Winding Down

“The operational tempo in the south of Afghanistan is gradually reducing and there are enough assets that there is not a pressing need for us to help anymore. It is the right time to go. ” RWG-8, or Task Group 633. 7, was made up of two Australian CH‑47D Chinooks and 63 personnel across Command and Support Team, Medium Lift Helicopter Troop, Technical Support Troop and Operations Troop. The group abounds with experience, with most members veterans of multiple tours.

Indeed, when Australian Aviation interviewed representatives of 5 Aviation Regiment’s C Squadron ‘Brahmans’, two of the seven members present were veterans of the initial Chinook deployment in 2006 – Sergeant Trevlin Green and Sergeant Scotty Graham – both of whom clocked up more than 2. 25 years in theatre over seven years (five and six tours respectively).

“RWG is made up ofpredominantly two units – C Squadron and Chinook TST at 5 Avn – and it’s been made up of nobody else but those units since 2006 . . . I think it’s noteworthy that a unit of less than 20 pilots, just over 20 aircrewmen, and 59 personnel from TST, probably just over 100 people in total, have managed to sustain intense combat operations and a high workload over seven years and they’ve drawn the majority of that workforce from the same group. On every RWG that I’ve been on, at least half of the people in the detachment are multiple tour veterans,” pilot and MLH troop second-in-command Captain Kelly Weatherstone said.

In 2006 Australia made up two of the Chinooks in Regional Command South (RC South) among a total fleet of eight, fully 25 per cent of the medium-lift capability in the south of Afghanistan. As the situation in Afghanistan developed, the US contribution was bumped up to a full squadron of 12 Chinooks. During the surge, the US added another squadron of Chinooks, bringing the Australian contribution to two out of 25.

Their mission has been to support Coalition troops on the ground and in Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) conducting combat operations in Regional Command South.

The link to Coalition operations, rather than being simply Australian air assets, is very strong. “We work for a US Combat Aviation Brigade, or a CAB, and we have done under a formal status of command agreement for the last four years. We are two aircraft in the pool, regardless of who we’re flying,” LTCOL Brown said.

Rotary Wing Group 8

Over its time in Afghanistan, RWG became very good at re-establishing itself for operations

A unit of just over 100 people have managed to sustain combat operations and a high workload over seven years. CAPT KELLY WEATHERSTONE

for each rotation, and because of the experience in RWG as a whole, the group was able to be up and flying within five days of arriving at Kandahar.

While RWG-8 started operating very quickly, it was knocked completely sideways 10 days later by a freak weather event when “the world’s biggest hailstorm” swept through Kandahar trashing aircraft all across the field, including the two Australian Chinooks.

Kandahar is an open flightline with little in the way of covers or protection for the aircraft, forcing pilots and maintainers to watch passively as the weather undid their quick redeployment work. In fact, the storm hit with such speed and ferocity that one crew was caught in their aircraft for its duration, having landed and taxied, but not yet disembarked.

“We were on approach as we started to hear and feel the first hail, and as we were shutting down the aircraft, the heavier stuff started,” CAPT Weatherstone said.

The hailstorm is cited anecdotally as the most damaging event for US Army aviation since Vietnam, with well in excess of 100 aircraft taken out of operation in half an hour by hailstones the size of golf balls.

“Once the hailstorm stopped we went out to assess the aircraft, and basically made a list of what we needed – what needed to be replaced, what we could get away with leaving in the condition that it was – and then we simply started from the top and worked our way down, essentially,” said Sergeant Trevlin Green, commander of the forward repair team.

“From both aircraft we lost all six rotors; 12 in total damaged beyond repair. We lost a lot of the windows – both overhead windows on both aircraft were broken, we had a smashed chin-bubble, smashed side-bubble and cabinwindows. Plus there was a fair bit of structural damage to the skins. A number of aerials were broken as well,” he said.

