Disconnected?

The latest delay, now totalling 27 months from the originally planned late 2008 delivery schedule for the first elements of project Air 5402, is mainly due to ongoing delays in Airbus writing the comprehensive technical documentation for the aircraft, including its all-new boom and remote operating station, and thus the aircraft currently does not satisfy the RAAF’s stringent airworthiness standards.

While a major contributor, the documentation issue is not solely confined to the boom.

The RAAF’s airworthiness requirements are recognised worldwide for their high standards, and without having the ap -propriate technical documentation upon which to establish an acceptable baseline, the RAAF is unable to verify the airwor- thiness of the aircraft and therefore clear it for operational use, and therefore cannot take delivery or possession of the aircraft.

-to the KC-30 project being placed on the Defence Minister’s Projects of Concern list in early 2010 – despite initial departmental denials to the contrary – a position new Minister Stephen Smith finally confirmed in November.

“The delivery of a first and new aircraft with a lot of new systems to a new cus-tomer/operator is always very complex and time consuming,” an Airbus spokesman said in response to queries from Australian Aviation in December.

“It involves not only a purely technical acceptance, but also a huge amount of paperwork regarding con–all the support activities and related docu-ments are taken through the acceptance process.

The qualification process, which includes crew training, is also very lengthy.

final handover is therefore huge.

So, rather than rush the process prior to the Austral – ian Christmas break and summer holiday period, it has been agreed to take the time needed to complete the procedures in a The amount of work to be performed during the acceptance process prior to the His itinerary included meetings with Ewan Ward and his team including the project’s chief engineer.

He also met with Chief of Air Force, AIRMSHL Mark Binskin.

proper manner.

This will lead to a final handover and formal acceptance moving into the New Year.

” Airbus Military’s head of the A330 MRTT RAAF program, Luis Guerra Peńa, followed up on the missed delivery deadline with a visit to Australia in late January, and spoke to Australian Aviation while in Canberra.

“There are discussions about the com-pliance of the requirements, and we are presenting evidence for compliance,” he explained.

“These are the types of discus-sions we have when we develop a first of type.

The Commonwealth is doing an extra diligent process in order to ensure they have the right data to present to the airworthiness board in order to secure the special flight permit.

This is not a C-17 procurement where you already have a mature system in place and you start opera-tions almost from day one.

” At the time of writing, Airbus Miltary and the DMO (Defence Materiel Organi–in the March timeframe.

“A lot of the visit was to re-engage with the company, to work through the issues we need to solve in terms of clearing the documentation, to have a clearer plan on how we’re going to get to acceptance of the first aircraft, and a few other activities that are necessary to support that March date,” Ewan Ward, the DMO’s MRTT project director told AA.

“There is still a bit of work to do that we’re working through.

For the aircraft acceptance, it is primarily documentation.

The certification testing was done quite a while ago, and then we rolled into qualification.

Certifi–the qualification means ‘does it meet the requirement of the contract?’.

”

Boom Or Bust

Ironically, during Peńa’s Australian visit the first KC-30A to be converted suffered the complete loss of its refuelling boom during a currency flight with Portuguese air force F-16s (which have acted as receiver aircraft during the KC-30 boom’s develop –and industry sources told AA that pre–snapped off near the F-16’s receptacle, causing the boom to spring up and strike the underside of the tanker, snapping off one of its two guiding fins and causing the boom to oscillate wildly until it detached from its supporting mast and fell to the ocean below.

Fortunately, both the tanker and the F-16 recovered safely to their respective bases with no injuries to the crews of either aircraft.

The three KC-30As at Airbus Military’s facility at Getafe near Madrid were then grounded pending the preliminary results of the investigation.

— known, it’s going to be a few weeks before -it will be months as a minimum before the final report by the agencies is done,” AIRCDRE Rob Lawson, the DMO’s director general airlift and training systems, explained.

“Airbus Military has got the lead on the initial investigation and we’ve got some of our folk over there involved in the process too.

There is no other boom like this one in service – it’s a first of type, -by-wire (FBW).

The Spanish authorities have withdrawn the flight permit for the KC-30As until such time as the aircraft is declared safe to fly again, which we believe will be soon.

