ADBR May-June 2020

UNM A NNE D

AIR POWER MAY-JUNE 2020 · Volume 39 | No. 03

ADBR.COM.AU

.COM.AU

CONTENTS

Volume 39 No. 3 MAY-JUNE 2020

FEATURES & ANALYSIS 14 LIF RFI Hawk 127 replacement RFI released 15 WEDGETAIL DECADE 10 years of the RAAF E-7A 16 TACTICAL ADVANTAGE LAND 129 Phase 3 TUAS in detail

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26 AI.R POWER RAAF UAS developments 32 DOWN TO EARTH

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The proliferation of UGVs 40 ISR SHOOTDOWN Evolution of the Lightning Bug 46 STaR SHOTS DST Group leans forward 50

OFFBOARD ONBOARD

Cooperative targeting

56 DATALINK MODS Link 16 Modernisation 60 OSINT - REGIONAL SUBS

COVER

REGULAR ITEMS

Boeing’s ATS will soon commence trials under the RAAF-sponsored Loyal Wingman program. BOEING

4 EDITORIAL

Regional submarines 66 GET SMART Getting real about Australia’s

6 BATTLESPACE 72

defence exports

ON TARGET

68 INFLUENCE PROJECTION Cooperation in the Indian Ocean

ADBR is published by: Felix Defence 7 Finlay Rd Eumundi QLD 4562 Australia adbr.com.au adbr@felix.net.au +61 (07) 5442 8377 Twitter: @DefenceBusiness

Managing Editor Andrew McLaughlin andrew@adbr.com.au Publisher John Conway john.conway@felixdefence.com

Assistant Editor Steve Gibbons

Art Director Daniel Frawley

Senior Contributor Max Blenkin

Sub Editor Bruce McLaughlin

Contributors this issue Dougal Robertson, John Conway, Dr Thomas Whittington, Peter Knott, Peter Hunter, Brian Weston

None of the content in this publication may be reproduced without the express permission of the Publisher.

Felix Advantage 2020.

All material published in ADBR is copyright and may not be used without the express permission of the publisher.

ISSN 1033-2898

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INITIAL POINT

Initial Point

THE ETHICS OF AI

By Andrew McLaughlin

nmanned aerial system, unmanned aerial vehicle, uninhabited vehicle, autonomous system, remote piloted aircraft system, drone … these are just some of the names and variations of what is essentially the same thing – a vehicle that flies, walks, rolls, or swims, that does not require an onboard operator.

There are several ways of controlling these vehicles. Their missions and courses may be preprogrammed, or there may be a ground or ship-based, or airborne controller with a remote-control link.

But what is becoming increasingly more common is that the vehicle possesses a degree of artificial intelligence to allow it to adapt to mission scenarios as they occur, without the intervention of a humanin-the-loop. This is the goal of Boeing’s Airpower Teaming Systems (ATS), and similar unmanned air combat programs being run in the US (Skyborg) and Europe (FCAS).

It’s likely these systems will retain a pre-programmed ‘point-and-click’ type of control for missions such as strike or EW tasks. But for the Loyal Wingman mission where the UAS conducts a high value asset (HVA) escort, or for offensive counter air and defensive counter air missions, the UAS will need the ability to independently adapt to the task as it evolves, and this requires a degree of artificial intelligence, or AI. There has been an increased emphasis in recent years on developing capabilities to counter HVAs operating at stand-off ranges by potential adversaries as part of a growing anti-access-area denial (A2AD) philosophy.

So, for the Loyal Wingman role which is one of many which the RAAF is initially looking to develop the ATS, the air vehicle would be tasked with protecting HVAs such as E-7A, KC-30A, P-8A, and the MC-55A, all of which are crucial for the success of an expeditionary or defensive air operation.

The loss of just a couple of HVAs would be devastating for a small air force such as the RAAF. So, it’s easy to imagine the primary role of the Loyal Wingmen UAS is to be tasked to escort RAAF HVAs in a high-intensity conflict.

Imagine a scenario where an E-7A and a KC-30 are operating in a region supporting a strike mission

U

of F-35s and EA-18Gs. Despite each of these HVAs being several hundred kilometres to the rear of the strike package, their adversary has supersonic lowobservable fighters with long-range air-to-air missiles.

Therefore, each HVA is escorted by two or more Loyal Wingmen flying several kilometres ahead of and above them.

Notionally, one of the escorting UASs would be equipped with a comprehensive EW/ESM suite to bolster the HVA’s own systems, while another could carry a load of expendables – either decoys, projectiles or, in the future, lasers – to defeat incoming threats, or to at least divert them away from the HVA. If these measures are not successful, near the end game a UAS could put itself between the threat and their HVA, making itself a target and possibly sacrificing itself. This is where the ‘attritable’ term, sometimes used for some of the more affordable systems, comes from.

All of these scenarios require the air vehicle, or a system of air vehicles, to be able to network with onboard and offboard sensors to rapidly determine the best course of action to protect the HVA, and to react accordingly without the need for human intervention. They need almost instant situational awareness of not just the threat but also the HVA, and they need to react in such a way to give the HVA the best chance of survival.

The mainstream media will inevitably draw unqualified parallels with movies like The Terminator or Stealth whenever any discussions of integrating artificial intelligence with ‘drones’ arise, so it’s essential the ADF leans forward early and often so it can control the narrative on the issue.

As UASs proliferate in ADF ranks, it needs to assure the public that Australia operates with strict rules of engagement that align with or exceed United Nations conventions, that there will always be humans-in-the-loop in case of a systems failure, and that ethicists and lawyers have been involved in the development of concepts of operations for these systems.

‘...it’s essential the ADF leans forward early and often so it can control the narrative...’

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BATTLESPACE ADBR DEFENCE NEWS ROUNDUP

DEF ENCE NE WS ROUNDUP

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BATTLESPACE

HMAS ANZAC back in the water after AMCAP upgrade

The second RAN ANZAC class frigate to go through the Project SEA 1442 Phase 4/4B ANZAC Midlife Capability Assurance Program (AMCAP) has returned to the water after completing the upgrade.

HMAS Anzac joins HMAS Arunta which completed its comprehensive AMCAP upgrade in 2019 and recently completed sea trials.