“All the rotor blades were replaced, all the transparencies were replaced, the antennas that were broken were replaced. A lot of the damage to the skins and structure of the aircraft we assessed and predominantly carried it forward as an ‘unservicability’, meaning there was no immediate need to rectify many of the panels or the skin. We did some repairs on areas we could access, considering as well that all this occurred in an operational environment,” SGT Green said. “We still had a mission to achieve. ” In a demonstration of the nature of operating as part of the Coalition and hand-in-hand with US forces, and despite their own aircraft being heavily damaged, the US provided the Australians with spares that exceeded the Australian stockpile.

“The event comfortably exceeded our ability to fix the aircraft in-theatre and so we asked the Americans if they could provide some parts from their own spares request, and they said yes,” LTCOL Brown said. “They provided us with eight blades – because we never expected to lose more than four – and they actually placed us higher on the priority list than some of their own aircraft . . . because we have our own self-contained maintenance and we could get into the air quicker than some of their aircraft, given the same spare parts. They could see that we would get up quicker than they could, so we were their route to getting airborne missions going again. ” All in all, the combination of Australian independent maintainers and the spare parts provided by US forces meant the aircraft were only on the ground for six and nine days respectively following the April 23

When you can hear the rounds over the two engines and the rotors turning, that means they’re pretty close. CAPT SHANE MITCHELL

storm. The majority of that was time spent waiting for spares.

Contact!

But while a speed-bump, the hailstorm from hell was not even close to the scariest experience for RWG-8. On June 3, a formation of both Australian aircraft was contacted by small-arms fire from several firing points believed to be multiple belt-fed machine guns.

CAPT Shane Mitchell, pilot and troop commander for the MLH troop, was the air mission commander at the time of the event. “We were coming back from a fairly long day out to RC West. We were on our way home from Helmand at the time, and we were engaged right on dusk,” he said.

“We’d been flying for nearly nine hours and had been forced low due to a thunderstorm near Bastion that was picking up dust behind it, so we were trying to improve our visibility . . . I think we just flew over an area that has a fairly high activity of insurgents, so I don’t think it wasan air ambush, but it was clearly a bunch of guys there who didn’t want us there, who had access to weapons and used them,” CAPT Mitchell said.

Testament to the unit’s professional flying combined with a healthy dose of good luck, only one aircraft was hit, with a single hole discovered in the rotorhead of the lead aircraft. The round hit a reservoir for one of the vertical hinge pins, meaning the aircraft handled no differently from normal and the crew didn’t even know they’d been hit until they shut down and noticed an oil leak.

The crew believe the second aircraft, CAPT Mitchell’s machine, was subjected to a greater concentration of fire, but miraculously emerged completely unscathed. Having passed through the fire, the lead aircraft watched as tracer rounds filled the air as if in a movie, fearing the second crew doomed. “When you can hear the rounds over the two engines and therotors turning, that means they’re pretty close,” CAPT Mitchell said.

“To our surprise, we weren’t hit at all . . . we think it was the initial engagement that hit the lead aircraft. We saw the initial burst at the lead aircraft, called it in, and when their attention turned to us we manoeuvered to make ourselves a more difficult target. ” In theatre, Australian Chinooks were fitted with two M134 Delta mini-guns for self-protection, capable of accurately firing between 2,000 and 6,000 rounds per minute. But interestingly, the Australian crews decided not to engage the tracer points-of-origin.

SGT Scotty Graham, apart from being a qualified technician, is also employed in the aircrew as the Delta gunner, and made the decision not to return fire due to the potential for civilian casualties.

“You have to be very conscious of the environment around you. Being a mini-gun, you can’t just ‘point and shoot’ – it has a very large impact area for rounds. ” Following their Rules of Engagement would have allowed for the aircrews to return fire, but a quick assessment showed they had moved beyond the engagement area and were no longer receiving effective fire. The risk of collateral damage by engaging the easily identifiable targets was too great. It was a quick and disciplined decision that potentially saved lives.