” Details of the damage to both aircraft -loss of the boom, is believed to be minor.

Investigators from Airbus Military and Portuguese air force officials were quickly joined by RAAF Directorate of Defence Aviation and Air Force Safety (DDAAFS) officials who flew to Madrid the day after the incident occurred.

A Department of Defence release issued late on the evening of January 20 stated, “The aircraft was being operated by Airbus Military Corporation.

No Australian personnel were onboard the MRTT at the time of the incident.

” Airbus Military said it hopes the in-cident will not have a further impact on the KC-30A’s delivery schedule, with the company saying it does not expect it to af–to the RAAF.

Peńa said his visit was designed to “get some momentum” back into the project.

“We need to engage people and go back to -we are working extremely hard to achieve this,” he said.

“Our objective is to deliver the aircraft as soon as possible.

”

Milestones Missed

A quick snapshot of the project to date shows three aircraft (numbers 1-3) cur-rently at Getafe in Spain, a fourth undergo-ing conversion at Qantas Defence Service’s (QDS) Brisbane Airport facility, and a fifth unmodified green A330-200 airframe in storage at Getafe pending QDS being ready to accept it for conversion.

Aircraft number 1, the first A330 to be modified to an MRTT standard with the work undertaken by Airbus Military in Spain and the aircraft involved in the boom incident, will soon enter a mainte-nance period following the completion of its flight test campaign and will have its comprehensive flight test equipment and instrumentation removed, while aircraft 2 and 3 are essentially awaiting delivery to the RAAF at Getafe.

“Aircraft 1 maintenance is now pending the investigation,” said Ward.

“They have might have been incurred as a result of losing the boom, and once the investiga – tion has been completed, it will then enter the refurbishment, and that is quite an extensive activity.

” quarantined the aircraft in terms of making sure they’ve captured all the damage that The refurbishment will include the fitting of the aircraft’s cabin and other interior fittings, a repaint, and a general service to bring it to an ‘as-new’ condition.

“Aircraft 4 will soon be removed from its stress free mounts (at Brisbane) which means the main modifications will have been performed, and will then start on systems installation,” explained Peńa.

“We plan to fly this aircraft in August for deliv-ery in September.

Aircraft number 5 has already been manufactured and is waiting to enter into conversion, and is being stored at Getafe because of forecast bad weather at Brisbane at this time of year.

We’ll plan with QDS to choose the most suitable time (to fly it to Brisbane) in order to optimise the resources in Brisbane.

” But the first KC-30A was originally to have been delivered by December 2008, and this was amended to the first quar -ter of 2009 after the RAAF requested some engineering changes, primarily in the placement of the rear facing boom operator’s station in the aircraft’s cockpit.

The RAAF’s 33SQN retired its remain-ing Boeing 707 tanker transports at its -relocated to Amberley in order to prepare for the first delivery.

Further improvements will be made to the boom in order to deliver a fully functioning capability by the first quarter of 2012.

When AA last spoke to the DMO’s Air 5402 project office in late 2008, the project team then spoke of an eight to 12 month delay to the program due to a longer than expected conversion process of the first two aircraft, and unretired risk from the flight test campaign, the second stage of which was then commencing.

At that time, they spoke of a possible delivery by the end of 2009, an initial operational capability (IOC) of two aircraft and four crews by mid 2010, and full operational ca-pability (FOC) of all five aircraft and their -But almost all of these dates have now passed with none of the milestones yet met.

The modifications to the basic A330 airliner are numerous and invasive, and the time needed to test and certify these modi-fications has been vastly underestimated by contractor and the customer alike.

“One of the challenges of the project has been all the industrialisation, moving big –structing the aircraft in Toulouse, and then having to fly the aircraft to another part of the world,” said Peńa.

“We are also building -kit in Seville and sending these to Brisbane, and Brisbane has its own warehouse to secure the components if they don’t arrive exactly on time.

It’s been very challenging.

” Challenging for the RAAF as well, which has had to extend its flying training arrangement of potential KC-30A crews and maintainers on Qantas commercial A330s, and has had to adjust the post -ing cycles of the first cadre of crews and maintainers around the delays.

