Print
Gift Subscriptions
A Tiger's Tale
Monday, December 21, 2009 - Dennis Raubenheimer, Vertical Online
By Dennis Raubenheimer, Vertical Online
After some unexpected setbacks, the Australian government finally has its armed reconnaissance helicopter project back on track, as Dennis Raubenheimer reports in this article from the December-January issue of Vertical Australasia.
On Oct. 1, 2009, Australia’s minister for Defence Personnel, Materiel and Science, Greg Combet, announced the Tiger armed reconnaissance helicopter (ARH) had passed its initial test and evaluation readiness milestone. This marked eight years since the Australian government had announced the signing of an agreement with Eurocopter for the supply of 22 Tigers under its Project Air 87 acquisition program.
While the introduction of a new combat helicopter into today’s technology-rich defence arena is a lengthy and complex task, the ARH project also encountered additional complications.
What Was the Hold Up?
Announced as a replacement for the ageing Bell 206B-1 Kiowa and UH-1H Iroquois fleet, the Tiger was seen as the platform to carry Australia’s tactical reconnaissance and combat escort needs well into the new century. The first two aircraft, manufactured in France and assembled at Eurocopter’s Marseilles facility, were delivered to Australia’s Department of Defence in Oakey, Qld, on Dec. 15, 2004. The second two helicopters, largely manufactured in France, but completed locally by Australian Aerospace, a joint subsidiary of Eurocopter and its parent company European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), followed soon after. Subsequent aircraft were to be wholly manufactured within Australia, but, on June 1, 2007, the ARH project ran into trouble with its failure to meet what Australia’s Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) referred to as “the critical milestone of initial operational capability.”
Upon the claimed failure, a stop payment provision in the ARH acquisition contract was executed, and DMO exercised its right to withhold payment. Then, in October 2007, Australian Aerospace and the Australian government entered into formal dispute over the stop payment, as well as various aspects of the contract’s provisions for through-life support.
“We spent from October 2007 until April 2008 negotiating matters that were in dispute,” explained Bruce Whiting, ARH project director at DMO. While he was not project director at the time, Whiting was heavily involved in the negotiations. He emphasised that, in spite of payment being withheld, Australian Aerospace continued with production throughout the dispute. The majority of delays were ultimately acknowledged to have been a result of dependencies on Franco-German contributions, and the project itself regained significant impetus once the dispute was resolved.
“The program had kept moving forward, but once we came out of the dispute, got all the contracts signed and agreed to in February this year, things accelerated in terms of what’s been achieved,” said Whiting. “The focus since then has been on getting four aircraft into Darwin with as much capability on those aircraft as possible.”
In the course of resolving the dispute, a new delivery schedule was enacted, with the support contract shifting to a performance-based structure. The new initial readiness target specified that the aircraft's availability, in a revised configuration known as Performance Baseline (PBL) 3, at the Australian Army’s 1st Aviation Regiment located at Robertson Barracks near Darwin, NT, was to be by Oct. 1, 2009.
Into the Fold
Capt. Paul Donaldson of the 161st Reconnaissance Squadron, 1st Aviation Regiment, 1st Brigade, is commander of a troop of young pilots responsible for implementing the Army’s ARH program at Robertson. Donaldson and his team now have four new Tigers at their disposal, with further deliveries imminent.
“For the last 18 months, everyone’s been working toward the initial readiness milestone,” said Donaldson. “Essentially, that was a milestone that had the aircraft in the correct configuration, with indicative air crew, engineers, all the maintenance guys, engineering support, logistics support and all the other things that go toward the Tiger capability. They were all lined up to be up here by the first of October — and we got there!”
The Northern Territory, and Robertson Barracks in particular, was chosen as the primary home of the Tiger due to Robertson being the location of some of the Army’s major combat hardware, troops and facilities. The placement of the ARH unit alongside the 1st Armoured Regiment, Australia’s only main battle tank regiment, meant maximising the potential for the Tiger’s integration into advanced tactical structures.