HMAS Anzac (right) sporting its new faceted mast joins HMAS Arunta at HMAS Stirling Fleet Base West after its AMCAP upgrade. ADF

Canadian Hornet upgrade package approved

A US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) notification has said the US State Department has approved the sale of a comprehensive package of advanced weapons and systems to Canada to upgrade some of its fleet of CF-18 Hornets.

The package is valued at US$862m (A$1.26bn), and includes 38 Raytheon AN/ APG-79(V)4 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars and 46 wideband radomes to accommodate the new radar.

The (V)4 is a scaled down version of the Super Hornet’s radar adapted for the classic Hornet’s smaller fuselage cross-section and radome.

The package also includes new software to allow the integration of the new systems, and the installation of an Automated Ground Collision Avoidance System (Auto GCAS) like that integrated with USAF F-16s and F-35As. The weapons package includes 50 AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles to replace the current AIM-9M models carried by the CF-18, 20 AIM-154C JSOW precision glide bombs, and associated training and captive carry rounds, weapons racks, and mission planning systems.

Canada took delivery of its first CF-18s in 1982, and maintains some 80 CF-18s from a fleet that once totalled 138 jets.

Despite acquiring 25 former RAAF F/A18A/Bs to augment its fleet, only enough aircraft for two RCAF squadrons will be equipped with the new weapons and systems. It is not known if any of the former RAAF jets will be upgraded.

The DSCA notice says, “This sale will provide Canada a 2-squadron bridge of enhanced F/A-18A aircraft to continue meeting NORAD and NATO commitments while it gradually introduces new advanced aircraft via the Future Fighter Capability Program between 2025 and 2035.”

Paul Chase confirmed as Leidos Australia CEO

Leidos Australia’s acting CEO, Paul Chase has been appointed to the role in a permanent capacity, effective June 15.

An engineer also with a masters degree in law, Mr Chase was appointed as acting CEO in March upon the departure of Christine Zeitz. He has been with the

CANADIAN FORCES

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company for more than 20 years in program management and new business roles.

“I’m honoured to be named Chief Executive for Leidos Australia,” Mr Chase said in a statement. “With the team, we will continue to grow our Australian business by focusing on helping our customers to deliver their mission.”

GBU-53/B StormBreaker integrated with Super Hornet

Raytheon Missiles & Defense has announced it has completed the first guided release of a GBU-53/B StormBreaker precision guided bomb from a US Navy F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet.

Previously known as the Small Diameter Bomb II (SDB II), the tri-mode StormBreaker has been designed to be able to hit moving targets such as vehicles and small boats, while still being effective against fixed targets.

“StormBreaker is the only weapon that enables pilots to hit moving targets during bad weather or if dust and smoke are in the area,” Raytheon’s StormBreaker program director, Cristy Stagg said in a statement.

“Super Hornet pilots will be able to use poor visibility to their advantage when StormBreaker integration is complete.”

The Super Hornet is the second aircraft to be integrated with the weapon after the Boing F-15E Strike Eagle. Because of its compact size, up to eight StormBreakers can be carried on an external weapons rack, and the F-15E can carry at least two such racks.

The announcement coincides with US media reports that production of the

Army’s first Boxer CRV. ADF

The GBU-53/B Stormbreaker. RAYTHEON

GBU-53/B has been paused since July 2019 after the discovery of technical issues with clips that hold the weapon’s folded wings. The wings deploy after launch, allowing the weapon to glide more than 100km depending on launch parameters.

A report in DefenseNews cites a US Government Accountability Office (DAO) report that states the issue has delayed the fielding of the weapon, and that a retrofit for nearly 600 weapons already delivered to the USAF and US Navy is being developed.

“While this problem could affect all aircraft carrying the bomb, officials said the greatest impact is to the F-35, because the bomb is carried in the aircraft’s internal weapons bay and could cause serious damage if the fins deploy while the bomb is in the bay,” the GAO reports states.

Australia was approved to acquire 3,900 GBU-53/Bs for the RAAF’s F-35As in 2017, but it is not known if any have been delivered yet.

Bisalloy steel certified

by German Govt for Rheinmetall vehicles

Australia’s Bisalloy Steel Group has been certified by the German Government as being suitable to provide steel plating for armoured vehicles manufactured

by Rheinmetall.

The certification of its initial O-grade armour comes after two years of research, development and testing of its armour steel products conducted in collaboration with Rheinmetall Defence Australia.

The O-grade armour has been assessed by the German testing authority (BAAINBw) as being suitable for integration with the Boxer 8×8 CRV being acquired by the Australian Army for its LAND 400 Phase 2 requirement, and for export customers.

A stronger Z-grade armour is also in development for the Boxer, and final testing of this grade is scheduled for July in Germany.

“Bisalloy is proud to have achieved this critical milestone after significant investment in research, development and testing of armour steel alongside our partners Bluescope Steel and Rheinmetall,” Bisalloy Steel Group Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Greg Albert said in a statement. “Our work with Rheinmetall will ensure Bisalloy’s capabilities have created the best possible protection for the Australian soldier but also significant export opportunities for Australia.”

The certification of the steel for the Boxer not only bolsters Rheinmetall’s Australian Industry Capability (AIC) credentials for LAND 400 Phase 2, but also enhances Bisalloy’s reputation as a world-class manufacturer of steel armour and the possibility of being integrated with other armoured vehicles.

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BATTLESPACE ADBR DEFENCE NEWS ROUNDUP

RAAF considering more A330s for MRTT conversion

The RAAF is reportedly considering acquiring two more Airbus A330-200s airliners and converting them to KC-30A multi role tanker transports (MRTT).

The RAAF’s initial five KC-30s were new-build aircraft delivered in 2011 and 2012, and these have since been joined in service by two more aircraft – both former Qantas and Jetstar airliners converted and delivered to the RAAF in 2018 and 2019.

While no actual airframes of interest have been identified, they are believed to be Qantas A330-203s. Most are currently stored as redundant to requirements due to the drastic reduction in international and domestic travel brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

While most of Qantas’s A330-200s are of a similar age and block build to the RAAF’s seven current KC-30As, there are still some configuration differences.

The initial new-build airframe commonality with Qantas’s airliners was intentional: at the start of the Project AIR 5402 program, which resulted in the MRTT, it was envisaged that the then Qantas Defence Services – now part of Northrop Grumman Australia – would not only perform the conversion work on all but one of the MRTTs, but also support and sustain aircraft in service.

