Tanker Smarts

The RAAF’s 33 Squadron currently operates five KC-30As from Amberley. A sixth aircraft is due to be delivered in the third quarter of 2017 with a seventh (which will have a government transport/VIP interior) to follow in late 2019. And 33SQN has had continuous deployment of a single KC-30A in the Middle East supporting coalition campaign against Islamic State in Iraq (and more recently Syria) since October 2014.

“We are now there where the aircraft has done so many receiver clearances that, having spoken to the Minister for Defence over the last couple of days, I would like to take this opportunity to declare final operational capability for the KC-30A MRTT in the Royal Australian Air Force,” AIRMSHL Davies told media at Avalon.

“There has been a lot of hard work that has gone into its development, but … there is a lot more that this aircraft can do. Now that we have FOC we are able to go into that next smart phase [of developing the aircraft],” the Chief observed.

There is a lot more that this aircraft can do. AIRMSHL DAVIES

That next phase will come following the announcement at the Avalon Airshow of the signing a research agreement between the RAAF and Airbus to further develop the KC-30A’s capabilities, and Airbus Defence and Space’s formal launch at Avalon of what it calls the “Smart Tanker” program for the MRTT – or “Smarter Tanker”, as Fernando Alonso, Head of Military Aircraft at Airbus Defence and Space, quipped at Avalon.

“We’re delighted that this official launch of the Smarter Tanker is happening at Avalon this year,” Alonso said.

The first milestone for the agreement between the RAAF and Airbus on the MRTT’s continued development is the joint development of the automatic air-to-air refuelling (A3R) concept.

Automating boom refuelling should cut operator workload, hence reducing risk, and increase operational efficiency by cutting the time for each contact.

But ultimately, explained Air Commodore Phil Tammen of Defence’s Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group said, it could also even do away for the need for the aircraft to carry an air refuelling officer (ARO).

“We’ll concentrate initially on some semi-automatic modes which will improve our ability to make contacts in challenging conditions and we’ll step through the program with the ultimate goal of completely eliminating the operator from the system,” AIRCDRE Tammen, director of heavylift aircraft and tankers for CASG, explained to media.

“It will help us make contracts in more challenging conditions, it will improve the accuracy of contacts, it will assist us in reducing the occasional damage events that happen during operations in challenging conditions, and above all it will help us preparing, especially the semi-automatic modes, for receivers that we are less familiar with.

“And in the full incarnation ultimately it has the potential to reduce the crew size on the aircraft.”

Other aspects of the Smarter Tanker project include connectivity “how can we make this aeroplane a node of communication, with satellite communication and laser communication so that it can act in a command and control position near the front,” Alonso said, and using software and big data to develop predictive maintenance for the aircraft’s military systems to increase operational reliability and availability.

“I’m really excited about the opportunities that the smarter tanker presents, the fact that we’ve got a young tanker in service that’s very capable, and we’ve already started a development program to take it to the next level, maximising the use of the technology that Airbus and industry can bring to the table,” Officer Commanding Air Mobility Group, Air Commodore Richard Lennon, told media after the FOC and teaming announcements.

Tanker of choice

Having a tanker on deployment in the Middle East has helped inform the RAAF’s desired development path for the KC-30, while also offering aircrews and maintainers a generally rewarding professional experience.

“We are benefiting from the operations that we’ve been participating in for the last two and a half years because it gives us insight and experience in how we want to use the tanker, how we want to fight the tanker, how we work with the coalition, and we certainly have used the opportunity to really put the tanker to work, understanding where the pressures are, and developing the various roles” AIRCDRE Lennon said.

“We rotate the aircraft through every four to six months for servicings back home. The crews are rotating through every three to four months and a number of them now have had two or three gos at deployment in the Middle East. In that two and a half years we’ve conducted about 930 tasks, so we’re looking forward to cracking the 1,000 tasks in the next couple of months.”

The KC-30 is flying on average eight sorties per week, AIRCDRE Lennon explained.

“And in that time we’ve offloaded over 74 million pounds or about 33,000 tonnes of fuel.”

The high sortie rate reflects not just the training and support systems in place for the aircraft, but also the high regard it is held in by the RAAF’s coalition partners in the Middle East.

