In the pipeline

Aircrews were undergoing training on the PC-21 in Switzerland and the Growler, P-8A and C-27J in the US. AP-3Cs were involved in, or were available to be tasked on Operation Resolute border protection and Operation Gateway maritime surveillance and freedom of navigation flights in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean, C-17s and C-130Js were tasked on resupply missions to and within the Middle East, and C-17s were flying proof-of-concept flights to an ice runway in Antarctica.

Then there is Plan Jericho; planning for the F-35’s introduction into service; and cultural change initiatives to make the Air Force a more flexible workplace and a more attractive, inclusive career option for women and minorities.

It’s a busy time for the Air Force.

“I’ve been in this job now for six months, and I’ve completed all but three… RAAF base visits,” Chief of Air Force Air Marshal Leo Davies tells journalists during roundtable briefing in early February.

“What I find is that people are really excited about two things in particular.

“One of them is excitement about all the new gear we’re getting, and a lot of our young folk are really keen to try and maximise the use of that new gear. That’s Plan Jericho.

That’s what we’re trying to open the aperture to, to allow them to tell us how better to use this new equipment.

“The other one that folk are really excited about is the cultural change that’s occurred across the ADF – that we are a place that is easier to work in, [with] better defined behaviours and expectations.”

One sign of that cultural change is that there is currently one woman training to become a fast jet pilot in the RAAF on Hawks with 76 Squadron, with a second due to begin fast jet training (with 79 Squadron on Hawks) mid-year. Women have been able to serve as pilots in the RAAF since the late 1980s and have been able to apply to be fast jet pilots since the early 1990s.

To date over 60 women have commenced pilot training with the RAAF, and 42 have graduated from pilots courses, earning their wings. However, just five women have begun fast jet training, but none has yet successfully completed operational conversion onto a frontline fighter.

“In that 2020-21-22 timeframe [when the JSF is entering service], I reckon we’ll have, three, four, five, six, somewhere in that number, of female fighter pilots,” CAF said.

In previous years the RAAF may have had “one woman on pilot’s course on CT-4s at Tamworth, who might have [had the potential to be] a fighter pilot and then four courses later, one more woman on CT‑4s. And what I’m seeing now is five women on CT-4s, three of which have potential for [fast jets]. So that number, that basis, is starting to grow, and I think that really is … positive,” AIRMSHL Davies explained.

“So I think now, rather than having one female fighter pilot in a year or two years, I reckon we’ll have five or six in five or six years’ time. It’s a more positive picture than two women on a pilots’ course.”

So why the change? “I think we have had a real, strong drive to try and get young women to understand that they might include being a fighter pilot as one of their vocational options,” said CAF.

“I think that’s what’s happening here, that there are a couple of young women, who are 17, 18, leaving school going; ‘we do have two women on Hawk, I’ll start that.

That’s all right if someone else is doing it. I’m not the first. It is an okay thing. Maybe their big, blokey fighter pilot attitude is starting to, sort of, dilute a little’.

“And so it bloody should.” Just as CAF is confident Australia will have female pilots flying the F-35 early next decade, he is confident too that the F-35 itself will be in service ready on the RAAF’s planned timeframe.

“Early on, the JSF test program was behind in almost every test sphere that the program used. It’s now on or ahead for nearly all of the test blocks, so the dampening is happening,” CAF said, noting, “I don’t have any concerns on the current trajectory or the current vector for test and delivery.”

Restates the one-time F-111 pilot, “do I have any concerns about the aircraft arriving on time and being able to replace the classic [Hornet]? The answer is no. The only thing that would prevent that would be something that is out of the blue.”

Instead, says AIRMSHL Davies, one of the biggest challenges facing the F-35’s introduction into RAAF service is making sure its full range of capabilities are exploited, rather than simply using it as a newer and better replacement for the existing Hornet.

“One of the really critical pieces here about ownership of the Joint Strike Fighter is not going to be whether it can pull 6G, and what does that information on my HUD look like; it’s how do I get the JSF to bring to the rest of Air Force, and Navy and Army assets [the ability] to be able to fight better themselves, because of what the JSF brings. “That’s going to be the biggest piece to the way we change how the ADF fights, and it’s why … [former CAF] Geoff [Brown] launched Jericho.”

Plan Jericho was formally launched 12 months ago ahead of the Avalon Airshow last February, and seeks to “transform our Air Force for the information age. Exploiting new capabilities to their full potential will be the difference between being an Air Force with fifth generation aircraft, and being a fifth generation Air Force,” AIRMSHL Davies writes on the Plan Jericho website.