Said Donaldson: “The upper echelons of [the] Army said that’s the spot for Tiger to go because the hardest thing for Tiger to do is to integrate into that ground tactical plan — to be one of the members of the combined arms team. If we can master that, then everything else is easy in terms of integration. They put us on this army base so that we could foster relationships with the combat team commanders and with all the other combat arms of the 1st Brigade.”
With acceptance processes for the Tiger’s rockets, Hellfire missiles, guns, electronic warfare protection suite and most on-board mission systems complete, the project now enters a concentrated phase of proving the aircraft and its capabilities, in alignment with the rest of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). For Donaldson and his troop, it’s a time of intense training and development.
Said Donaldson: “Over the next four months through ‘til March next year [2010] is our opportunity, now that we’ve got all those systems, to start employing them as per [the] Army’s expectations for all the roles that we can do with Tiger. We plan to conduct evaluations to see if the systems that we’ve got in place are adequate; where we can find improvements; where we can address deficiencies; where we can exploit opportunities. The 161st Reconnaissance Squadron’s mandate for the next six months is to start taking [the aircraft] out on exercise with other combined arms team members and with the wider joint members of the ADF to evaluate its interoperability. With the F/A-18s and F-111s, for example, [we’re] doing close air support, close-combat attack and all the other independent and integrated missions specified to us.”
Like most other combat helicopters, the Eurocopter Tiger has dual-cockpit, tandem seating, but is unique because the pilot sits in the front cockpit. The battle captain (a.k.a, the gunner), meanwhile, occupies the rear cockpit, which is raised to improve his or her field of vision. While the battle captain generally does not fly the aircraft, there are dual flight controls and a host of sophisticated electronics available to distribute the workload.
In Australia, the battle captain is normally a more senior crewmember and is also the mission commander aboard the aircraft. This crew structure enables the pilot to focus purely on flying the helicopter. Said Donaldson: "The battle captain has increased access to the weapons, with controls that enable him to do more detailed weaponeering. The pilot is responsible for keeping the aircraft flying safely, out of harm’s way and clear of any threats. The battle captain is the guy who fights the platform, but, having nearly identical controls, if he wants to or needs to, he can take over.”
With greater access to its suite of warfare electronics, the battle captain uses the Tiger’s roof-mounted sight, with its thermal and video cameras, to acquire targets and direct the firepower of the aircraft. (The Tiger’s weaponry includes a 30-millimetre, turret-mounted cannon under the nose; 70-mm rockets; and Hellfire II anti-tank missiles). Said Donaldson: “He may change weapon configurations and use moving maps and other equipment to keep the aircraft going forward in the mission. He gives that direction to the pilot, or to his wingman, or whomever he needs to, to keep the aircraft on the mission.”
Donaldson also told Vertical Australasia that the Tiger’s communications capabilities are now fully functioning: “After over 18 months of effort, the unit is now successfully sending data messages, drawings, overlays, aircraft specific information and images between our ground and air elements. This is a very rewarding achievement and a great success for our mission support soldiers, who manage the capability.” It is an accomplishment that clearly has Donaldson excited: “As the saying goes, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words.’ This capability aids situational awareness immensely.”
Internally, the primary means of crew communication is still by voice, but there are also a number of aircraft systems that enable sharing of information between the front and rear cockpits. “The pilot can use one of the screens to take a copy of the backseater’s screens and vice versa. By doing that, he can see what the battle captain is looking at, or if he wants him to check or identify something, he can ask the battle captain to back him up on one of the rear screens.”
According to Donaldson, who flew the side-by-side cockpit arrangement of the Kiowa for several years before his conversion to the Tiger, there had been some concern among pilots that adapting to tandem seating would present significant challenges — it hasn’t. “There are ways and means to see what the other seat is doing. You need to have careful controls on some things, but in some ways it’s reasonably intuitive. It does get a bit more complicated at night — but not insurmountable.”
