” he added. “When you introduce a capability where you’re not going to get there in one leap, we need to set expectations. The crews have been flying the aircraft through initial delivery, they knew what they were going to get at acceptance, and they knew what the training implications were. One of the greatest we could state at the airworthiness board was that we’d already tested some of the operational system and procedures within 2SQN, and that we’d actually started to exercise some of the supply chain and logistics system and brought some of that up to speed, and could see the system working.” AVM Deeble added that he thought the incremental approach had been valuable to both the DMO and to Boeing in that it has kept the program going rather than risking a ‘stall’ which may have been difficult to recover from.

The initial handover period has also coincided with gains being made in the areas of radar system stability and performance, as well as the stability of other key systems which had previously been of concern. In early 2009, the system was experiencing an average of just one hour mean time between ‘instability events’ where the loss of the radar picture results in the loss of the common operating picture. But the most recent figures are now up around 16 hours between such events for the radar, and in excess of 12 hours for the integrated system, numbers which, when the RAAF is predicting mission durations of up to 10 hours, anecdotally compare favourably with current in-service and mature AEW&C platforms such as the E-2C Hawkeye and E-3 AWACS.

“At final acceptance, which is currently programmed for December this year with some additional effort expected until mid 2011, we’ll have about 98 per cent compliance of about 10,000 requirements,” said AVM Deeble. “And when you look at the sorts of things that we’ll have to waive, we’re really close now but final compliance will be confirmed when formal acceptance testing is completed later this year.

While we continue to work collaboratively with Boeing and Northrop Grumman to address some radar issues, there will also be lots of small things like paint standards, or materials differences, or labelling; areas where we didn’t quite achieve spec but are acceptable and don’t impact on operations. For a capability with 10,000 requirements to have achieved 98 per cent compliance is pretty amazing.

“The radar shortfalls where we knew we weren’t going to get there are of operational significance, but that’s where we’ve agreed to work with Boeing and Northrop Grumman in a collaborative radar study to understand exactly what we’ve got. There are some areas of detection we’re concerned about, but by the end of this year we hope to have implemented a number of changes which will improve radar performance and will set the path for further improvements as our collaborative efforts continue.”

“At final acceptance we’ll have about 98 per cent compliance of about 10,000 requirements,” said AVM Deeble.

The initial handover period has also given the end users of the capability an opportunity to test and work a lot of the bugs out of the system. “Every day I see the guys are doing things a little differently, and a lot of the issues we had up front they’re already finding work arounds for,” said AVM Deeble. “And I think they’re quickly getting to the point where they’re going to have a good system. The experience we’ve had operationally has been great too – while there are issues with respect to getting everybody on the same wavelength with regards to datalinks and setting up networks, the reality is that we’re already working very closely with the fighter community, and they love having an AEW&C up there. The operational picture is much, much different with an AEW&C around.”

The Royal Australian Navy has also had an opportunity to work with Wedgetail, with anecdotal evidence that Wedgetail is receiving rave reviews to date. “The FFG frigates that are based out of Sydney historically would have turned right to go down to the Jervis Bay training area,” explained AVM Deeble. “But now they’re turning left to head north to operate off Williamtown. I heard some feedback from the captain of an FFG saying that it was the first time they had operated effectively with an AEW&C and it was the best picture they had ever had. Because the AEW&C is sitting at 30,000 feet, they get to see so much more on the ship through their Link 16 feed.”

With the anti-air systems of the four Adelaide class FFGs recently upgraded and due to lead in to the three new Aegis-equipped Hobart class Air Warfare Destroyers later this decade, it’s important that a link is already being established between the two capabilities to evolve concepts of operations for the future. But AVM Deeble is also excited about the potential of Wedgetail’s combination with other ADF networked capabilities.