“One of the reasons the Airbus has got the reputation as the tanker of choice is because the crews are being really innovative and intelligent about the way they use the tankers,” AIRCDRE Lennon explained.

“So, traditionally you’ll go into the airspace and you’ll find a tanker at its assigned orbit, at its assigned altitude, and if you need fuel, you go up and get it. When we go off on a mission we have a list of receivers. The crew looks at that list. They work out where they’re coming from, where they’re going to in the theatre, and the crew will actually move the tanker around the airspace to meet the aircraft as opposed to staying in a static point.”

The tankers crews will use both the Link 16 datalink and monitoring radio traffic to determine who needs how much fuel, where and when.

“The tanker crews will modify their patterns and orbits to make sure that they’re near the entry point when the receivers are due and they’ll use a combination of Link 16 and technology on the aircraft, but they also use their ears. They listen to the radio and work out where their customers are and then when they modify the pattern so that as the aircraft are full and they’re ready to go, they’ll drop them off near the exit point and that’s what the receivers and the fighters really like about the Australian MRTT in theatre.”

Continues AIRCDRE Lennon, “I’d just like to stress that the success of the tanker over there is not just because of the smart tanker that we have, the modern technology on-board, the 3D vision on the boom. It is the people and the team operating it. It’s a credit to Airbus, the reliability of the tanker… it’s achieving 95 per cent of its tasks over there and we’re doing that with one of the smallest footprints. So, we have a minimal ground crew on the ground there, so we have good support from the supply chain but also it’s a reflection of the reliability of the aircraft while it’s over there.”

Reaching FOC

“One of the reasons we’ve been able to get to FOC today is not just the immensely intensive campaign of clearances that we’ve been supporting, but FOC also says that we can reliably and repeatedly produce the aircraft when required in the global setting and support it to the degree of availability that Air Force requires,” AIRCDRE Tannen said.

“So, we’ve been incredibly busy working with both Airbus Defence and Space and also our local partner here now, Northrop Grumman Integrated Defence Services. We’ve been very pleased with how they’ve assisted us in essentially redesigning and reforming the sustainment enterprise.”

Changes in the sustainment model have allowed the KC-30 fleet to fly far more hours than originally planned.

“We initially sought to fly the tanker for around about 3,500 hours a year and what we’re finding is that it’s such a red-hot hit out there in the community that both we and all the international partners want more and more,” AIRCDRE Tammen said.

Instead the currently five-strong KC-30A fleet is flying over 6,000 hours a year.

“So, not only have we achieved FOC. We’ve achieved FOC for more than double the amount of tanking that we had originally envisaged doing.”

AIRCDRE Tammen explained the Commonwealth is taking a long-term view in its partnership in developing the KC-30.

“It’s all about R&D collaboration, it’s about being able to work closely with our certifier in Europe, INTA, and above all it keeps us continuously in direct communication with Airbus,” he said.

“As the lead customer of the tanker we take that responsibility to collaborate on development and enhancement of the tanker very seriously indeed.”
KC-30 aircrew training has been another key element in achieving FOC and sustaining a high tempo of operations.

Using a Level D-certified full-mission simulator (FMS), an integrated procedure trainer and an air refuelling officer (ARO) part-task trainer the CAE Australia-operated KC-30A training centre at RAAF Base Amberley is planning to run four pilot conversion courses with three students and two courses of six AROs in 2017.

Training at the centre began in 2012 following the KC-30’S entry into RAAF service with 33 Squadron in 2011.

“There was a sudden ramp up in 2013 with the aircraft here in country,” CAE Australia’s Amberley training centre manager Ben Gage told media in late February.

Then in 2014 KC-30 aircrew training in fact tapered off as KC-30s underwent upgrades.

“At that stage the Air Force had enough crews to meet the number of aircraft they had to keep airborne,” Gage said.

“But then along came Operation Okra, the efforts that were required to go and support operations in the Middle East kicked off and the training ramped right up because not only were they doing the local type of missions there was also now a requirement to have crews positioned overseas.”
That was a challenge, Gage noted.

“Credit to the squadron that they battled through that program, Air Force got the people in, our training went up, we started doing six students per course. That does put a training load burden on but we all worked together as a team across the platform and we got those aircrews happening,” Gage said.