Night flying, and, in particular, flight with night vision goggles (NVGs), forms a major part of the upcoming flying program. To prepare for such specialised work, skills are reigned in from all sections of the Army's ARH community. “In the next couple of months, we will be starting in earnest up here in the operational unit, to be trained and qualified on night and NVG flying. The Aviation Training Centre at Oakey has taken on this task, as well as managing and achieving their already diverse range of commitments. Everyone involved in this program has put in an extraordinary effort to get us to initial readiness. The regiment welcomes this support as we progress to the upcoming operational milestones.”
Moving Forward
Donaldson’s team and others engaged in the flying program are diverse in experience and background. Supervised by weapons tactics instructors and electronic warfare specialists, they will train for and evaluate every aspect of the Tiger’s operational potential. And, as system deficiencies are noted, Australian Aerospace and the major suppliers of electronic equipment, such as Thales, will continue to implement solutions. Updated equipment and software will be brought in on six or 12-month cycles, as part of an ongoing retrofit program.
Of the helicopters currently in service, several are based at Oakey, where they are engaged in pilot conversion training. At any given time, one or two aircraft are in deep maintenance undergoing retrofit work. And at least one helicopter, according to Donaldson, will ideally be kept available for experimental work.
Donaldson has been involved with Project Air 87 since 2007, and it and the Tiger continue to be something of a passion for him. He regards himself as having been “pretty lucky” to be chosen, along with Capt. Hamish Felton-Taylor, to train on the Tiger at a French-German base at Le Luc in southern France during a first-of-its-kind military exchange program: “It was pretty exciting learning from those guys. They were slightly in front of us in terms of reaching tactical objectives with the aircraft: they were flying by night, shooting. . . . It was a great experience learning how the machine performed.”
Having, to date, accepted delivery of 16 aircraft, the Defence Materiel Organisation anticipates the remaining six will have been received by the end of 2010, as the project is now proceeding very smoothly. According to Whiting, DMO’s ARH project director, one result of having resolved the formal dispute with Australian Aerospace has been a far more constructive relationship. “The dispute process probably improved our relationship with our contractor,” said Whiting. “Both parties got all their issues out on the table openly and honestly. The consequence was we had to work on solving all those together. The relationship has improved substantially. The fact that we’ve got more precision in the contract has helped with that. Our relationship is far more collaborative.”
After acceptance of all remaining aircraft and systems, the acquisition contract component of the ARH program will officially end in June 2012. And, Whiting has clear views about what those 22 helicopters will mean to the ADF: “There's no doubt that as this aircraft comes into service — and the chief of Army has said this — it will change the way that [the] Army fights. There will be a new element to the combined arms team that has never been there before: which is more agile, which has surveillance systems that are far superior to anything they’ve had before; and particularly since we now have Hellfire [missiles], allowing us to go out to eight kilometres with a precision-guided weapon. It’s going to give the Army [new] eyes and ears. And although the weaponry on board the aircraft is fundamentally there to protect the aircraft itself, it’s going to give capability to [the] Army that they will have to think about how they employ.”
To those individuals engaged in the integration of the new armed reconnaissance helicopter with the rest of the ADF, it’s both a rewarding job and the opportunity to gain experience in an aircraft that handles with pedigree, managed in flight by equipment that is state-of-the-art.
That pedigree and technological advancement means few helicopter pilots wouldn’t be curious about the flight characteristics of the Tiger. Appropriately, when Vertical Australasia asked Donaldson to sum up his personal impressions, we were not kept waiting for a reply: “It’s a very slick aircraft. It’s got beautiful performance. It’s got a very capable automatic flight control system. It’s powerful and very manoeuvrable. It’s a beautiful helicopter to fly.”
Related Articles
:
No Related Content Found
Submit Your Comment |
|
| Your Name : | |
| Your E-mail : | |
| Comment : | |
Current Comments |
|