Conversion work on the first two former airliners was not without its complications due to their age, configuration differences, and some of the more invasive MRTT modifications required. Meanwhile, the QDS/Northrop Grumman workforce that converted

ADF

the four original, new-build aircraft, had long-been dispersed so the conversions of these extra two additional jets was undertaken by Airbus in Spain and Germany.

ADBR understands there are varying levels of enthusiasm for the latest proposal.

Qantas would obviously be keen to offload its excess capacity and to possibly engage some of its skilled Brisbane-based heavy maintenance workforce in a local conversion program.

Airbus as OEM and Northrop Grumman, as the RAAF’s platform steward, are reportedly willing to study the proposal further to see if the conversion work could be performed at Northrop Grumman’s Brisbane Airport facility by a joint industry/ airline workforce.

While the RAAF would obviously be eager to add to its tanker transport force, it reportedly has reservations due to the age of the airliners – the youngest of which is about 12 years – and the cost of conversion in a likely tightening fiscal environment.

RAAF conducts remote UAS control trial from C-130J

The RAAF has successfully demonstrated its ability to remotely control an unmanned aerial system (UAS) by piloting a Sky Ranger R70 quad-rotor UAS from a C-130J Hercules of 37SQN. The trial was conducted at RAAF Edinburgh in conjunction with 3 Security Forces Squadron (3SECFOR) which operated the UAS. It proved the ability to operate a UAS via the C-130J’s onboard wide-band Satellite Communications

3SECFOR personnel with the Sky Ranger R70 quad-rotor UAS. ADF

(SATCOM) link and provide still and video imagery from the UAS, a key plank of the RAAF’s Plan Jericho which aims to provide extended secure networks to bolster the ADF’s capabilities by increasing situational awareness via datalink from remote sensors.

“This trial is the first time that airborne control UAS has been attempted from a C-130J Hercules,” RAAF SQNLDR Peter Cunningham said in a statement. “We used our wide-band satellite communication systems to provide a link to the UAS controller on the C-130J beyond the line of sight, and received video from the UAS throughout the flight.

“Working together with different skillsets and stakeholders such as 3SECFOR, Army and Plan Jericho has shown how we can be responsive to meet the needs of Air Force in pretty short order.”

SATCOM along with other communications and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities – including Litening AT EO/IR pods formerly fitted to RAAF F/A-18A/B Hornet fighters – is being rolled out to the RAAF’s C-130J fleet through the Plan Jericho initiative. The remote UAS activity also captured overarching video of the trial from the C-130J’s wing-mounted Litening pod.

“With this sort of technology, we can see much further and be more distant from our targets, while still getting a comprehensive understanding of the ground in front of us through a streamlined information feed,” CORP Mitchell Blight said.

“Be proactive, network with other units and you will find like-minded people who are willing to help,” UAS operator LAC Rhys Mitting added. “You need to be motivated, hardworking and you need to contact Jericho.”

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BATTLESPACE ADBR DEFENCE NEWS ROUNDUP

ANDREW McLAUGHLIN

RAAF 82WG stands up Super Hornet training flight

The RAAF’s 82 Wing (82WG), which oversees the operations of the F/A-18F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler aircraft of 1 and 6SQNs has stood up 82 Wing Training Flight (82TF) at Amberley as part a two-year trial to provide Super Hornet conversion training in Australia.

Currently RAAF crews converting to the Super Hornet and Growler do so with the US Navy at NAS Oceana in Virginia and NAS Whidbey Island in Washington state, respectively. This arrangement was implemented in 2015 after 6SQN – the RAAF’s former Super Hornet training unit – converted to the Growler and transferred all of its Super Hornets to 1SQN. At the same time, the expanded 1SQN stood up a third ‘training’ flight within the squadron to conduct refreshers and upgrades, but this responsibility will be transferred to 82TF. “This program will enable No. 82 Wing to provide enduring aircrew training for the entire capability spectrum required for the F/A-18F,” OC82TF and XO82WG, Wing Commander Trevor Andrews said in a release. “We expect significant advantages to be realised through an Australianbased operational conversion, such as improved delivery of Australian-trained aircrew back into the squadrons, increased standardisation, reduction in duplicate training overheads and increased alignment to Australian graduation requirements.”

While some RAAF Super Hornet training will continue with the US Navy, it will look to streamline the conversion training process locally for some crews coming from the

Introductory Fighter Course with 76SQN. This has advantages by immediately going to Australian-specific radio and airspace procedures and Australian concepts of operations, none of which are taught by the US Navy.

Most of the RAAF’s Super Hornets don’t have a stick and throttle quadrant in the rear seat, and are instead typically configured for sensor operation and weapons employment. But all Super Hornets can quickly be reconfigured with a stick and throttle to meet training requirements.

Lockheed Martin appoints James Taiclet as new President and CEO Lockheed

Martin has announced the appointment of James Taiclet as president and CEO, succeeding Marillyn Hewson who has served in the roles since 2013. Ms Hewson will stay on as executive chairman of the board and to support the transition.

Mr Taiclet is a former USAF pilot, was a consultant at McKinsey & Company, vice president Engine Services at Pratt & Whitney, president of Honeywell Aerospace Services, and established American Tower Corporation in 2003.

“As a former military pilot, I understand the mission of this great corporation to provide global security and innovative solutions for the brave men and women who protect our freedom,” Mr Taiclet said in a company statement. “I come into this role at a time when our nation and its allies have been tested globally by new and emerging threats. Now more than ever, it’s critical we continue to deliver the best systems and equipment in the world.

“I’m honoured to succeed Marillyn, who is rightfully one of the most respected CEOs in America, and to lead a workforce that is inventing and advancing the technology and security of our future.”

Penten opens new Canberra office

In the challenging world of cyber security, Canberra company Penten is establishing a growing reputation by selling its advanced technology to the Australian and UK governments, and to others.

From just four employees five years ago, Penten now has 80, and with growth comes the need for more space. To this end, the company has moved into the new University of NSW Canberra collaborative precinct, ‘Launch on Northbourne’ at 216 Northbourne Ave in Braddon as an anchor tenant.

Penten CEO Matthew Wilson said the company was delivering world-leading security technology to defence forces and governments in Australia, the UK, Canada and New Zealand.