“Developing the training system, developing the aircraft, -train the crews in a very complex train –and understanding and requires to take the right decisions at the right time,” Peńa added, suggesting the delays may not all be one-sided.

“This is potentially different to what (the RAAF) expected, because everybody in the project agrees this was not to be as complex a development as it has turned out to be.

” “We don’t have just one customer,” he -composed of a series of stakeholders, each of which has a different interest.

So there- – ment when you have a lot of input coming from different areas is sometimes difficult.

Our specialists develop the documents for their understanding – they are highly skilled specialists, but the readers may not fore, trying to prepare a [technical] docu have the same background, and sometimes there may be a conflict in their understand- ing or the documents might be too techni-cal.

So, for our people to facilitate the read-ers, this takes time because we’re not just talking about one document, there are a lot of documents with very long review cycles as well for all of the stakeholders within the Commonwealth, so this is something that is aggravating the problem.

” AIRCDRE Lawson agreed that there is some frustration on Airbus’s behalf due to the Australian process.

“I think one of their frustrations is that it’s not just the resident project team (in Getafe) or even the project office back here that they’re dealing with – there are other agencies within the airworthiness, regulatory or capability management framework who have significant input into the decision on whether or not to accept these documents.

That’s just the way we operate within the Australian environment.

” “That is the basis on which we will firstly accept the aircraft,” added Ward.

“And after having accepted it, it is the basis of a set of documentation that goes forward to the -a special flight permit to start operating with the RAAF, and then an Australian military type certificate and service release.

That doesn’t happen just because European certification authorities said it was good – it’s that plus a whole lot of further evidence in terms of compliance.

”

Two Staged

Whatever the reasons for the delays, it is in the interest of both parties to resolve the issues as soon as possible.

For Airbus, it has other customer MRTTs to develop for the UK, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, while the lucrative USAF KC-X decision for which EADS North America has bid an A330 based solution very similar to the Austral-ian KC-30A, is due to be handed down – -Part of the Australian delivery solution now appears to lie with a possible agreement to deliver the capability in a two-staged process, beginning with the wing mounted refuelling pods and passenger/cargo capabil-ity, and then later with the boom.

“We are reasonably satisfied that we have tried to tackle the process in the right man –we hope to be able to isolate the major issues to progress into delivery,” said Peńa.

“We are currently discussing clear specifi— tional requirements for a future generation of boom that is currently in development.

So yes, what we are doing now is ensur-ing that we deliver a product that complies with certain requirements that are agreed by the parties.

So, the RAAF will introduce the capability in a two-step process.

First, pods, because they have F/A-18s – Super Hornets and classic Hornets [which use probe and drogue refuelling systems], and they need this capability straight away since -capabilities.

And also in the terms of car –operations, that is a quite important asset.

” “We’re certainly open to that two-staged delivery process – it’s certainly been sug -gested,” continued AIRCDRE Lawson.

“The boom is the part of the design that is the least mature, and we’re in discus-sions with the company at the moment to -acceptance.

” “And a two-staged delivery fits in with Air Force’s capability requirements, in that the near term focus is on ALS [air logistics support] and the pods,” added Ward.

“In terms of an effective capability outcome, –est priority.

And Air Force has necessity issues as well – they can’t do everything at once with the new platform – they want to crawl and then walk and then run.

We have boomers going through the training program in Madrid, so we are starting to feed the process, but the initial focus will be on the ALS and pods.

” Peńa added that further improvements capability by the first quarter of 2012.

“The changes will be mainly software.

What we understand is that the Commonwealth’s boom operators have been trained on US tanker booms, and they have suggested some improvements.

We expect this to be will be made to the boom system in order to deliver a fully functioning and certifiable “It’s not yet fully resolved in terms of a determination from the US government where and when it can be fitted,” explained Ward.

“All of the provisions are in place, but it’s not just the installation, it’s the test complete in one year’s time.

We are capable of doing it within the model that we have.

So I think this is a wise way to introduce the capability as a step-by-step.

” While the RAAF is interested in what improvements can be made to the boom, no commitment to take up any upgrade has been made yet.

“It’s too early to say what they’ll entail,” said AIRCDRE Lawson.

“They’re offering some enhancements and we’re in the process of deciding whether we agree to the enhancements.

