Spartan

“It’s not a major change,” GPCAPT Young told Australian Aviation. “It’s mostly to do with the fact that atthe front end of the project most of our interaction was with Air Force Headquarters. But now that we’re closer to the rubber hitting the tarmac so to speak, the changes allow us to get inside Air Lift Group (ALG) and their airworthiness and command & control structure. Our engineering staff have also been supplemented to give us more horsepower to get us through the airworthiness process, and there’s a really tight connection with the DMO’s AIR 8000 project office. ” 35SQN was re-established at Richmond in early 2013, having been disbanded in 2000 followingthe consolidation of DHC-4 Caribou operations with 38SQN. While a number of Caribou airframes were retired in 2000, the remaining 14 were to be operated by 38SQN which moved north from Richmond, initially to Amberley and then on to Townsville. The Caribou was retired from RAAF service in 2009 and 38SQN converted to the King Air which it operates in the light transport role.

The first RAAF C-27J entered Alenia’s Turin assembly line in December 2012 and that aircraft flew for the first time about two months ahead of schedule on December 18 2013. Although the aircraft are referred to as ‘green’, which usually denotes an aircraft which is flyable but is otherwise incomplete, the Alenia factory manufactures the RAAF C-27Js to the same military industrial baseline standard as those sold to other operators such as Italy, Lithuania, Poland and other non-US operators.

After an initial checkout at Alenia, the aircraft was to be ferried to L-3 at roughly 10-week intervals where additional combat systems are added to bring them to a common configuration to the 21 C-27Js that were built for the US Air National Guard (ANG) under the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) program.

“Conversion of the aircraft at L-3 takes about three months,” GPCAPT Young said. “Our first completed aircraft is due to be delivered at the end of July. Although L-3 has been quite wise in adding a bit of margin into their schedule, it’s in no way a developmental aircraft. ” At the time of writing there were six RAAF C-27Js in various stages of build at Alenia, while GPCAPT Young confirmed that L-3 has sufficient capacity to induct the aircraft for the conversions if Alenia remains ahead of schedule.

The work to install the systems common to the US JCA-spec is not an invasive process, and all the required apertures and wiring conduits are manufactured into the standard aircraft by Alenia. The JCA equipment comprises additional ballistic protection for the aircraft’s cockpit and loadmaster station, a US-spec electronic warfare self-protection (EWSP) suite, and high-end US-standard communications equipment.

The ballistic matting is designed to prevent small arms fire and shrapnel from entering the aircraft where crew members are commonly positioned for tactical landings and departures, and is similar to that which has been fitted to RAAF C-130s and Army CH-47Ds in recent years.

Although other non-US C-27J operators also use EWSP and ballistic protection, these are of different specifications and from other suppliers and are not common to the JCA specification.

“The Alenia aircraft is fitted for but not with” the JCA additions, GPCAPT Young explained. “L-3 pulls it back only to the degree that is required to fit that equipment. As you can imagine if it’s justEWSP and comms, it’s mostly just a matter of swapping boxes out and changing the mission software, and the ballistic protection is purely a mechanical fit. ” The first four converted aircraft will be delivered to L-3’s new training centre which is currently being established adjacent to the company’s conversion facility at Waco in Texas. 35SQN had initially planned to embed itself and do its initial training at the US Air National Guard’s ‘JCA Schoolhouse’ at Robins AFB in Georgia, but with the ANG’s retirement of its C-27Js in 2013, the Robins facility is now being used for other purposes.

The training of RAAF crews and maintainers will commence in the second half of this year, with the exact timing still subject to final negotiations between L-3 and the USAF which is the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) authority for the RAAF program. “The exact durations for the training aren’t clear yet,” GPCAPT Young said. “But we’ve got a pretty good feel for what the ANG did and our requirements will be similar. So what we’re aiming to do is start training in the second half of this year in time to have the first crews turned out for the aircraft’s arrival in Australia in March next year. ” With the retirement of the ANG’s C-27Js and the associated closing down of its training system, the RAAF will take the lead in the airworthiness of the aircraft and the supporting training system.

“The ANG was on the verge of getting a full airworthiness type certificate when divestment occurred,” said GPCAPT Young. “They’d done a large proportion of the certification effort, but when divestment occurred and when resources were taken away from that effort, their ability to exercise that eroded. So we’ve basically picked it up.

“It’s a little unusual compared to some of the other systems,” he added. “If you look at C-17 or Super Hornet for example, both of those aircraft have an established operating base in the USAF or Navy. But because the USAF has divested of the C-27J, we’re taking the lead role in the airworthiness management of the training operations in the US. While that adds a level of complexity to the project, we anticipated that would happen and so as mitigation we have strengthened our engineering organisation within 35SQN and the transition team, and we’re taking a more active role in the training operations in the US. ”

We also want to resurrect 35SQN’s legacy of pragmatism which was formed in Vietnam. GPCAPT YOUNG

Despite its recency and following a successful operational evaluation of two aircraft in Afghanistan, the ANG lost its C-27Js after the Pentagon decided to cancel the JCA program as part of sequestration measures imposed upon the US defence budget. The 17 aircraft then in operation with the Ohio and Georgia ANGs were ferried to the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) ‘boneyard’ in Arizona in October last year to be placed in ‘type 1000’ near-ready storage, while the four aircraft that were still being modified by L-3 were delivered straight from Waco to AMARG.

