Workhorse

BACKGROUND

The acquisition of the CH-47Fs was originally flagged by Liberal Defence Minister Brendan Nelson during the 2007 election campaign, and was later affirmed by the Labor government in the 2009 Defence White Paper and Defence Capability Plan under the $631 million Project AIR9000 Phase 5C. Governmental Second Pass approval for the purchase of seven CH-47Fs was announced by then Defence Minister Senator John Faulkner in February 2010.

At that time Army’s CH-47Ds had been deployed to Afghanistan for more than a decade. The Afghanistan mission with its dust and climate extremes was rough on the Chinook airframes, four of which had been upgraded from former RAAF CH-47Cs originally delivered in 1974, and Army’s regular raise raise, train, sustain operational rhythm was also stretched to its limit.

“These new helicopters will give the ADF a robust, deployable medium lift helicopter capability out to 2040,” Minister Faulkner said in a statement at the time. “Capability and support issues in the current Chinook helicopters will be addressed with the acquisition of the new model aircraft, which will bring safety, supportability and operational benefits to the ADF.”

The Minister’s announcement was quickly followed by the signature in March 2010 of an FMS contract through the US Army Security Assistance Command for seven machines as well as two simulators and a list of spares and support services. At that time the aircraft were scheduled to enter service between 2014 and 2017.

In January 2012 Boeing received an FMS contract for 14 CH-47Fs including Australia’s seven machines. This announcement was preceded by the sad loss of a CH-47D in Afghanistan in 2011, and the subsequent rapid acquisition of two former US Army D model Chinooks to maintain capability until the newer ‘Foxtrot’ models entered service.

As the arrival of the CH-47Fs neared, planning approval for new facilities at Townsville to house the machines was referred to the Parliamentary Works Committee in March 2014. The $54.8 million Replacement Chinook Facilities Project which also came under AIR9000 Phase 5C would “provide new and upgraded working accommodation, new maintenance hangars, storage and workshop facilities, and a simulator building” a ministerial release stated, with a projected completion date of mid-2017.

The first two CH-47Fs for the Australian Army were delivered some eight months later than expected in May 2015. But this delay was quickly absorbed with the whole initial order of seven aircraft fulfilled by that August, while the two simulators had already been installed at Townsville.

“Our CH-47D Chinooks have been real workhorses for Australia, both here and on operations overseas, and our new CH-47F Chinooks are set to be even more dependable, affordable and capable assets,” RADM Tony Dalton, then head of Helicopters, Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems and Guided Weapons at Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG) said at the delivery of the seventh machine.

As the seven initial CH-47Fs were bedding down at Townsville, a short-notice opportunity to acquire an additional three machines came up, and a formal request for pricing and availability from Australia was announced by the US Defense Security Co-operation Agency (DSCA) in December 2015. The additional aircraft were valued at US$180m (A$232m) and would be acquired by a new Project LAND4502 Phase 1 project team. It was anticipated government approval would be forthcoming as part of the 2016 Defence White Paper process which was then in the final stages of preparation.

“The extra three aircraft had been planned for a little further out” (than suggested by the timing of the notification) explained 5 Aviation Regiment’s Commanding Officer, LTCOL Kim Gilfillan. “As you know there are some big projects in the integrated investment plan (IIP), and when things move around some smaller projects get squeezed out. Chinook was initially a casualty of a big movement, but when there was an opportunity caused by an under-spend, we took it.”

As expected, formal US and Australian Government approval was granted in February 2016, and the three aircraft were delivered to Townsville just four months later in June, some 10 weeks ahead of schedule. As the LAND4502 aircraft were straight off the US Army production line, they were not fitted with a rotor brake which is a unique Australian requirement for operations aboard the Navy’s new Canberra class LHDs, but these are expected to have been fitted by 2020. They did however come loaded with the then latest Block 9.2.2 operational flight program software which is a slightly different iteration than the 9.2 load on the initial seven aircraft, but all 10 are planned to be equipped with a common load soon.

“Achieving delivery of three new aircraft inside four months demonstrates highly effective and coordinated project acquisition between the US Army, Vice Chief of the Defence Force Group, the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group, and Army Aviation,” Executive Officer Cargo Helicopter Management Unit MAJ Michael Hansen said at the delivery. “By employing the FMS strategy, the ADF also leverages the benefits of being part of a much larger fleet, which is growing to almost 500 CH-47Fs flying with the US Army. Not only does the ADF see the benefits of scale in the initial purchase price, but the ongoing cost of consumable and repairable items is greatly reduced.”

In the meantime, the Navy’s Aircraft Maintenance and Flight Trials Unit (AMAFTU) commenced initial deck handling trials of the CH-47F Chinook on board HMAS Canberra in May 2016, when two Chinooks landed on board the vessel for the first time while it was alongside at Garden Island, Sydney.

As with all embarked aircraft, deck handling trials are a prelude to first of class flight trials (FOCFT), and are designed to ensure flight deck markings, securing fittings, associated ground equipment, hangar arrangements, and deck handling and blade removal procedures are suitable for the aircraft when embarked.

The second FOCFTs phase was conducted in August and September 2016 when two CH-47Fs embarked on LHD HMAS Adelaide for seven weeks to conduct cold and hot weather testing. While the vessel sailed from Sydney to Tasmania and then to Darwin, the machines flew a total of 119 hours and conducted 625 deck landings.

In October 2016 Boeing Defence Australia (BDA) was awarded a five-year contract to provide maintenance to CH-47F fleet at Townsville. “The contract integrates Defence industry and Australian Defence Force workforces to provide an efficient, flexible and effective maintenance team for Australia’s Chinook helicopter capability,” Minister for Defence Industry Christopher Pyne said in a statement announcing the contract.