”

Moving Forward

In the meantime, Airbus has been liable for liquidated damages on the contract, and although neither party would specify what these entailed, they are believed to include the cost of using air-to-air refuelling tank-ers from Omega Air and the USAF to assist with deployments of F/A-18s to and from Malaysia and for supporting 2OCU’s High Sierra graduation exercise in 2010, and for at least two delivery flights of Super Hornets from the US.

“We were liable for liquidated damages in the past – we came to an agreement and we had a settlement in the past,” Peńa shared without elaborating.

If Peńa’s mission to Australia was successful and an outcome can soon be -two aircraft “as soon as possible”.

Aircraft 1 and 4 are planned to follow around September, and aircraft 5 in early 2012, and it is hoped aircraft 4 and 5 will be deliv- ered to Amberley straight from the QDS Brisbane modification facility, assuming a suitable local paint facility can be found or alternative arrangements can be made.

At the time of writing, March’s Avalon Airshow program showed a KC-30 would be present for static display, and Airbus is anxious to bring an example to Australia as soon as possible in order to get some program momentum under its belt, a move which will no doubt benefit its KC-X bid as well.

“Part of whether it comes to Avalon is -can make the space to get an aircraft out here for that,” said AIRCDRE Lawson.

“The lifting of the flight permit withdrawal is another issue – if it goes on for too much longer we’ll be past the decision point.

It’s been discussed but neither us nor Airbus is leaping forward to make it happen yet.

It would be nice, but we’ll have to see how it plays out.

” “We are very keen to have the aircraft -Amberley in front of the hangar – it should happen soon,” added Peńa.

“It’s a possibility to have one of the aircraft at Avalon and maybe at Amberley in the -we still have lots of things to do – for us it’s not our priority.

To showcase the aircraft is always good for us and Avalon is a very important airshow because it’s the [home] airshow of our lead customer, so we take it very seriously.

But we don’t want to distract resources from the activity to deliver the aircraft as soon as possible.

The aircraft will be in our control in any case because of the special flight permit.

” Peńa also dismissed speculation that parent company EADS’s KC-X bid may have drawn resources and distracted the — ian program.

“We have different teams,” -management, a different chief engineer, and different specialists.

KC-X is a competition and just has a marketing team – there is only paperwork.

Australia has been and is a priority for us.

” Another issue yet to be resolved is where or when the RAAF KC-30A’s Large Aircraft Infra Red Countermeasures (LAIRCM) system will be installed, al-though this is not a delay of Airbus’s mak-ing.

During the course of the project, the US State Department changed its policy regarding the export of LAIRCM, mean–the system could no longer be installed by Airbus in Spain.

Ironically, while Airbus was required to return any hardware it had been deliv -ered, it retained all the data necessary to complete the installation right up to where the hardware ‘plugs in’.

“The installation is already on the aircraft, we just have to plug the equipment in, test it and certify it,” Peńa said.

“We are going to be supporting the process for our customer and the Span-ish authority has been invited to certify it.

It’s a very strange change in policy, and ob-viously it is affecting the program – it’s very difficult but we just have to live with it.

For (the UK’s) FSTA, we will install LAIRCM -Peńa added that the restriction does raise some issues about how Airbus and its sub- contractor, QDS, can test, maintain and support the LAIRCM system in Australia -the complete installation, although one suspects this can only be resolved at the government to government level.

-ing as well which is aircraft specific.

But it will need to be done after we take accept-ance and ownership of the aircraft.

If it has to be done overseas, it’s more complicated and takes longer to organise, versus if it can be done in Australia.

Suffice to say it’s being actively worked.

” For Airbus Military, the company says it has learned its lessons from this project, both in the immediate and longer terms.

Peńa said that during each aircraft’s modification cycle, processes have been adjusted, and the sequence of work activi-ties have been changed to provide greater efficiency, meaning each aircraft converted to date has taken less time than the previ-ous one.

To that end, both Qantas in Bris-bane and Iberia in Spain have contributed greatly through their experience as opera-tors and maintainers of Airbus A330/340 airliners.

In the longer term, the follow on Saudi, UAE and UK programs, and perhaps that of the USAF, will also benefit greatly from the experience of the Austral-ian MRTT program.