21 Today

“That’s when we started with the concept of the PC-21, and the Australian Air Force was a benchmark customer for us at the time,” recalls Pilatus’s vice-president government aircraft Jim Roche.

“Doing our market testing and market surveys before we even launched the program we spent quite a reasonable amount of time working with CFS (the RAAF’s Central Flying School) and 2FTS (2 Flying Training School) just to get their ideas of where did Australia see itself from a training point of view, what was its needs going to be around 2020.”

Australia was in fact the biggest customer for the PC-9, which has served as the RAAF’s primary advanced pilot trainer since the late 1980s.

So with its experience with the PC-9 the RAAF was very useful in offering Pilatus a number of suggestions that helped define the PC-21 aircraft and training philosophy, such as the use of advanced simulation and computer-based training and using the aircraft to train pilots in advanced systems management.

“In order to match the training system to the product and the product to the training system we spent a lot of time talking to them,” Roche told Australian Aviation during a visit to Pilatus last June.

By the time Australia stood up its AIR 5428 project to acquire a new pilot training system to replace the PC-9 in the mid-2000s the PC-21 had already flown – first flight was on July 1 2002 – and it would soon be ordered for the Republic of Singapore’s Basic Wings (BWC) program.

Australia’s journey to order the PC-21 was a protracted one, particularly as the requirement definition process had to take into account the differing needs of the RAAF, Navy and Army pilot training, to what extent simulation and synthetic training would be used, whether aircraft would be contractor or Commonwealth owned, would one or two aircraft types be acquired, etc.

In contrast Singapore’s BWC program evaluation took 12 months from tender release to contract signature in November 2006, which would see RSAF PC-21s operating from RAAF Base Pearce from 200X.

In the end the BWC and AIR 5428 operating models are “significantly different”, notes Roche. “The BWC model is a pure performance-based, Air Force hands-off operation of their training system.”

And there is greater complexity to the AIR 5428 model in terms of training not just pilots for the RAAF but the Navy and Army, and in undertaking both basic and advanced training on a single aircraft type (replacing the current model of basic training on the CT-4B and advanced training on the PC-9/A.

BWC has been, notes Roche, “a fantastic operation. We’ve been allowed to get on and do our job, they’re getting the operational availability and success that they need, and it’s very much a partnership in every sense of the word.”

Having the RSAF PC-21s operating from Pearce, having RAAF flying instructors flying on the PC-21 on exchange with the RSAF, and originally having ADF officers help the RSAF on its BWC requirements definition and assessment, gave the RAAF in-depth exposure to the aircraft long before the September 2015 announcement that the PC-21 and the Lockheed Martin, Pilatus and Hawker Pacific ‘Team 21’ teaming had been selected to provide the PC-21, training devices and support as the winning AIR 5428 bidder.

“It [BWC] provided the RAAF with the opportunity to have almost a daily view of how the system was performing,” says Roche.

BWC provided the RAAF with almost a daily view of how the system was performing.

Team 21 was selected ahead of a BAE Systems-Beechcraft teaming offering the T-6B Texan (had the T-6B been selected for AIR 5428 Pilatus still would have got something out of the deal – it still receives a licence fee from Beechcraft for each T-6 built).

Leaving aside any capability advantages of the PC-21 and the associated training system Team 21 offered over the BAE T-6 bid, having the BWC program operating from Pearce, and the RAAF’s close exposure to it, meant the Team 21 offering could be seen as a lower risk bid, given the Singapore program offered verifiable data on aircraft operating costs and availability rates, for example.

“We were able to tailor our requirement based on our knowledge of operations at BWC to respond to the very detailed requirement from the RAAF,” says Roche.

“From our point of view one thing that BWC did do was that every statement we made was verifiable, we said it can do this many hours, this is how it will work, don’t just take our word for it, you can see it working on your base,” Neil Smorthit, Pilatus regional sales director for government programs in Asia, affirms.

That detailed requirement included not only advanced pilot training at Pearce, similar to the BWC program, but the RAAF’s requirement for aircraft for CFS for qualified flying instructor (QFI) training plus the Roulettes formation display team, for ab initio student pilot training with BFTS at East Sale, for Williamtown-based 4SQN for JTAC (joint terminal attack controller) and FAC (forward air controller) training (four aircraft) and three aircraft for Edinburgh-based ARDU (Aircraft Research and Development Unit).

Compared to the BWC tender which amounted to a few dozen pages, the AIR 5428 tender document ran to around 4,000 pages, with AIR 5428 further complicated by the need for bidders to offer on and off- base training options for BFTS basic pilot training (BAE’s off-base option was a continuation of BFTS operations at Tamworth, Pilatus proposed using the civil East Sale airport as its off-base option).

The $1.2 billion AIR 5428 contract was signed with Lockheed Martin on December 4 2015, less than three months after the decision announcement, and covered 49 PC-21 aircraft, seven flight simulators and training devices supplied by Lockheed Martin and maintenance support provided by Hawker Pacific.

“The division of work suits each of the partners to play on their best strengths,” Roche explains of the Team 21 partnership arrangement.

Lockheed Martin is a natural fit with Pilatus given their relationship on BWC, but Pilatus did evaluate partnering with other defence prime contractors on AIR 5428.

“Working with Lockheed Martin gave us the scope to use our knowledge of the RAAF environment to better shape our response,” Roche said.
“Lockheed Martin is our partner of choice.”

Meanwhile, “Hawker Pacific bring to the table a tremendous amount of knowledge of how to work in a RAAF environment,” says Roche.
“I believe with HP’s knowledge and guidance that has helped us feel very confident in the offering the service we’re offering to the RAAF.”

The first RAAF PC-21 would fly just seven months after contract signature, on July 21 2016. That aircraft wore both an interim Swiss civil registration, HB-HWA, and its ADF serial, A54-001 and was painted in the colours it will wear in 2FTS service (aircraft allocated to CFS and the Roulettes will feature a specific Roulettes colour scheme, again with a predominantly red colour scheme but with a white band along the fuselage with the Roulettes’ trademark ‘R’ on the vertical tail).

The first RAAF PC-21 would fly just seven months after contract signature.

“Having worked directly with the Australian Defence Force for many years, I am delighted to see Pilatus continuing to deliver outstanding service,” Markus Bucher, CEO of Pilatus, said of the first flight at the time.

“The first flight of this aircraft, the very first Australian PC-21, marks a very significant chapter in the continuing relationship between the Commonwealth and Pilatus. We look forward to many more.”

Interestingly at the time of Australian Aviation’s visit to Stans half a dozen RAAF PC-21s were already in various states of production.

The first two PC-21s are due to be formally handed over to the RAAF at East Sale in June 2017 after completion of testing and verification work in Switzerland and then Australia. The first aircraft was due to arrive in Australia in February before going on public display at the Avalon Airshow late that month.

That airshow debut will give a public face to a program that has had a long gestation but one that is now rapidly coming to fruition, ahead of retiring the last of the PC-9s in 2019.

“The Australians are buying into a system that is still relatively new and has capability for the future, but is also proven, so they know they’re going to get what they’ve asked for,” Smorthit observes.

“It’s a very low-risk product and system for the RAAF,” says Roche. “And of the systems available it gave them the most surety that the JSF can be catered to in the training system at a later date. The flexibility of the PC-21 offers them from a training system environment will allow them to redefine their training requirements as they get to know the JSF.”

The initial undergraduate pilot training course on the PC-21 is planned for early 2019.