Herefore Art Our Romeos

“This is the future of naval aviation,” Chief of Navy Vice-Admiral Tim Barrett told the handover ceremony.

“The Romeo, which is the best maritime combat helicopter in the world, was decided upon by government in 2011 and we’ve already gained a lot through this project. We gained initial operating capability in August last year, and we have three flights at sea at the moment. We have great training coming from 725 Squadron and we have 816 Squadron operating these aircraft at sea. ” The 24 helicopters have been acquired under a foreign military sales agreement with the US to replace the RAN’s existing S-70B-2 Seahawks, plus the capability never delivered by the cancelled SH-2G(A) Seasprite program, under the $3. 2 billion AIR 9000 Phase 8 project.

“This is a special occasion for the Royal Australian Navy, Lockheed Martin and our partners Sikorsky,” Lockheed Martin Australia chief executive Raydon Gates said.

“This is a milestone. We are proud of handing over the final helicopter and opening our facilities. This is the culmination of many hours of collaboration between the RAN, US Navy and Lockheed Martin. ” The ceremony also marked the formal opening of the $50 million, 11,400m2 Maritime Helicopter Support Company (MHSCo) facility at the Albatross Aviation Technology Park at Naval Air Station Nowra, built by Lockheed Martin and its now wholly-owned subsidiary Sikorsky to provide maintenance and through-life support services for the Romeo.

“This building, and MHSCo, is one of those elements that allows us to say we’re not just an owner of Romeos, we are a user of Romeos to their full extent,” said VADM Barrett.

“I was talking earlier to say when we introduced the classic Seahawk quite a few years ago there was an element of ‘we rushed that into service’. My observation now is that we’ve done the right thing with Romeo,” Chief of Navy said.

“We’ve done the right training, at the right places, regulated in the right places and certified in the right places, and now we have a system that is worthy of any operator of Romeos anywhere in the world. ” Although all 24 Romeos have now been delivered to Australia, on time and on budget, half a dozen are in fact in storage in the MHSCo hangar while the drawdown of the classic Seahawk continues through into 2017.

In a presentation to the Army Aviation Symposium during the Land Forces exhibition in Adelaide in early September, the head of helicopter systems division within Defence’s Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group, Major General Andrew Mathewson, reflected that the Romeo was “A very, very successful program. In fact a little too successful because the Seahawk Romeos have arrived a little faster than we can introduce them into service and to meet our operational obligations with Seahawk at the moment, so we have a number of them in storage and they’ll be introduced slowly as we retire the classic Seahawks from service. ” A number of classic Seahawks have already been withdrawn from service, with final disposal plan for the type – expected to see a small number donated to museums including the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Nowra and the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, with others to be used as training aids and the remainder broken up for spare parts harvesting – expected to be finalised shortly.

That transition from classic to Romeo Seahawk is part of a broader transformation of the Fleet Air Arm, VADM Barrett told the handover ceremony.

“What is happening at Nowra at the moment, and has been happening over the last couple of years, really is a reflection of where our Navy has to go,” CN said.

“The Fleet Air Arm over a period of time, has been reinvigorated. New squadrons – 808 and 725, new equipment – the Romeo, the MRH, and future equipment such as the Helicopter Aircrew Training System which will arrive here shortly, is generating a completely new look to this establishment,” VADM Barrett continued.

“This has not been an easy ride, there have been challenges along the way, but what I have seen from Fleet Air Arm and all those associated with the development of these new plans is an ability to take these challenges and to solve them, solve them through agile thinking, solve them through innovative thinking, and solve them through a sense of purpose about where we needed to go.

“Now at the time that this Navy is about to completely recapitalise over the next 15 years, it’s those same attributes I need to see the rest of Navy follow. ” The speed of the Romeo’s acquisition and entry into service offer lessons for the Navy’s recapitalisation of its surface combatant and submarine fleets, Chief of Navy offered.

One example was, “how we were going to train the numbers that we needed to train while we were still operating the classic Seahawks. That is one reason why we sent people to the States so we would not be using our own people here to train pilots on both the classic but also have to train them on the new aircraft. ” Another was the airworthiness certification for the Romeo in the ADF.

“We started looking at ways we could certify, use and regulate this aircraft using common techniques used overseas.

“It’s thinking like that, looking at novel ways of being able to approach whole problems, which is exactly what we need to bring a new fleet into service for the rest of Navy. ”

It’s those same attributes I need to see the rest of Navy follow. VADM BARRETT

Now the Romeo is in service, focus shifts to sustainment and future upgrades of the platform. Already the first two RAN Romeos have entered deeper level maintenance with MHSCo at Nowra – deeper level maintenance is time-based, rather than flying hours-based, and is scheduled for every three years.

And as with the aircraft’s acquisition, the Romeo’s sustainment and future capability development will be worked in concert with the US Navy, reliant upon and building upon an “outstanding” relationship between the two countries.

“It’s been outstanding in producing the helicopters and getting us to where we are now, already, and it’s going to be even more paramount going forward,” said Captain Craig Grubb, the US Naval Air Systems Command (Navair) H-60 helicopter program manager, on the sidelines of the Romeo handover ceremony.

“We’re going to be very closely tied in the sustainment of the aircraft. There will be some nuances where things will be different, but for the most part it’s going to be a common effort from the people supporting the program as the technical solutions get applied to the helicopter going forward, and then all the logistics support that surrounds all that. ” That common effort will also extend to future capability upgrades for the Romeo.

“Aside from the sustainment of the aircraft that’s where we are going to be to leverage each other’s finances as well as technical expertise as we go forward,” Captain Grubb said.

“We’ve done a fair amount of discussions of the capabilities we’d be interested in, the missions of the helicopter are very similar so it makes a lot of sense to have the same [specification] helicopter, but it is also going to put us in a good position going forward to pursue the same kind of capabilities that will be valuable to Australia and the Royal Australian Navy as well as the US Navy. Those opportunities are going to be really useful for the collective team. ”