Big Skies

The three-week long exercise is held during the tropical dry season, virtually guaranteeing endless clear skies and fine weather. But the dry season is also the time of the Darwin Festival, the Darwin Cup race carnival and other events in the region, meaning accommodation, rental cars and other services required by participants (and media covering the event) are at a premium.

Participants

As host nation, the RAAF was well represented with eight F/A‑18F Super Hornets from 82WG and about 30 F/A-18A/B classic Hornets from 81WG tasked to the exercise, plus one to two E-7A Wedgetail AEW&Cs from 2SQN, two B350 King Airs from 38SQN, a 92WG AP-3C Orion, and a C-130J Hercules from 37SQN also participating.

Additionally, KC-30A MRTTs from 33SQN made almost daily flights to and from the exercise area from their home base of RAAF Amberley to coincide with the launch and recovery ‘waves’. The RAAF’s classic Hornets were split between RAAF Darwin and Tindal, with 77SQN taking over 75SQN’s jets at Tindal to play the role of the defending ‘red force’ for the exercise. The Darwin elements comprised 75SQN and 3SQN pilots and support crews, with other people drawn in from 81WG to provide planning and other support.

The C-130J and King Airs supported transport requirements throughout the exercise, with the Hercules inserting special forces and airfield defence guards into the Bradshaw airstrip under simulated combat conditions. The King Airs were utilised to ferry VIPs, media or for light transport tasks between Tindal and Darwin, and occasionally played the role of a NGO (nongovernment organisation) aircraft in contested airspace.

The Royal Thai Air Force returned for its sixth Pitch Black, but for the first time brought six of its new JAS‑39C/D Gripens.

Operated by 701 Squadron from Surat Thani Air Base, they were supported by C-130 Hercules transports (which didn’t participate in the exercise itself).

Pitch Black 14 was the Gripen’s first overseas exercise in RTAF service (the RTAF sent F-16A/Bs to earlier Pitch Blacks).

The Thai detachment brought a large contingent of 15 pilots to Pitch Black 14, with only five of them having previously attended the exercise. Using the ‘Shark’ callsign, the Gripens flew air-to-air missions, primarily as a part of the ‘blue force’ in the exercise.

“One of our main objectives is to give the pilots big learnings from the exercise in terms of fighting with the Gripen with international forces in multi-link networked scenarios,” RTAF 701SQN commanding officer WGCDR Chareon ‘Tonic’ Watanasrimongkol said. “It’s a new jet and can do multirole missions,

We thought we would take it easy by doing only air-to-air missions.

but we thought we would take it easy by doing only air-to-air missions for this first time. ” The United Arab Emirates was a first time participant, sending six Mirage 2000-9s from 71 Squadron based at Al Dhafra supported by a 10 Squadron A330 MRTT. The UAE contingent deployed to Darwin via Malaysia, and marked the first time any Middle East nation had attended a Pitch Black exercise.

The Republic of Singapore Air Force, meanwhile, returned for Pitch Black in force with a contingent of eight F-16C/D Block 52s, six F-15SG Eagles, a Gulfstream/IAI G550 AEW&C and a KC-130R tanker to Darwin. For the RSAF, Pitch Black represented just one part of a longer-term deployment which also included the Commando Sling 14 exercise with the RAAF and US ANG immediately following Pitch Black.

The USAF brought a combined element of 12 F-16C Block 30Ds from the District of Columbia’s 177th Fighter Wing and New Jersey 113th Wing Air National Guard units. Based at RAAFTindal for Pitch Black, these ANG jets have been upgraded to the F-16C++ (pronounced ‘plus plus’) configuration (which includes a GPS/INS upgrade and the ability to carry GPS-guided weapons like JDAM and the Litening targeting pod). Pitch Black 14 was part of a longer-term Theatre Security Package deployment to the western Pacific for the ANG group which included the followon Commando Sling 14 exercise with Singapore and the RAAF, and the deployment included command elements from the USAF’s Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) headquarters in Hawaii.

“Our role was to provide defensive counter air (DCA), but also OCA and CAS (close air support) and strike and escort missions to protect strikers depending on what the roles are that day,” the ANG detachment commander, Lt Col Scott Arbogast explained. “So I’m doing both blue and red air. We’re mainly simulating GBU-12 (laser-guided) and GBU-38 (GPS-guided) bombs on strike missions. ”“We’re part of a theatre security package and the initial contingent was in Korea,” Arbogast added.

“We picked up the aircraft from Korea and brought them here for the exercise. We’re doing a lot of mission commander upgrades for some of our young guys, we have some young pilots and this is their first opportunity to fly in multiship packages. We’re staying on for Commando Sling, and then we’ll take these aircraft back to the US.

“Most of the exercises that our unit is involved with is usually in the US, so it’s been interesting working with our multi-national partners,” he added. “Dealing with some of the language issues is interesting, and most of us have never been to the PACAF AOR (area or responsibility) or operated out of Australia, so all that’s been unique.