The incident itself was a particularly bad day, but it is also representative of the risk encountered by the RWG as they went about their mission. Small-arms fire was not an irregular occurrence, and though rare, hits to Australian Chinooks were not unheard of. “It’s not unusual for us to be under fire by ground forces and not even know about it until someone tells us later,” CAPT Mitchell said. Often the source of fire was unclear, whether malicious fire from insurgents or celebratory gunfire from Afghan National Security Forces or even locals. The tongue-in-cheek phrase ‘Afghan noise complaints’ even emerged to describe the expression of displeasure by locals, personified by shooting aimlessly at Coalition aircraft. “What is clear is that there is a lot of rounds in the air and that is why we fly the tactics we fly – to separate ourselves from the ground and generally make it harder to score a hit,” LTCOL Brown said.

“Still, no-one will say it was scary,” he said. “It was ‘professionally challenging’. ” Australia has lost two Chinooks to the Afghanistan mission, one crash resulting in the tragic death of Lieutenant Marcus Case, the other from a more standard hard landing. “Neither of the aircraft were in contact at the time, so they weren’t actually under duress from the enemy. However, there are plenty of threats and risks in theatre without considering the enemy. In fact the most significant risk to us at any time is the environment,” LTCOL Brown said.

On May 30 2011, Australian Chinook A15-102 crashed in Zabul Province in Afghanistan, killing LT Case, who was believed to be sitting on the open rear ramp of the helicopter. Citing sources close to the accident investigation, mainstream media reported that LT Case was wearing a harness that was too long and he was thrown from the aircraft as it hit the ground.

Although the aircraft’s flight-data recorders were unrecoverable and destroyed alongside the airframe, an aeronautical engineer from the Defence Science and Technology Organisation told a Commission of Inquiry the D-model Chinook’s analogue Advanced Flight Control System (AFCS) wasprone to becoming overloaded in Afghanistan’s demanding high-altitude flight conditions, causing the helicopter to ‘porpoise’, or tilt onto its nose. The digital AFCS in the newer CH-47F is believed to correct this issue, alongside a more stable airframe that is less susceptible to vibration. The Commission of Inquiry report into the crash has yet to be released.

Though tragic and avoidable, the 2011 crash served as an opportunity for Army Aviation to learn. “The 2011 crash enabled us to learn a lot of lessons about securing people in the aircraft and about how the aircraft actually flies; that is, how the Advanced Flight Control System actually operates. Those lessons that we have now learned have manifested themselves in some restrictions that we placed on pilots and aircrewmen, and some extra rules which we place on everyone who flies a Chinook, in terms of where we sit in the aircraft, how we secure ourselves to the aircraft, and how we react in turbulence and other environmental conditions,” LTCOL Brown said.

“It was a horrible accident, and it wasn’t one that we needed to have, but we have learnt a lot from it and our operations are safer as a result,” he said.

“It hasn’t restricted the level of support we’re able to provide to troops. It’s given us more awareness of several factors, but it hasn’t reduced our capability to support the guys on the ground,” CAPT Mitchell said.

“It’s also worth noting that, as aircrew, it’s not something we’re worried about. There’s appropriate measures put in place and it’s not a concern to us,” CAPT Weatherstone added.

Environmental complexity

“It’s a pretty complex environment to operate in. The only risk to

We didn’t want to go home with fuel in the tank, so to speak. LTCOL JAMES BROWN

appreciate isn’t necessarily where you’ll take small-arms fire from or where the high air-threat areas are. Because of the environment itself, the aircraft are a lot more limited in their performance than they would be at home under the same or less taxing conditions, in terms of the altitude and temperature. The weights we operate at are much heavier due to the amount of gear we need to move. We’re often operating closer to the edge of the envelope of the aircraft than we otherwise normally would be at home,” CAPT Weatherstone said.