“Defence and our customers around the world are asking more of us. Our investment here at Launch on Northbourne allows us to meet these needs,” he said at the launch. “It also allows us to extend our commitment to collaboration with Defence, UNSW Canberra and the Australian defence cyber and space partners in industry and academia.”

Wilson said the cyber threat was certainly growing, but there was now a good understanding of defences. He said that, in previous years Australia had been playing catch-up, but now the cyber capability in government and industry was coordinated and collaborative.

“As we have rushed through and developed and taken advantage of digitalisation of a lot of these capabilities, our ability to digitally defend those capabilities really is only now just keeping pace,” he said. “Yes there is a lot of work we need to do. Yes there

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BATTLESPACE ADBR DEFENCE NEWS ROUNDUP

is a lot we need to think about in the context of the threat landscape.

“As we build our sovereign Australian cyber defence industry and we see government really engaging with that industry to …force multiply the effects they are trying to achieve, we are genuinely moving in a direction where we are getting on top of this.”

“The ACT Government is committed to supporting our defence, space and cyber industries, which play a key role in diversifying the ACT economy, attracting more investment and creating more jobs for Canberra.”

Penten founder and director Ben Whitham said, “We are focused on building things that are globally unique, not just for the Australian market. We are interested in building things that solve difficult problems or problems that haven’t been solved before and focused primarily on government markets.”

New Zealand confirms C-130J acquisition

The New Zealand government has confirmed its intention to buy five Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 Hercules transports to replace its ageing fleet of five C-130Hs. The confirmation by Defence Minister Ron Mark comes after New Zealand

announced its intention to buy the aircraft in June 2019 to coincide with the release of its Defence Capability Plan. The foreign military sale (FMS) was approved by the US State Department in November 2019.

“Last year, Cabinet selected these aircraft as the preferred option to replace the current Hercules fleet.

Procurement of the Super Hercules has been my highest capability priority as Minister of Defence,” Mr Mark said.

“Generations of New Zealanders have grown up and grown old with the Hercules, and they know these aircraft are an essential first line of response. This decision ensures the Defence Force will have the capability it needs to meet expected future tasks.”

Valued at NZ$1.521bn (A$1.42bn) includes the aircraft, a full mission simulator, and other supporting infrastructure.

The new aircraft will be equipped with a wide bandwidth, high speed satellite communications (SATCOM) system, and an electro-optical/infrared EO/IR turret under the nose radome.

“This equipment will make our new Super Hercules among the most capable in the world,” Mr Mark added.

“The satellite communications system will allow imagery, video and data to be streamed in real-time, and the camera

allows for aerial surveillance, including at the same time as the aircraft is undertaking transport tasks, particularly useful on humanitarian and disaster relief operations and search and rescue missions.”

The first C-130Js are scheduled to be delivered in 2024 and 2025, while options for the replacement of the RNZAF’s two Boeing 757 transports are due to be considered in 2021 for service entry later in the decade.

Babcock to offer Bell 429 for Army Special Ops helo

Babcock Australasia has announced it will offer the Bell 429 for the Australian Army’s Project LAND 2097 Phase 4 special operations support helicopter requirement.

To be operated by 6 Aviation Regiment (6Avn) at Holsworthy in Sydney, the capability will support the larger MRH 90 helicopter in service by providing a military or commercial-off-the-shelf and rapidlydeployable light helicopter capable of operating in low threat and built-up urban environments.

Babcock had been considering the twin-engined Bell 429 and the smaller single-engined Bell 407 for its bid, but says the B429 is the most suitable helicopter for the requirement.

An artist’s concept of an RNZAF C-130J-30 with the SATCOM antenna and EO/IR turret. NZ GOVT

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A former RAN RMI2 Bell 429. ADF

“The Bell 429 has a relatively new paramilitary design, with high levels of safety, role flexibility and performance that will meet the demands of Australian Special Forces,” Babcock Australasia’s Managing Director – Land, Graeme Nayler said in a statement. “Working together, Babcock and Bell draw on a global track record of successful helicopter operations to deliver a trusted solution.

“Babcock has put the customer first in selecting a reliable, adaptable solution that will remain responsive to the needs of our Special Forces,” he added. “The ADF requires absolute confidence in its Special Operations helicopters capability together with cost-effective customisation and ongoing sustainment. Our solution is trusted to deliver.”

The Bell 429 has been successfully missionised for coast guard, ambulance, police and other para-public requirements worldwide. The type has also previously served in a limited capacity in the ADF, with Raytheon Australia operating four B429s on lease to the RAN for the second iteration of the Retention & Motivation Initiative (RMI 2) at HMAS Albatross from 2012 to 2018.

RMI 2’s B429s replaced the AgustaWestland A109Es operated under RMI 1 from 2007 to 2012, and both types

successfully maintained pilot proficiency and training throughput for the Fleet Air Arm during Navy’s protracted transition to the MRH 90, MH-60R Romeo Seahawk and Airbus H135 helicopters during that period.

“As one of the world’s leading helicopter manufacturers, Bell is in a strong position to offer reliable, cost-effective global support for the ongoing maintenance and sustainment of the ADF’s Special Operations helicopter fleet,” Bell’s Managing Director Asia Pacific, David Sale said. “The Bell 429 is rugged and reliable.

It is operationally robust and favoured by pilots and crew throughout the world with more than 330 aircraft exceeding 330,000 hours of operation.

“With an open architecture system and global support in place, the Bell 429 Global Ranger has the capacity to perform consistently and adapt rapidly to new technologies and evolving requirements.”

Babcock and its B429 will be pitted against Airbus’s H145M for LAND 2097 Phase 4, while Hawker Pacific is also believed to be considering both the B429 and B407GX as well. Responses to the RFT are due to be submitted in July, with down-select and contract signature scheduled in 2021/22, for service entry in 2023.

Major defence trade shows postponed

The organisers of the biennial PACIFIC International Maritime Exposition have announced that the show originally scheduled for August 2021 has been deferred to 2022.

To be renamed INDO-PACIFIC International Maritime Exposition 2022 to better reflect increasing naval capabilities and influence in Australia’s wider region, the show will now be held in May 2022, with the exact dates to be confirmed.

The announcement came shortly after the LAND FORCES 2020 – which had been scheduled for this September – was postponed to 1-3 June 2021 due to travel restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2021 Australian International Airshow at Avalon originally scheduled for 23-28 February 2021 was postponed to 23-28 November 2021..