Anytime you pack up and take half your operation halfway across the world, there’s always lessons to be learned, and we’re providing those back to PACAF for subsequent units who will participate in these exercises so that they won’t make the same mistakes we have. ” The ANG brought a large contingent of spares and staff on the deployment. Detachment maintenance chief CMSGT Joseph Smiley explained: “One of the biggest challenges we face is logistics, supply chain management and things like that. We moved about 86 increments of cargo from the US and Korea which is about six C-17s worth of equipment. One of the advantages of exercises like this is we get to do that and practice that and learn some lessons along the way. ” “We started planning this about six months prior to departure,” CMSGT Smiley added. “For this one we brought more support equipment than we normally would because Tindal is not set up for F-16s – we brought more ground handling equipment in addition to our standard war readiness supply kit package or parts package for the aircraft. We have about 137 maintenance folks in total, and a total of about 186 for the whole Pitch Black team including pilots, logistics. ” Guam-based USAF B-52Hs also took part of the exercise although were not included in every mission. Demonstrating their strategic reach, the B-52s flew to and from Guam and did not land on Australian soil.

Rounding out the aircraft participants was a lone CN-235 from the French air force in New Caledonia which was based at RAAF Tindal for the exercise and which supported the C-130J in transport and ‘white air’ operations.

Finally, New Zealand didn’t deploy aircraft to Pitch Black, but did send military working dogs from its 209 Squadron Force Protection unit.

Red, white & blue

Pitch Black takes the form of a number of scripted scenarios rather than a three-week war of attrition.

The White Force is tasked with scripting and planning the variousair combat missions, with providing intelligence to both the blue and red forces, and with injecting realistic ‘pop-up’ scenarios into the missions to maximise the training value. White Force also controls the simulated electronic ground-based air defence (GBAD) threat emitters on the ground at the Delamere Range, and can task the transport aircraft to play the roles of non-combatant air traffic such as those commonly operated by nongovernment organisations (NGOs) in actual war zones.

The Blue Force or ‘blue air’ is the attacking force for the exercise.

There were typically two ‘waves’ launched each day from Darwin.

The RSAF and UAE tankers and the G550 AEW&C would launch first out of Darwin, followed by a brace of fighters to conduct offensive counter air (OCA) or fighter sweeps ahead of the strikers. The fighters were typically played by the Thai Gripens, UAE Mirages, RSAF F-16s and some RAAF classic Hornets.

Following the fighters would be the strikers, comprising RSAF F-15SGs and F-16Ds and RAAF Super and classic Hornets, but some escort fighters would also be mixed with the strikers to provide additional cover.

A typical afternoon launch wave from Darwin could comprise as many as 40 aircraft in the space of 45 minutes to an hour, and they would be gone for up to 2. 5 hours before recovering back to base. Most fighters that were capable of doing so carried air combat manoeuvring instrumentation (ACMI) pods which resemble AIM‑9 Sidewinder missiles without the fins, and these stored data from blue and red force aircraft to accurately determine whether missiles had been launched within acceptable parameters and whether an air-to-air kill had been recorded.

The Tindal-based Red Force was the defending or adversary force for the exercise, and was tasked with trying to prevent the Darwinbased strike aircraft from reaching their targets on the ranges, and their missions typically lasted about 1. 5 hours as they were conducted closer to Tindal. Red air fighters also carried ACMI pods and, if ‘shot down’, they were required to turn on their transponders and retire behind an imaginary line or to a simulated airfield in the sky to be ‘regenerated’ to re-join the fight if scripted to do so.

Leading the RAAF’s part of the red force was the Williamtown-based 77SQN.

“We are down here coordinating what the guys in Darwin see on their radars, and the presentations and problems we give them to sort out and solve,” 77SQN commanding officer WGCDR Ben Sleeman said at Tindal. “We typically set up to the south and the blue air ingress from the north, so we are defending Delamere, Bradshaw, or wherever area they’re trying to head to. Tindal is not a target – [the blue force] is simulating dropping bombs, so they need to use the range for that, so that’s Delamere primarily and Bradshaw as well. ” “75SQN is based at Tindal permanently and Tindal normally hosts the red air component,” WGCDR Sleeman added. “So this is just a chance to rotate 75SQN out to Darwin to give them some blue air experience – we were blue air two years ago, so it’s our turn to come down to Tindal. All the maintenance force here at Tindal is still 75SQN, so we’ve really just changed out the aircrew. ” Red air is tasked to play the part of typical adversary aircraft types that a blue force might come up against in a real-war scenario, rather than fight against the blue force as if they are Hornets.

“We are restricted in the tactics we can do, it’s not just get out there and go crazy for an hour. Itmight be scripted so you can do a certain manoeuvre three times and then just fly straight after that. In the early part of the exercise when we’re all learning it’s quite a simple

We are outgunned and outnumbered so we expect to lose, but we’re certainly not going to do that easily.

presentation, but by the third week the guidance will probably be to do whatever you want. We are simulating a generic adversary airframe and adversary missile – it’s not a Hornet. We are outgunned and outnumbered so we expect to lose, but we’re certainly not going to do that easily. ” Augmenting the combat aircraft are a number of Learjet and IAI Westwinds operated by Pel-Air which are used to bulk out the air combat force.

“These aircraft are typically piloted by former pilots who understand the flow – they’re really just a slower, less performing airframe but they’re also smaller and harder to detect, and they can do some damage if they can get in there without being seen,” WGCDR Sleeman said.

“I think they fly a MiG-21 type profile, and we’ve given them the equivalent of a very old close in airto- air missile as their weapon. But there are just two pilots with eyes, they don’t have a radar or any EW. ” The next Pitch Black is due to be held in August 2016.