“We’ve got the environmental factors that are always present, you’ve got the tactical threat in terms of the insurgency, and then you’ve got just the airspace and Coalition environment itself, which is also a complex one. Kandahar is one of the busiest runways in the world, and just overlaying the normal complexity of aviation operations into aenvironment presents more challenges. ” The role of deconflicting the airspace in a military zone as busy as Afghanistan was a complex task. All the missions were coordinated through the American Tactical Operations Centre, or TOC, the Battalion-level headquarters responsible for all day and night missions allocated for that day. “We provided one operator on a daily basis as part of our shift roster and they embed with the TOC. They’ll utilise the radios, the BFT in the TOC and assist the American Battle Captain and Battle NCO,” said SGT Trevor Couch, the operations sergeant for the deployment.

With as many as 12 aircraft in the air at any one time operating across multiple callsigns, various tools, including radio comms and Blue Force Tracker, were used to funnel information through the Battle NCO to the Battle Captain utilising anecho system, ensuring there is as full a situational awareness picture as possible both in the TOC and in aircraft in the field.

“We use theatre-specific situational awareness tools, the main one being Blue Force Tracker, or BFT. We can program in a route from grid to grid, and we’ll get a 60-second update on heading altitude and air speed. From that we can give senior commanders an update on when they’ve landed at a FOB, when they’ve shut down, and when they’ve departed again, and we’ll track all of that. We can also use something like an SMS text message across SATCOM and pass traffic as required,” SGT Couch said.

When the day’s plans changed, as they inevitably did, the TOC became the situational awareness hub foraircraft in the field for coordination, retasking and replanning. “Without their situational awareness and the co-ord of the TOC, we’re not able to effectively execute the missions,” CAPT Weatherstone said.

The TOC was also responsible for liaising with other battalions to organise escorts for the Chinooks, usually Apaches or Kiowa Warriors, to go into the FOBs deemed moderate or high risk. They also shared the responsibility of fielding calls for AME, or aeromedical evacuations.

Australian operators in the TOC were recognised as having a superior knowledge base thanks to their experience, and were often called on to mentor Coalition forces, and were commended by the US battalion commander for the critical role they played in TOC operations.

The last two weeks

The last two weeks for RWG-8 was a period of unusually high workload for the aircrew, particularly night taskings. At thesame time, the technicians were relocating the maintenance base across the airfield to prepare for deep-level maintenance.

“We had an end date for our mission that we had been given, and we were trying very hard to give the maximum support that we could to our aviation brigade. We didn’t want to go home with fuel in the tank, so to speak,” LTCOL Brown said.

“Our operations staff did a great deal of liaison with the brigade planning staff, and our troop commander and technical troop commander came up with a plan to fly a high-intensity period by night. We launched on that about three weeks before the due date for end of mission and got started,” he said.

As luck would have it, the high-intensity period for Australian Chinooks coincided with a period of low serviceability in the US battalion as they rotated over. “We were on night phase for two weeks and in one of those weeks we flew about 65 hours between the twoaircraft,” CAPT Mitchell said.

“We were a bit on the back foot of the hours we’d planned to do overall, until that last few weeks. When we flew that night phase, we picked up a lot of taskings as the two US CABs changed over . . . because we put both aircraft online as many days as we could where maintenance and weather would allow, on average our missions were six hours, and the longest were up around the nine mark. ” Night taskings for the Chinooks were usually a similar flavour to the combat service support tasks completed during the day, that is, moving cargo and troops to FOBs, with slight differences.

“The difference in doing things by night is that we’d go to some of the FOBs that were moderate or high risk and can only be serviced by night . . . a lot of the FOBs that we’d go to at the start of the trip every day, we’d go in unescorted just as two Chinooks. As the threat situation changes throughout thefighting season, it gets towards the end of the trip where you can only go into the same FOBs by night as a single aircraft with armed escorts,” CAPT Weatherstone said.