In summary, the revised dates for all three shows are: LAND FORCES 2021 – 1-3 June 2021 AVALON 2021 – 23-28 November 2021 INDO-PACIFIC 2022 – TBA May 2022

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PROJECT AIR 6002 PHASE 1

LIF RFI RFI released to begin RAAF Hawk 127 lead-in fighter replacement process

BY ANDREW MCLAUGHLIN

he Commonwealth has released a Request for Information to industry for technologies that could lead to the replacement of the RAAF’s BAE Hawk 127 lead-in fighter capability.

The RFI was issued on June 3 by CASG’s Aerospace Systems Division through AUSTENDER, and submissions are due to be received by 1600 AEST on 31 July 2020. It says it is seeking “information about these technologies while providing industry an opportunity to engage early on the capability lifecycle as it considers options that may contribute towards the next generation of LIF capability”.

While early in the planning phase, it says responses to the RFI will “inform Defence decision-making in relation to the future of the LIFTS (LIF training system) capability”, and stresses that the RFI “does not form any part of any Commonwealth procurement process”.

ADBR understands the LIFTS replacement program will be known as Project AIR 6002 Phase 1, while a notional Phase 2 aims to provide an enhanced ADF support such as an adversary or maritime strike training capability with the same system.

The RAAF ordered 33 Hawk 127s in 1997 to replace the Macchi MB.326 in service. The first 12 jets were built by BAE Systems in the UK while the remaining 21 Hawks were assembled at a new facility at RAAF Williamtown. The Hawk 127 entered RAAF service in 1999, and the fleet is operated by 76SQN at RAAF Williamtown and 79SQN at RAAF Pearce.

Very much a training product of the 1990s and an airframe from the 1970s, the RAAF’s Hawk fleet underwent a comprehensive upgrade of many of its aircraft and training systems from 2016 to 2018 under the Project AIR 5438 Phase 1A Lead-In Fighter Capability Assurance Program (LIFCAP) in order to better prepare fast jet pilots for the F-35A Lightning II and other next generation aircraft.

The Hawk is powered by the Rolls-Royce Turbomeca Adour Mk 871 which, in recent years has become increasingly difficult to support and has experienced cracking in the low bypass turbine. Engine problems and a persistent wing fatigue issue have led to a couple of groundings of the fleet, the last one in 2019.

T

ADBR understands the RAAF is possibly looking at an option to re-engine the aircraft with the newer R-R Adour 951 engine, although this has had a lukewarm reception due to the aircraft’s age and its ongoing fatigue issues, and a lack of return on such an investment. The Hawk also lacks the secure systems required to conduct integrated training and operations with F-35A, EA-18G, E-7A, and other next-generation systems, and is not suitable for training F/A-18F and EA-18G weapons systems officers (WSOs).

Industry sources suggest the program could be accelerated once the RFI responses are received, and that the planned lifeof-type of the Hawk could be brought forward due to the ongoing engine and fatigue issues. The fleet is currently scheduled to be withdrawn from 2026.

Possible contender systems to replace the Hawk include the new Boeing-Saab T-7A Red Hawk, the Korean Aerospace (KAI) T-50, the Leonardo M346 Master, and the Textron Scorpion, while BAE may offer a more comprehensively refurbished and re-engined Hawk.

The supersonic T-7A is the most modern of these designs, having been selected by the USAF to replace the long-lived Northrop T-38 in 2018. The system passed a key milestone in June after the USAF and Boeing conducted an aircraft critical design review (CDR) and overall system CDR on the new advanced trainer.

The CDR was the culmination of an initial 18-month development program and involved the analysis of the aircraft and sub-systems to be able to provide the levels of training required for modern combat aircraft pilots. The T-7A is jointly designed by Boeing and Saab, and is powered by a single GE F404 engine – the same as that which powers the F/A-18A-D classic Hornet.

“This is an important step forward in the life of this program,” Air Vehicle Branch Chief Shanika Sims said in a USAF statement.

“This design review further solidifies the aircraft and The Boeing-Saab T-7A subsystem designs, bringing Red Hawk. USAF/BOEING the T-7A Red Hawk closer to production.”

Boeing was awarded a US$9.2bn (A$13.4bn) contract to develop the T-7A and to provide 351 aircraft to the USAF’s Air Education and Training Command.

Two T-7A prototypes are currently flying from Boeing’s St Louis facility.

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E -7A W E D G E TA I L

A DECADE OF WEDGETAIL

BY MAX BLENKIN

t is a decade since the RAAF officially took delivery of the first two of six E-7A Wedgetail aircraft now recognised, after overcoming problems allied to its radar, as a world-leading airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft.

That 10th anniversary on April 30 was marked by the RAAF and by Boeing Defence Australia, but unfortunately passed mostly unremarked by the rest of the community amidst the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

“Pretty exciting achievement,” said Darryn Fletcher, Boeing Defence Australia director of commercial derivative aircraft. “The journey in getting it to delivery, let alone 10 years, is something we are proud to be a part of as a company in partnership with Defence.

It was obviously a very complex program. The involvement of our parent company back in the US was very important as well.

“We support (the RAAF) with the sustainment program, but also the modification program for where they want to take the platform over its life of type,” he said.

For all of Wedgetail’s acknowledged capability at managing the air battlespace, much of what it can do remains classified. Therefore, Fletcher said he could not say too much. “There is only so much we can talk about in relation to the capability,” he said.

While the RAAF received its first two aircraft back in 2010, they had actually been around much longer, with Wedgetail A30-001 making its first flight in May 2004.

Wedgetail was a long time coming. Back in the 1980s, the ADF recognised the need for an airborne battlespace management capability, with the government releasing a request for proposal in 1996. Four years later, Boeing was announced the winner with a version of the widely used 737-700 airliner fitted with the new Northrop Grumman Multi-role Electronically Scanned Array (MESA) radar.

It was recognised that this was an extremely innovative proposal carrying considerable technical risk – a risk subsequently borne out.

Problems with the radar led to long delays and the government came close to pulling the plug. Reassured that the radar could be made to work, the Commonwealth opted to persevere, as did Boeing – which took a substantial loss on the project – on the expectation it would make good on future sales.

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The RAAF declared final operational capability (FOC) in May 2015, 77 months later than originally planned.

