Capabilities by the hour?

Such an arrangement might seem simple for what appears, on face value, to be a relatively basic unmanned system. But, as Insitu Pacific managing director Andrew Duggan told us, the company’s infrastructure footprint in Afghanistan took a not insignificant two 747 freighters to carry.

The RAAF’s arrangement with Canadian firm McDonald Dettwiler & Associates (MDA) for the provision of IAI Heron based UAS services at Kandahar has built upon the success of the ScanEagle lease, but with a far larger air vehicle, and has wisely also utilised some of the expertise built up by the Army with establishing the ScanEagle capability.

From talking to key people, it seems these arrangements are working satisfactorily for both sides of the ledger. Rather than selling equipment as a one-off deal, the contractor is building a lasting relationship with Defence which not only provides a consistent source of revenue over various contract periods, but also opens the possibilities to future contracts or equipment upgrades. For Defence, there are no upfront acquisition costs, capabilities can be fielded with a much shorter lead time, and upgrades and enhancements to these capabilities don’t need to go through time-consuming and bureaucratic acquisition processes.

And there’s no doubt the industry lease model has application across many areas of ADF capability, including but not limited to the ADF’s looming Air 5428 and Air 9000 Phase 7 fixed and rotary winged pilot training requirements.

Such models give a capability previously unheardof levels of agility and flexibility.

So it was strange to read in a US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) notification to Congress in May that the ADF was considering an upfront acquisition of two RQ-7B Shadow 200 UAV systems and associated support equipment for an estimated US$218m ($A254m). While the ADF assures us no decision has yet been made, the DSCA notification, if approved, usually signifies that such a decision is one of when, not if. With Defence having cancelled the previous JP 129 contract with the Boeing/IAI teaming and adopted a clean-sheet approach to the requirement, it seems the Shadow will be acquired under a new Phase 2 of the project Capability aside, the large upfront acquisition cost seems to go against the numerous benefits being realised daily by the ScanEagle and Heron models. Surely for a capability such as this, a lease arrangement makes far more sense? Then there is the fact that the Shadow requires a runway and other fixed infrastructure from which to operate. Both of the ADF’s main operating locations in Afghanistan have their limitations – Kandahar has anecdotally been referred to as the busiest single runway military airfield in the world with takeoff and landing slots at a premium, while Tarin Kowt’s mean density altitude of more than 7000ft, extreme heat, and lack of prevailing winds means UAV payloads and endurance are severely compromised.

Looking ahead, the UAS lease model may even have applications for future capabilities such as the Air 7000 Phase 1 requirement to replace part of the RAAF’s AP-3C Orion fleet with unmanned air vehicles. The Northrop Grumman Global Hawk has long been the ‘pencilled in’ capability of choice for this role, but with the complexity and high cost of this large air vehicle, is unlikely to be an attractive lease option for either the contractor or the ADF. But what could be an option to offset the large upfront costs is a possible lease of the various sensors this aircraft can carry – EO/ IR, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), ELINT/SIGINT, and maritime radar sensors have been or are being integrated on Global Hawk, but these can comprise up to 50 per cent of the aircraft’s acquisition cost.

Such a scenario could see the RAAF buy a small fleet of ‘vanilla’ air vehicles and establish a permanent ground control centre and permanent basing infrastructure at Edinburgh near Adelaide which would primarily be manned by uniformed personnel. Where industry would come in is in the supervision of launch and recovery operations, and in conducting maintenance and sensor integration work at forward deployed locations such as Learmonth or Darwin or Cocos Islands.

In these times of immediate budget tightening and longer term savings initiatives, this should be food for thought… n