The night phase saw RWG juggling crew and night-vision goggle endurance, and aircraft hours, in order to take on additional taskings to compensate for the American F-model serviceability trough.

“What we thankfully have on our side is a crew of five and if we have both Australian aircraft in the air, a crew of ten who might see a better way of doing something. When you’re an aircraft captain and you’ve got a lot going on, it’s good to have someone in the back who can provide options. We find efficiencies where we can in the mission so we can try and complete more throughout the same period without wasting time and blade hours. That’s the challenge every time,” CAPT Mitchell said.

In comparison to previous tours, the pilots said the concentration of hours into a six-month period contributed to their generally high workload compared to previous tours. “We used to fly the same amount of hours over eight months. Just due to density of hours we were flying a lot more hours than we have before and certainly on previous trips, where we would fly every three days, we were often flying consecutive days over weeks at times,” CAPT Weatherstone said.

“In terms of the type of support, it’s really changed flavours over the years. In the early days there was a lot more emphasis on kinetic activity: combat support and deliberate operations as well as [combat service support]. This year was predominantly CSS due to the retrograde and the activities that were going on in support of the drawdown whilst also sustaining the forces that continued conducting combat operations and ensuringsecurity,” he said. “All the combat support and deliberate ops are still going on, but the focus is more toward the retrograde these days. ” Combat service support, which included resupply and air transport, was generally going from one secure location to another, while combat support is similar work looking after combat troops, not necessarily engaged in combat operations, but working in non-secure locations. Deliberate actions, or ‘combat operations’ in the Australian vernacular, were essentially a contested or uncontested air assault, such as transporting Special Forces troops into the combat zone.

But the emphasis on CSS work had not seen a reduction in the insurgent threat to the aircraft or operators. Rather, the retrograde of combat forces away from certain areas saw the insurgents retaking some ground.

“As we start to pull more and more people out, the surrounding areas becomes less and less stable . . . as we retrograde, our biggest threat this year was going back and forth to the same FOB, possibly with external loads, into areas that the insurgents were looking to move back into,” CAPT Mitchell said. “They aren’t combat ops, but there is still a risk there because of the freedom of movement for the insurgents. ” The detachment achieved the highest rate of effort for any single month, and highest rate of effort for any single week since 2006, in this final deployment, flying 788. 9 hours in support of ISAF operations, 89 missions in total, of which 20 were by night, and 44 missions partnered with American aircraft.

Despite the American forces predominantly running the more advanced Foxtrot models, LTCOL Brown said there was no hindrance to interoperability between crews.

“We were predominantly paired up with one of their National

It was a horrible accident, and it wasn’t one that we needed to have, but we have learnt a lot from it and our operations are safer as a result. LTCOL JAMES BROWN

Guard units that fly Deltas,” CAPT Mitchell said. “Day-to-day we flew with them, but they have some restrictions on night flying so when we did our night phase we flew with F-models and had no issues with integrating with them. ” The key difference between the Delta and Foxtrot models is in the avionics suite – multifunction displays, GPS-coupled systems and, importantly, digital flight control systems. There are also differences in the airframe, with skins machined from solid pieces rather than the sandwiched construction.

“The biggest difference isn’t necessarily what you see when you look in the cockpit . . . the biggest difference is how you’re able to operate the aircraft and to what degree of safety in conditions like extremely dark nights and restrictive visibility operations like heavy dust,” CAPT Weatherstone said.

“The information and situational awareness that the systems provide you in terms of terrain and the fact that you can ‘couple’ the aircraft in terms of altitude, speed and height above ground to the GPS systems enables you to operate with lower risk than a D-model in a lot of environments,” he said.

Maintenance challenges

“We used to take our aircraft home at the end of each fighting season, which goes from around April until September. We’d then pull them down and put them on a C-17 to fly home, service them and then bring them back into theatre for the next fighting season,” LTCOL Brown said.