Since then, RAAF Wedgetails have demonstrated their exceptional capabilities in support of the air campaign against Islamic State over Iraq and Syria.

Boeing has now sold four Wedgetails each to Turkey and South Korea where they are, ADF respectively, named Peace Eagle and Peace Eye, while in March last year Britain announced it would buy five. Interest in the E7 has also been reported from Italy, Qatar and the UAE, and NATO. However, the truly alluring deal to replace the USAF’s fleet of 31 ageing Boeing 707-based E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft remains uncertain. At the moment, the USAF says it’s looking to see its E-3s through to life of type around 2035, by which time the oldest airframe will be a stately 64.

Although Australia’s Wedgetails have just passed their 10th year in service, they are no longer in their prime. Once the F/A-18 Hornets are retired, the Wedgetails will be the RAAF’s second oldest platform after C-130J. Key Wedgetail systems reflect technology current when the aircraft came off the production line. To this end, an upgrade program dubbed Project AIR 5077 Phase 5A is under way to update navigation, IFF (identification friend or foe), tactical datalinks, communication, and encryption systems.

Navigation improvements will bring Wedgetails up to the same capability in congested airspace as current production civil 737s.

IFF will be upgraded from Mode 4 to Mode 5 – a crucial cyber security enhancement – with Australia following the US military in a development that, eventually, will be applied to all ADF aircraft.

Wedgetail Program Director Claire Kluge said AIR 5077 Phase 5A was a complex program, with scope now different from when it was originally contracted. “It has a number of different releases within that one program, and different aircraft over the next four years will undergo the modifications,” she said.

Like most commercial derivatives, the Wedgetail airframe has proved totally reliable. However a further upgrade to mission systems is planned under Project Air 5077 Phase 6, with first pass around 2021-22 and capability release in 2025-26.

L AND 129 PHASE 3

TACTICAL ADVANTAGE Army’s Project LAND 129 Phase 3 approaches its RFT response submission deadline

BY ANDREW McLAUGHLIN

ADBR

T

he Australian Army will soon select a new unmanned system to replace its Textron RQ-7B Shadow 200 v1 tactical unmanned aerial system (TUAS).

Four companies were shortlisted in late March to meet the Project LAND 129 Phase 3 requirement to replace the Shadow system which has been in service since 2011, with tenders due to be submitted to the Commonwealth by July 24.

REQUIREMENT The new system will be operated by the 20th Surveillance and Target Acquisition Regiment (20 STA Regt) that currently operates the Textron Shadow 200 and other unmanned systems.

A 2019 Army brief says ‘the project will grow the capability to provide a third sub-unit and provide an enduring capability effect that enables 24/7 intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) coverage in two separate focal areas. The TUAS capability should integrate with existing and future in-service systems in order to disseminate information and intelligence to the supported Land Commander.’

A TUAS capability ‘brick’ will comprise about 30 personnel in a troop headquarters, an operations team, a forward repair team and a combat services support node, and include a set of air vehicles, ground elements and workforce. Each ‘brick’ will have a Bushmaster protected mobility vehicle (PMV) with a ground control segment (GCS), be required to provide 24/7 coverage of a single area of interest, and be able to be scaled up or down to meet operational requirements.

The performance requirements of the new TUAS are equal or better than the Shadow.

The air vehicle will be capable of an operating range of at least 125km, and be capable of providing electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR), laser pointing, laser range-finding, and laser designation of a target of interest, and provide a VHF/UHF communications relay.

The air vehicle’s payload space/s will be modular to allow the integration of multiple payloads. It will comply with STANAG 4586/AEP-84 Level of Integration up to LOI 3 with non-GCS systems, be runway-independent, use a fuel source compatible with shipboard fuel storage, and be capable of operating in classes of airspace other than military restricted airspace.

The requirement is divided into five core tasks:

‘The performance requirements of the new TUAS are equal or better than the Shadow’

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1. ‘ISR: surveillance’, which is defined as ‘the ability to provide systematic observation of specified areas, with multiple sensors, including visual, across the electromagnetic spectrum … by day, night and in degraded visual environments’, and provide ‘aerial and long distance slant observation’.

This will require ‘payload flexibility’ and ‘range commensurate or better than Shadow 200’.

2. ‘Targeting: target detection’, will require the system to ‘detect, recognise and identify targets and disseminate accurate data from the ground control station to targeting systems’, and to possibly ‘have the ability to disseminate target data to guide precision guided weapons from fixed-wing platforms and indirect fire assets onto targets’.

3. ‘Targeting: enhanced lethality’, which will require ‘a Laser Target Designator to provide target guidance for laser guided munitions released from other armed platforms’, and a ‘data link interoperability with the future ARH capability enhancing targeting information for future ARH crews via Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T)’.

4. ‘ISR: Intelligence support’, which requires the system to ‘send information that has undergone a level of technical analysis from the GCS/C2 element to the Combat Brigade intelligence cell’ to ‘enhance analytical efficiency and provide the best effect for the Commander’. This will allow analysis to be ‘conducted forward’, and that ‘intelligence corps specialists’ can be ‘embedded in the GCS’ for which ‘analysis tools (will be) required in the GCS or even on the air vehicle’.

5. ‘Organic support’, where the TUAS GCS ‘will operate and move with the combat brigade elements to enable the provision of timely and networked support to the commander’, possibly including ‘the provision of voice and/or data communications relay’. This will require the UAS to be runway-independent, and for the GCS to be integrated with a protected mobility vehicle such as the Bushmaster.

The TUAS will be required to be capable of integrating with other in-service and future systems of the Joint Force, including: • Advanced Field Artillery Designation System (AFATDS) • Digital Terminal Control System (DTCS) • Rover terminals • Protected Mobility Vehicle (Bushmaster) • Link-16 enabled systems • Laser-guided weapons • Voice and data radios • Air and sea lift • Rotary and fixed-wing assets • Operations from Canberra class LHDs • LAND 4503 – Future Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter

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LAND 129 PHASE 3

BACKGROUND Project LAND 129 Phase 3 can trace its project roots back to Army’s original requirement for a TUAS. Joint Project (JP)129 was originally issued in 2003, and the Boeing Australia/Israeli Aircraft Industries (IAI) I-view 250 was selected in 2005.