“Jericho’s become a reason,” CAF said. “If a young airman or young airwoman … says; ‘if we could get that on this aeroplane, I could do this’, previously we’ve said; ‘well, that’s technically difficult, and it would cost a lot of money, and I can’t afford the [aircraft] to be offline while we fit that’.

“And Jericho says; ‘no, if that’s an improvement to our combat effect, we’re going to suck up those dollars and that time, and we’re going to deliver’.”

CAF cites the example of the KC-30 tanker operating over Iraq in Operation Okra using IFF (information friend or foe) transponder data on a laptop on the flightdeck to build an air picture of where the aircraft it is supporting are operating, and then positioning the aircraft to be closer to them for refuelling, as an example of the thinking Jericho aims to foster. “Through our ability to take pieces of IFF off other aircraft, we can build a picture on a laptop in the cockpit. So the tanker now sees where the next receivers are through ATO (air tasking order) mode allocation.

And they move away from their tanker track and go up range – cleared, of course – to where the next receivers are.”

That means in a pair of fighters one aircraft can refuel while the other remains on station. “We don’t lose any of the picture, so we don’t have a break in the ‘pattern of life’,” CAF said.

“The tanker couldn’t get there, unless we had that [IFF] piece. And we said; ‘well, why didn’t we do that years ago? Why didn’t we?’… We’re all asking the same question.

“But Jericho has now given us the ability for a young corporal, or a young flying officer, to go; ‘that aeroplane can do that, if we had that picture, that’s what we can do’. So I’m still really excited about Jericho.”

Another area where the KC-30’s effectiveness on operations over Iraq is soon to increase is clearance to use its boom to refuel US Air Force aircraft such as the F-16, F-15 and even B-1B.

“The ability to give a big offload to a big aeroplane is really helpful.” As it is the KC-30’s reliability has seen it become the ‘tanker of choice’ in theatre.

“It’s not just the tanker of choice because it carries a lot of gas, but it’s really reliable.”

That reliability means missions can be planned with the assurance that there will be the needed tanker support.

“If the KC-30’s up, I know I can go through my plan because the gas will be where it’s supposed to be.”

More broadly, the tempo of Okra operations has remained relatively consistent, and at a tempo of operations that is sustainable, CAF said, noting that RAAF planning to put together an Air Task Group that could remain in theatre for three years without putting excessive strain on the rest of the Air Force has been validated by experience.

“I don’t want to be in a position in a couple of years’ time, should we be asked the question to go to, whether that’s Libya or some other part of the world, that we would have trouble doing that,” AIRMSHL Davies said when asked if the RAAF could hypothetically take part in a potential coalition effort against Islamic State terrorists in Libya.

“Why? Because we’ve run out of people or training. So I still want to be able to go to Bersama Lima, I still want to be able to go to Red Flag, I still need to be able to do weapons training and evaluation. We need to transition out of Hornet into JSF, which will mean I’ve got a period where I not only need to provide my preparedness levels for CDF, I need to have a buffer on that that allows me to take maintenance crews, logistics crews, support crews, and aircrew, out of the system, effectively, to go and learn how to fly JSF.

“I’ve got transition from P-3 to P-8. I will eventually have transition from P-3 to Triton. I’ve got two C-27Js on the ramp, we’ve got three crews in Texas now doing C-27J transition, I’ve got AIR 5428 coming, I’ve got a total pilot training system that’s about to change.

“When I look at that transition block, I’ve got to factor that in anything that I do or offer, and say; I will be able to do this, and not have a failure point outside of what we already do in Iraq.”

But for now the current Okra operation is running at a sustainable tempo.

“When we were asked to provide options for support of Iraq, we were very clear to say to the government; ‘you have some options here. You can have a really big shorter period response and contribution [or] you can have a quite reasonable and enduring contribution’.

“And at the time, the window that we planned on was around three years, and that’s basically what we have now. So in that context, we could continue our current contribution for quite some time,” CAF said.

“From an aircraft and weapons and sustainability point of view, I have no issues at all. [But] I would need to look at rotations of people. “So if you’re on your fifth or sixth rotation to the Middle East, in support of Okra, I would need to look at that management. But I’m not concerned about that because we are growing new people all the time. And if we are there for the full three years, or beyond, that would mean that we have a new crop of pilots and a new crop of maintainers and intelos. So that’s not an issue yet.

“The question, then, around whether we could expand our contribution, regardless of where that was in the world, my answer to that is; yes, we could. But it would need to be for a defined role, for a defined period.

In that 2020-21-22 timeframe… we’ll have, three, four, five, six … female fighter pilots.