But they won’t languish in the boneyard long, as the type has already been thrown a lifeline, with the US Coast Guard and Special Operations Command (SOCOM) moving late last year to quickly snap up the 21 near-new JCA-configured C-27Js under the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act, which was signed on December 26.

Under the bill, the USCG will take 14 of the C-27Js and will look to modify them with surface-search radars, electro-optical sensors and mission suites for search and rescue missions. As a consequence the USCG will cut its planned buy of 36 HC-144 (Airbus CN-235) Ocean Sentries in half to 18 aircraft, and will transfer seven of its older HC-130Hs to the USAF (in turn they will be converted with aerial firefighting equipment for use by the US Forest Service). SOCOM meanwhile will take the remaining seven C-27Js reportedly to be operated in a training role at the US Army’s JFK Special Warfare Center (‘SWICK’) at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

The continuation of C-27J operations in the US means a critical mass of training and sustainment will be maintained from which to support the RAAF’s 10 aircraft. “We’re waiting to see what support arrangements those agencies will seek,” said GPCAPT Young. “Neither organisation is fully within the US DoD system so they have some unique arrangements, so we’re waiting to see what they do to see what cooperative opportunities there will be. We do know SOCOM will want to start training on their aircraft in the very near future which is beneficial to us because it keeps the size of the training market bigger and the system more robust. ” While the USCG’s use of C-27Js effectively splits its SAR capabilities between two different types with two separate sustainment streams, the C-27J will be available much sooner than the HC-144s on order, thus allowing some of its 24 older and more costly HC-130Hs to be retired sooner. The C-27J arguably will also provide greater capability than the HC-144 for operations from remote airfields in regions like Alaska and the Caribbean. Some of the non-recurring integration work for the search radars and optical systems has likely already been done by Alenia for its MC-27J Praetorian gunship concept, and the C-27J has engines and other systems common to the six HC-130Js in USCG service.

Interestingly, the search and rescue modifications planned for the USCG C-27Js may also better position the type for a competition for a similar capability currently underway in Canada, a fact that likely hasn’t been lost on L-3 or Alenia.

The new L-3 training facility at Waco will include a full flight simulator (FFS) as well as a fuselage trainer and other synthetic training devices. “Under the FMS case, we’re basically buying a training service off L-3 and that will include the provision of simulator services as part of thatcontract,” said GPCAPT Young. “The interim system will be US-based, while the Australian training system will be implemented in Amberley. ” The training facility at Amberley will also include a C-27J FFS and fuselage trainer and other maintenance training devices, and is planned to come online in conjunction with the aircraft’s full operational capability (FOC) in late 2017. Until then, while most of the aircraft will be delivered to 35SQN at Richmond from March next year, GPCAPT Young said two or three C-27Js will remain at Waco to support the interim training system.

Interestingly, and despite 35SQN’s current basing at Richmond, the decision to position the C-27J’s training system at Amberley suggests that is the likely long-term base for the aircraft, and again raises the prospect of Richmond closing or losing permanent tenants in the medium term.

Australian personnel recently got to see first-hand the capabilities offered by the Spartan, when RAAF C-130Js worked alongside an Italian air force C-27J which had been deployed to Macatan Air Base in the Philippines to support recovery operations in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan. “The short field capability is ideal for austere airfields not able to be serviced by larger aircraft such as the C-130J or C-17A,” 35SQN XO SQNLDR Wayne Baylis said in a Defence release, with RAAF loadmasters and airfield operations support personnel making similar remarks.

GPCAPT Young noted the Italian air force squadron was “very similar in terms of size and roles and rate of effort to 35SQN”, and added that both the Italians and the ANG had “operated the C-27Js in Afghanistan and had good experiences in the field”.

RAAF IOC will be declared at Richmond with at least four aircraft in mid to late 2016, although if production stays ahead of schedule this may increase to five or six. “It’s always a matter of balancing the aircraft, the training of crews and the logistics support to operate them,” GPCAPT Young said of the delivery schedule. “We’re doing our best to keep those all tightly interconnected so we don’t have any wastage anywhere, but at the moment it’s looking pretty good. ” In closing, GPCAPT Young said that, while he is always happy to talk about the capability the C-27J will bring to the RAAF, he is also very conscious of his responsibility in helping to create an operational culture within 35SQN. “We’re trying to establish a whole operational culture where 35SQN really embraces the whole ‘Spartan’ identity,” he explained.

“While we create the best mix of modern technology in a battlefield airlifter which can go into harm’s way and go places a C-130 can’t, we also want to resurrect 35SQN’s legacy of pragmatism which was formed in Vietnam. So there will also be an enthusiasm for all things Spartan, for example the resilience evident in Spartan culture which was demonstrated (against the ancient Greeks) in the battle of Thermopylae. ”