Boeing also delivered Australia’s first Maintenance Blended Reconfigurable Aviation Trainers (MBRATs) for the CH-47F to the Army Aviation Centre at Oakey in Queensland last December as part of its Army Aviation Training and Training Support contract. The reconfigurable MBRATs are designed to provide maintenance personnel with what Boeing describes as a virtually immersive, full-task training experience that combines computer-based learning with replicated physical controls. Further training aids in the form of a Chinook Avionics Trainer and a Chinook Helicopter Maintenance Training Aid are expected to be delivered to Oakey in 2018.

CAPABILITY

The CH-47F capability is now at 10 aircraft following the release for interim operational capability of the three LAND4502 aircraft in June, but due to the rapid acquisition of these aircraft, C SQN isn’t yet at full strength.

“After the CH-47D was withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2014, the workforce was drawn down after operating at maximum rate for more than a decade. “Chinook has always been a pretty small capability in the overall scheme of things,” said LTCOL Gilfillan. “Clearly when we sent it to Afghanistan we had to be able to support that, but since then the total manning has since come down a bit.”

“We jumped in on the line when the opportunity came up to get three more, and they were here is a fairly short space of time,” added MAJ Andrew Mitchell, 5 Avn’s Operations Officer. “We now have all 10 on strength but we don’t quite have the manning to run two troops, so right now our limitation on CH-47 is we don’t have enough maintainers.

“We were stretched quite thin with our commitment to Afghanistan with 6 aircraft,” he added. “Obviously the priority was Afghanistan, but back home all we were really doing was focusing on the next group of people to deploy, and that didn’t really allow for was much residual capacity for just pilot training, or for support to rest of Army. So the rest of army didn’t really see Chinook much during that period, whereas now, we find ourselves being able to support activities as well as have residual capacity for training and for local support to 3 Brigade.”

The delivery windows for the first seven and then the subsequent three aircraft were so narrow that the unit found itself with an initial maintenance stagger issue which late last year saw up to four CH-47Fs in deep maintenance at the same time. “We are still limited in CH-47 maintenance, but we are managing it better,” said MAJ Mitchell. “With all 10 aircraft now released, we usually have seven or eight serviceable at any one time. We are back to a better maintenance stagger now and we are looking forward to having more ‘tradies’ in the regiment from early next year, and I think we’re planning on flying around 2000 hours next year – we’re at about 1600 or 1700 now.”

The stagger has been alleviated by the Regiment-wide “battle rhythm” implemented earlier this year by LTCOL Gilfillan. This change saw the regiment’s aircraft only made available for non-operational support work while ‘in barracks’ between set hours, allowing aircrew, maintainers and support personnel to establish family life routines away from work.

Despite some initial cultural pushback from ‘big Army’, this change has resulted in more stability in the workforce, and better maintenance planning across the CH-47 and MRH-90 fleets. “I talk about a culture of belief,” LTCOL Gilfillan said. “We’ve done a lot of work to set conditions to establish a stable routine in the regiment, and good planning, that helps us to deliver our effect but doesn’t drive our people into the ground while we’re doing it.”

Another maintenance challenge for the new Chinooks is the higher than expected workload when the aircraft is embarked aboard the LHDs. The concept of operations is for it to be transported on an LHD to an area of operations and then operate from a base ashore once there rather than continuously from the ship. But the US Army doesn’t operate this way and the Chinook is not marinised, so this brings with it an extra preventative maintenance burden.

“Chinook was never meant to be an aircraft that can embark,” explained MAJ Mitchell. “But it’s an aircraft that can embark, but there’s quite a heavy maintenance burden with that. There’s quite a lot of effort involved in washing it every day after flying in that environment, and then doing a more thorough wash every two or three days. It is a necessary preventative measure so it can embark, and we’ll be doing a lot of corrosion preventative maintenance as well. We are quite conservative on the amount of preventative maintenance we do, it’s a small fleet and we want to protect it.

On top of that, the blades have to come off to use the LHD lifts,” he added. “But it is the next evolution for Chinook, and in many ways it has become an amphibious capability.”

DIFFERENCES

The CH-47F differs in several key areas from the older D models it replaced. While maintainers will be familiar with the main fuselage structure, engines, transmission and blades, the avionics has come in for a complete digital revamp compared to the very analogue CH-47D.

“Chinook is still a very black-hander aircraft, but there is a greater focus on ‘boxes in and boxes out’,” explained MAJ Mitchell. “Essentially the D and F are the same airframe, same engines and transmission; there are some very minor differences in parts, and there are some really simple fixes in terms of things you can access in the F model which you couldn’t in the D.”

Other minor differences include 7.62mm minigun mounts and cartridge ejectors at the forward side doors, engine air particle separators on the engine intakes and infra-red suppressors on the exhausts, chaff and flare ejectors on the rear fuselage, and infra-red countermeasures (IRCM) apertures.

“Obviously where it’s different the most is in the front with the new avionics,” MAJ Mitchell added. “It’s taken everything that was great about the D, and given it much greater functionality and redundancy. In time new engines, transmissions and swept blade tips will come – they’re talking about taking Chinook from 55,000lbs max weight to 60,000 in the next few years – It sits on the ramp now at 33,000lbs so it’ll take 17,000 to 20,000lbs of cargo, which is still pretty impressive.”

“The CH-47 is a great capability; I suspect the Army and the ADF would like some more but it’s always about balancing out a lot of competing capabilities,” LTCOL Gilfillan said in closing. “But the real capability is in the people, the people who maintain it and who fly it.”