“We realised that this was inefficient and as Kandahar became more developed and there was more hangar space available, we found that it was possible for us to leave the aircraft in Afghanistan and bring contractors into Kandahar to conduct deeper maintenance on the aircraft over winter, whichwould save in my estimation about one man-year every single year of maintenance work,” he said.

The in-theatre maintenance scheme allowed the RWG to shorten rotation times and increase the rate of effort, flying more hours per day, as well as giving a guaranteed level of service to Coalition partners.

“We evolved from an eight-month period every year where we’d fly our aircraft in, change an aircraft out, then fly both aircraft out, to a more concentrated six-month period, with the aircraft already there. That was the final iteration of the operational construct. That’s why we were able to start operating fairly quickly, because the aircraft were here and serviceable, only requiring minimal test flying. ” Maintainers at Kandahar faced their own range of challenges with the harsh conditions. Temperatures in summer would easily hover over 48 degrees, perhaps more on the flightline. Maintainers and technicians would wear microclimate cooling vests to help cope and strict work/rest ratios were implemented. Sitting in the glaring sun, external skin temperatures of the machines would reach 70 or 80 degrees Celsius. Gloves were a necessity.

It also presented a range of diverse challenges for maintainers, such as one a few years ago known as the ‘Mustang mud wasp’, named for the Australian operating ramp at Kandahar airfield.

“Basically, it was a small wasp that liked to make its home in one of the engine components,” SGT Green said. “It made life interesting for the aircrew. ” “I had two engines trying to ignite themselves on start-up, at the same time,” CAPT Weatherstone said. “The engines thought they were at a different altitude to what they were, and pumped a load of fuel in. I was about ten degrees Celsius away fromtoasting two million-dollar engines. ” The culprit, the Mustang mud wasp, had built its nest on top of the tiny hole that fed the ambient air sensor.

“The only reason we found it was because while we were tracing what we thought was a fault with the engine, one of our technicians was shooing an insect away, and he watched it land on the engine then crawl into the hole,” SGT Green said. “That’s the only way we found it. ” The RWG implemented its own procedures to manage the bug, and in passing information to Coalition partners discovered that many had already faced and overcome the same problem. “If you let an engine sit for ten days or so, the bugs would bring mud in and build a nest, so once we had found the problem, we instigated a maintenance schedule that if the engine wasn’t run for a period of time we’d clean that particular area out,” SGT Green said.

Maintainers “fought a constant battle” with the dust in Afghanistan, trying to keep up with the “insidious stuff”. “We’ve even found dust inside sealed unit components. It’s very fine, talcum-like dust that just gets everywhere,” SGT Green said.

The finer dust found in Afghanistan was not as bad for the engines as has been found on other operations, such as Iraq, where the heavy, sandy dust was considered responsible for chewing out the aircraft’s moving parts.

As on the Arabian Peninsula, however, the dust in Afghanistan reduced the time between overhauling the dynamic components of the aircraft – engines and blades. The blades on the aircraft in Kandahar were a good example, with visible paint erosion to a far greater degree than would be expected from the hours flown on them. Engine Air Particle Separators were installed on engines to reduce the inflow of dust. “We’ve got servicing schedules to cover all of those elements. We keep up the maintenance in order to preserve the life of the aircraft in this environment,” said WO2 Matthew Connell, the TST Artificer Sergeant Major.

“It’s true that there’s a lot more unscheduled maintenance required in Afghanistan than back home, but the guys keep on top of it and the logistics support from our American friends has assisted us in keeping up our rate of effort,” he said.

For RWG-8, the Chinooks in Afghanistan flew at a mission success rate of 92 per cent.

Deep-level maintenance

At the time of Australian Aviation’s embed in Kandahar, the aircraft were still on location, undergoing scheduled deep maintenance designed to “put the hours back on the aircraft”, allowing for thenext 400 hours to be flown on the airframe.