The I-View was a hybrid design incorporating elements of several IAI platforms including the Searcher II and Hunter that would be integrated with sensor and communications payloads of Australian or US origin, and for which Australia would have been the launch customer. While the goal to combine an Israeli platform with non-Israeli systems was an honourable one, it proved to be too difficult for many reasons – commercial, political, and technical – and the project was cancelled by then Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon in September 2008.

“Since contract award, Boeing Australia and its subcontractors have experienced a range of technical issues making it increasingly difficult to deliver the full scope of the contract within a timeframe acceptable to Defence,” a Ministerial statement read. “With a Defence imperative to field a TUAV capability as soon as possible, and the potential for a number of lower risk alternative systems, the DMO and Boeing Australia have agreed to terminate the contract on mutually acceptable terms.”

Pitted against the Boeing/IAI bid at the time was a teaming of BAE Systems Australia and AAI Corporation (now part of Textron Systems) which had offered the RQ-7B Shadow 200. Anecdotal reports at the time indicated that the US-common Shadow was Army’s preferred choice for JP129, but that it was overruled at the political level.

A further effort to acquire Shadow systems supported by US Army and industry trainers, operators and sustainment personnel, was initiated

by Capability Development Group (CDG) in 2008.

But this effort was shelved as funding cuts from the Global Financial Crisis took hold.

However, as Australia’s commitment to the war in Afghanistan was increasing there was also a growing need for airborne tactical intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) support for ground forces in theatre. A request for two Shadow systems was eventually made to the US in May 2010, and in March 2011 – under a renewed JP129 Phase 2 – the Commonwealth signed a contract for two Shadow 200 systems for which AAI was the prime contractor.

The first Shadow system was delivered in August that year with a deep level of US Army and contractor support, and was deployed immediately to Afghanistan. The second system was delivered to Australia in March 2012 for pre-deployment training of Army personnel by staff from AAI subsidiary Aerosonde, while in 2013 the Commonwealth signed up to a longer-term sustainment and training contract that was to run to April 2018.

The Shadow joined the hand-launched AeroVironment RQ-11B Raven, while Army had earlier

operated Insitu ScanEagle systems under lease in Iraq from 2006 in lieu of the I-View entering service.

Army’s first UAS, the hand-launched Elbit Skylark, was effectively relegated to a training role with the arrival of the ScanEagle.

Since that time the Army has also inducted the palm-sized FLIR Systems PD-100 Black Hornet 2 nano UAS under Army Minor Program (AMP) 024.33, the commercial-off-the-shelf DJI Phantom 4 drone under AMP 024.34, and the hand-launched AeroVironment Wasp AE small UAS (SUAS) through LAND 129 Phase 4A. A future LAND 129 Phase 4B phase of the program is seeking a smaller and more robust replacement for the Wasp in the early 2020s.

LAND 129/3 CONTENDERS About one month before responses to the LAND 129 Phase 3 RFT were due to be submitted, ADBR spoke to representatives of three of the four expected prime system integrators (PSI) for their respective bids.

Leidos Australia Leidos Australia has teamed with Israeli UAS manufacturer Aeronautics to offer the Orbiter 4 system. The Orbiter 4 has been developed from previous iterations of the Orbiter family, all of which have seen extensive service with the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and other operators.

“There was probably some surprise in the local market to see us responding to this, because we’re not well known in Australia for unmanned systems or for doing airborne ISR,” Leidos Australia’s Defence Business Development Manager, Martin Faulkner told ADBR. “But, apart from being part of a team with Aeronautics with their platform, we’re leveraging our local ISR integration skills as demonstrated on the JP 2096 ISR data integration program.”

The IAI/Boeing I-View 250.

ADBR

‘...we’ve got a pretty clear understanding of what Army is after’

Leidos believes the Orbiter 4 is the most modern of the competing air vehicles. LEIDOS

Leidos was selected for JP 2096 Phase 1 in February 2019.

The $500 million program will provide for acquisition and sustainment of a system to store ISR data through readily-accessible applications designed to allow analysts to quickly search and discover data to improve intelligence and decision support.

Faulkner said the LAND 129/3 requirements suit their proposal. “It’s a pretty good request for tender from my perspective,” he offered. “It was accompanied by a quite comprehensive and wellwritten operational concept document, so we’ve got a pretty clear understanding of what Army is after.

It’s been, I think, quite well articulated.”

Leidos Australia also reached back to its US parent through the recent acquisition of Dynetics, concluded in January 2020. Some of the programs in which Dynetics is participating include the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Gremlins recoverable UAS system, and several smaller US Army manned ISR programs.

“We’re going to be leveraging some of the work we’ve done in the United States in a couple of areas,” Leidos’s Senior Vice President Global Capability, Keith Johnson said. “Our airborne solutions operation has a long experience integrating very sophisticated ISR packages on manned platforms for the US Army.

“Another area is the ground control stations where, again to the US Army, (there was) an upgrade of the universal ground control station for their UAVs … And with the acquisition of Dynetics, that has given us an extensive experience in UAV mission support.”

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Like all the bidders we spoke to for this story, Leidos is keeping plans for its Australian industry capability (AIC) team on a close hold for now.

“We certainly understand government’s drive towards sovereignty and the importance in Australian industry capability, and we have worked hard to incorporate as much Australian industry capabilities as we possibly can,” Faulkner said. “The challenge has been, because of the relatively late approach to the market, that we’re still finalising the commercial details.

“We opened our industry portal just prior to the RFT release,” he added. “But we ended up with more than 160 responses through the portal which we were pretty happy with. We’ve had to work pretty hard in the last couple of months to triage all their responses and pull the team together.

“We’re confident we’ll have it all stitched together comprehensively. We are teaming with a few companies but we’re still finalising the commercial details, so it’s a bit difficult to speak about it yet.”

Faulkner said Leidos is acutely aware of the importance of having a strong AIC case, particularly in a post-pandemic fiscal environment where the Commonwealth will want to spend as much money on locally-sourced content as possible.

“We’ve certainly been taking notice of industrial announcements across AIC and the importance of sovereignty,” he said. “We’re certainly conscious that AIC has been growing in importance over the last few years. It just has that additional emphasis now, particular in the last couple of months.”

The Aeronautics Orbiter 4 platform is built

by Aeronautics at its Yavne facility near Tel Aviv.