“It’s still early days for Defence in terms of Link 16 and network management and how we’re actually flowing information through to the key players, but once we start to see Vigilare and AEW&C working together with Super Hornet it will just take us to a very new level of capability. The SA (situational awareness) that a fighter pilot gets with having a platform like AEW&C that has much more range with its sensors and with additional information being piped in from off-board systems to create an accurate and comprehensive operating picture, will provide the ability to sit there without using your own sensors and using the characteristics of the aircraft and weapons to the maximum extent, is just eye-watering! Then when the fighter pilot determines he has the tactical advantage and goes live, he will be able to quickly execute his mission having maintained his tactical advantage. I think for platforms that have more advanced characteristics like JSF, the maximum utility of these platforms will be achieved by having platforms like AEW&C relaying information to them so they can take full advantage of the characteristics of the platform for as long as possible and achieve their mission with greater speed and precision. And I think our next generation of fighter pilots are really getting it!

“Some of the commentary out there really lacks an understanding of how a system of systems can be brought together. It’s early days for the ADF, but if we get that right, there’s your warfighting edge. If we do it with AEW&C and Super Hornet and leading into JSF, that will be just fantastic.”

The next step for Wedgetail project team and 2SQN is set to receive an update software ‘drop’ in early July, and shortly after to take one of the aircraft to the multi-national RIMPAC exercises in Hawaii where it will be tasked to work with US AEW&C assets as well as Aegis-equipped destroyers and cruisers and other “players”. RIMPAC will also form part of the USAF’s Operational Utility Demonstration (OUD) assessment of the Wedgetail from an interoperability viewpoint, a process which is required for the system’s final export approval.

“We also hope to have the ESM (Electronic Support Measures) fitted to that aircraft, albeit not necessarily fully integrated, but to the point where we can exercise it during the exercise,” added AVM Deeble. “We’ll get to see ESM operating as a part of that integrated system, and the new software load will improve tracking and datalinks, so I think it will be a great opportunity to see how that all works.”

Testing on the ESM is now well underway, with a full system fitted to aircraft 002 which is still in the US for ongoing testing. “At the subsystem level, ESM is performing well, but as with the radar, we have to get the ESM installed in the aircraft and to understand the integrated system performance,” AVM Deeble continued. “This platform has a lot of antennas and active systems on it but ESM is a passive system, so we have to work interface blanking, and we have to look at the programming of the system in an operational context against threats. I think we’re heading down the right path with some positive indicators.”

The ADF signed a five-year in-service support contract with Boeing Defence Australia in January, ensuring a smooth transition from development to operational support of the fleet as the aircraft enter service. Indeed, the first Wedgetail which has been flying since 2003 will enter deep maintenance at Boeing’s facility at Amberley in July. “This aircraft is very complex and expensive to operate, and we’re hoping to work with Boeing to better understand the cost of ownership,” explained AVM Deeble. “We’re doing it in a ‘cost plus’ environment but Boeing is also wearing some of the risk as we move forward. It’s early days but that relationship is pretty good, and we’re trying to set it up as a partnership. Whether we roll that over at the end of five years is still to be decided – I think it takes between about five and eight years to gain an understanding of what the cost of ownership is, so we’re going to have to have a close look at that at the three year mark, by which time I hope we’ll be able to tell if we have a more mature understanding of the cost of ownership, the success of the ISSC partnership and the contractual model we may chose to adopt for the future.”

Certainly, the confidence in the program expressed by AVM Deeble is encouraging, although with ESM development and radar performance issues still to be resolved, perhaps not quite convincing enough for Wedgetail to be removed from Minister for Defence Materiel and Science, Greg Combet’s list of ‘projects of concern’ quite yet. “The Wedgetail project has suffered problems, especially in regards to schedule, and has been on the government’s ‘projects of concern’ list,” Mr Combet said at the aircraft handover in early May. “This project was experiencing a variety of problems when the government was elected but we have put a lot of work into getting it back on track.”

“While it is still early days, we are starting to get the right elements in place now, we’ve growing our sustainment capability and exercising the supply chain, we’ve got a good basic aircraft that will continue to evolve, and a plan to update the system at six month intervals until mid next year,” said AVM Deeble. “By the end of next year we should have the majority of the program behind us – late, but it was always a complex and demanding task! IOC is at the end of 2011, and FOC at the end of 2012, and I think they’re achievable.

“From a project manager’s view, we got through the settlement – we’ve had some pretty hard discussions with Boeing but have maintained communication throughout all of that, and ultimately we’ve now entered into a new relationship, which has the potential for going for the life of the aircraft, on a good footing.”