The 35-day in-country cycle was labour intensive, requiring almost complete disassembly and 100 per cent examination of the airframe components. Any rectifications were performed in-theatre, bringing the contractors closer to high levels of US support and supply chains.

One example of that support was rotor blades given to the US for service support and remediation. The blades were repaired, painted and statically balanced before being returned to Australian forces, all within 24 hours.

The aircraft are washed before being stripped, after being stripped and a third time for good measure, an indication of the environmental effects of the dust on the airframes. Much to the chagrin of the maintainers, the Australian Chinooks were required to undergoDepartment of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry quarantine and inspections before officially returning to Australian operations. On arrival in Townsville, the Chinooks were to be taken to an accredited wash-bay and cleaned to manage biosecurity.

A significant part of deep maintenance is the rectification of repairs that were delayed to allow for continuation of flying in order to meet operational requirements. Those unservicabilities were cleared as part of the broader deep maintenance cycle.

For the final RWG rotation, the aircraft were being prepared to return to Australia via C-17 having completed deep maintenance, and were to be reassembled over five days prior to test flying. The goal was to be ready for ongoing Defence assistance to the civil community work in time for the Australian summer. The deep maintenance cycle and return of aircraft, supplies and stores to Australia was being managed by a specific Force Extraction Team, led by LTCOL Tyron DeBoer, who also doubles as the project manager for the CH-47D at DMO and triples as the project manager for the CH-47F acquisition.

“Retrograding the Chinooks from theatre seemed a big job at first; there’s many years of accumulated spares, supplies and tooling,” LTCOL DeBoer said. “The specific Chinook tooling will be taken home, while the non-specific tools will be left behind, as will any consumables . . . some items will be gifted to the US Chinook crews. ” Certain spares will be taken home with the aircraft, mainly those items that can be used on the future Foxtrot model, which shares 85 per cent commonality with Deltas. All up, there was to be between 30 and 35 pallets of stores in addition to the two aircraft. Each machine required a dedicated C-17 for the trip home.

The two aircraft that finished up in Afghanistan were slated for ongoing roles in the Defence establishment. A15-104 is an upgraded D-model from the original RAAF CH‑47C Chinook acquisition and will continue in service until the introduction of the Foxtrots. A15-201 has been earmarked for the Australian War Memorial as the airframe with the most operational tours.

The CH-47D has a limited self-diagnostic capability, mainly for vibration analysis, and involves a plug-in, external computer system. Some smaller subsystems also have built-in test functions. The newer F-models, which are expected to be delivered to Defence from 2016, are newer technology and the systems are able to communicate more in theway of self-assessment.

But the Australian Chinook crews have the next best thing to a self-diagnosing aircraft – Aircrewman Technicians, or ATs, like SGT Graham, who is both an aircrewman (a gunner) and a tradesman, allowing for inflight diagnosis and possible rectification of maintenance problems.

As far as Australian rotary-wing assets go, the Chinook was the only platform that has that, and according to the pilots it makes a big difference to have a subject matter expert in the back who can provide information about problems. “As pilots, it’s very hard to know the systems in the depth that we’d need to facilitate that. We’ve got someone who can do minor repairs, either inflight on while on the ground and running. It keeps aircraft in the air and it makes a very big difference,” CAPT Mitchell said.

“It’s often the difference between being able to continue with a mission or having to cancel it, and that’s where we have an advantage over other platforms like Black Hawk or MRH,” CAPT Weatherstone added.

LTCOL Brown spoke highly of his personnel, saying the RWG was unique in sending people into theatre time and again to work ‘outside the wire’. “Only the Special Operations Task Group does something similar,” he said. “Every day we would send two aircraft away from Kandahar with 10 or 11 Australian soldiers on board, supported by a superb team of technicians and support staff back at Camp Bakar. And every day, that team of 10 or 11 Australian soldiers and officers would do a superb job under extremely difficult conditions,” LTCOL Brown said.