CAE provides the training with five, and soon to be six instructor pilots and three ARO instructors. The instructors mostly have military backgrounds and while now civilians they must meet RAAF Central Flying School standards.

“For us now with the expansion of the fleet, coming out of 2016 into 2017 [with] the two new aircraft are arriving, in consultation with the commanding officer of 33 Squadron [we expect] slight increases but it is [now] about managing that throughput,” Gage said.

Conversion training for both pilots and AROs runs for six months, and pilots will typically graduate from the centre with 70 hours flying time in the FMS full-motion simulator, explained 33SQN commanding officer Wing Commander Brent Taylor.

“Before they get to the line and fly an actual aircraft they’ve got in the vicinity of 70-odd simulator hours, then they’ll get to the line and they’ll do three flights which can be anywhere from an hour to a couple of hours,” WGCDR Taylor said.

Once a student has successfully completed the qualification flights they will be rated as a ‘D cat’ co-pilot.

“They’re in the right hand seat as a co-pilot for about nine months, and then after that across the board it’s ‘seat agile’.”

Beyond conversion courses the KC-30 training centre also provides upgrade courses and currency training. Northrop Grumman also uses the facility to train maintenance personnel in tasks such as engine runs.

But the fact that a 2FTS graduate with fewer than 240 flying hours on the 2.7 tonne max takeoff weight PC-9/A can then convert to the 233 tonne max takeoff weight KC-30A almost entirely using synthetic training speaks to the efficacy of simulation.

Still, “One of the challenges that I’ve seen in my short time here is the 2FTS graduate needs a little more mentoring and training to get the landing right. You’re going from a very small machine [the PC-9] to a very big machine and the processes are exactly the same but clearly our weights are vast,” said WGCDR Taylor.

Greater flexibility

Given the KC-30 is an in-demand asset, the arrival of the extra sixth and seventh airframes gives 33SQN and Air Mobility Group greater flexibility.
“The sixth aircraft just gives us flexibility and the seventh aircraft will do so as well because at the moment it is a very fine balancing of rotating aircraft through the Middle East, rotating aircraft through the clearance program, and then having aircraft moving around the world,” AIRCDRE Lennon said.

“It’s a very closely choreographed activity to make sure that the KC-30 gets here today and it’ll be somewhere else tomorrow. With that extra flexibility and with looking at development work coming on where we want to take an aircraft offline to try new technology out, that’s a flexibility we need.”

The KC-30 looks set to offer further flexibility in becoming a communications relay node. As part of its Smart Tanker initiative Airbus is looking at fitting the aircraft with satcomm and laser communication capabilities.

Indeed Air Marshal Davies told media the KC-30’s ability to be used as a communications node using note just the existing Link 16 and radios but satcomm and laser communications is “almost limitless”.

“In our current operations in Operation Okra we’re spending nine or 10 hours airborne, in that time at the moment we’re not able to do any sort of forward link, we’re not able to receive from further up range, so 1,000 miles away, any sort of data that could be re-transmitted,” said CAF.

“I think this is building a web, this might well be a re-transmit [function] where the [tanker] crew don’t know the information came in and went out, that would be extremely handy.”

The promise is taking data from an F-35 and “bouncing” it off a tanker to another F-35 that might still be 1,000 miles away giving updated information for their mission planning.

“Those seem relatively simple, and they are, but they’re extremely effectively. We just haven’t bothered to ask the question about feeding this to a tanker before.”

Force multiplier

The squadron is immensely proud of those achievements. AIRCDRE Lennan

Meanwhile, FOC was not the only Avalon milestone for the KC-30A, as the aircraft ferried both the EA-18G Growler and F-35 Lightning II to Australia in the lead-up to the airshow.

“The squadron is immensely proud of those achievements,” said AIRCDRE Lennan.

“We have to remember the reason we have tankers and the reason we have E-7s is because we’re creating a networked force. So, the fact is that whilst the F-35 is an awesome capability, it works best in conjunction with other capabilities and that’s the whole idea of Plan Jericho; to make sure that the E-7 and the tanker and the Growler and all the other aircraft supporting the F-35 and its latest technology are able to integrate as best as possible.
“So, to be involved in the delivery flight of the aircraft really shows that it’s a partnership kicking off from the ground [level] and certainly for the F-35 operators they see that the tanker is as much of the capability as the aircraft itself.”