Aeronautics has a strong history of developing unmanned systems. “We looked around when we were contemplating bidding on LAND 129,” Faulkner said. “And we settled on the Orbiter because

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LAND 129 PHASE 3

we thought it had some pretty advantageous characteristics. It has impressive endurance and range of up to 24 hours. It’s got a very low profile – both visually and the radar cross-section.

“It’s very modern,” he added. “It’s only been flying for a few years, so I would argue it’s the most modern of the competing platforms, capable of carrying a couple of payloads which I know a number of the (competing) platforms are. But, what’s important for Army is (that) it has a pretty small logistics footprint.

Faulkner added that Leidos is studying whether it might be possible to manufacture its air vehicle in Australia. “We are taking careful note of what the government said about AIC,” he said. “To that end, we are conscious that it may be possible to manufacture in Australia. But I think that’ll depend a lot on what government determines is their priority.

“Should we get to contract negotiations then I think those sort of conversations will happen about manufacture,” he added. “These aircraft are basically composite material, and there are companies in Australia that are very proficient at using those sort of technologies.”

Leidos is also confident in the Orbiter 4’s growth potential. As payloads become more miniaturised and more capable, it’s essential for the air vehicle to have an architecture as open as possible to accommodate the integration of new payloads as they emerge.

“It’s a very open platform and it’s all standardsbased,” Johnson explained. “We’ll be presenting options for the Commonwealth to integrate other packages at a very competitive cost, so that should not be a problem.

“We’ll be leveraging some of our experience with standard certification processes that we have in the US through Dynetics who, in some ways, lead the industry in compliance. So it will be fully compliant and integrate in a way that will make it very easy to swap in and out new payloads.”

The integration and flexible architecture of the ground control segment (GCS) will also be a key consideration.

“The aircraft obviously comes with its own integrated ground station,” said Faulkner. “We expect that, to achieve some of the requirements (of) the Commonwealth and the STANAG compliance, we are going to have to make some adjustments to that ground station to ensure that we meet those.

That’s some of the work that Leidos Australia in partnership with Leidos in the US is taking on.

“The Commonwealth has also indicated that they want a level of integration into a (Bushmaster) PMV,” he added. “They’re facilitating that integration as GFE in order to provide a level playing ground for all competitors. I think everybody has probably had early conversations with Thales as to some of the constraints, but our expectation is the government will facilitate that integration in due course.”

In closing, Faulkner says the reach-back the company has, and the capability of the platform, gives them a strong package. “What Leidos is seeking to do is to take what we think is the best available platform, and then utilising the strength of Leidos Australia and potentially of Leidos in the US which includes Dynetics, to provide a package that’s really optimised for LAND 129.”

Johnson added that he sees his bid team as being very collaborative and very open across all entities. “I think this is an important bid for Leidos – both for Australia and for the US – and for Aeronautics as well, and we want to win it. So we’re doing whatever it takes to make sure we overcome any of those organisational industry barriers that may add risk, by developing very much of a oneteam approach here.”

Insitu Pacific Boeing subsidiary and specialist UAS manufacturer Insitu Pacific has bid with a family of systems led by its Integrator air vehicle.

A growth version of the more familiar ScanEagle air vehicle that has been in service for nearly two decades, the Integrator features a larger engine, wingspan, and payload, but remains compatible with the ScanEagle’s GCS and its launch and recovery equipment.

Insitu Pacific Managing Director, Andrew Duggan told ADBR that he would put forward both the Integrator and the ScanEagle as a “family” solution for LAND 129 Phase 3.

“When we read the requirement, we decided we would offer the whole family of systems,” he told us.

“There are elements in there where we think we can meet certain parts of the requirement more flexibly with the whole family. So it’s not necessarily just Integrator; it will be a mixed fleet of aircraft. The key point for us is the common ground infrastructure, common ground control, and common training requirements, but the actual flying vehicle will be appropriate to the task at hand.”

Insitu is offering a unique solution and capability. The Australian Army is already familiar with the ScanEagle having operated it in Iraq and

The Integrator is in service with the US Marine Corps as the RQ-21A Blackjack.

US NAVY

ADBR

Insitu’s family of ScanEagle (front) and Integrator/RQ-21 air vehicles. INSITU

Afghanistan from 2006 to 2010, but sensors have moved on since then and today’s ScanEagle is far more capable than that of more than a decade ago.

The larger Integrator operates as the RQ-21A Blackjack in US Marine Corps service, so there is a broad spares and development base the Australian Army could draw upon as it develops its own TUAS capabilities.

“I’d point to the history and the heritage of the Integrator and the rest of this family of systems,” Duggan said. “I think we’re probably one of the few competitors that’s got well over 1.2 million flight hours now, across all kinds of domains globally, so it’s a very well-proven product. The fact that you’ve got the program of record now with the Marine Corps and RQ-21s means you’re going to have a long life and a long basis for this platform.

“There are other customers out there including the Canadians and the Dutch that have bought that same platform,” he added. “So, by the time the Australian Army jumps on board – potentially – with these platforms, they’ll know they’re not going to be buying an orphan. There’s a broad allied customer base there.

The Integrator/RQ-21 is not only larger than the ScanEagle, but also offers more power than its smaller stablemate. “What that means is the ability to carry more sensors and more complex sensors, which opens up options for you in terms of some of the electronic type payloads you might want to carry. Also, things like lasing for example, is obviously a core requirement of Army.

“From a materials perspective, it’s more of the same materials and a similar concept to ScanEagle,” he added. “I think all the competitors are in this same space – primarily carbon fibre structures. The engines that most competitors

‘I’d point to the history and the heritage of the Integrator and the rest of this family of systems’

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are offering are all of the same sort of size and space in terms of the engine power and capacity in order to meet the majority of the requirements that Army is asking for.

Like Leidos, Duggan is confident Insitu is well placed to meet the requirement. “Army obviously spent quite a bit of time pulling it together,” he explained. “You can see the pedigree in there from some of the things that I think they felt they probably didn’t get as much out of Shadow as they would’ve liked in certain areas, and so that’s been reflected throughout the tendering. Things like agility, mobility, footprint, all of those kinds of elements.

“With the sensing, they’ve foreshadowed over the last two or three years at various conferences about what they wanted in the high-end of the sensing world, so there were no real surprises in there. So, it’s all laid out pretty much as we expected, and the asks in there are pretty much in line with what we thought we’d see.

“Clearly, Army’s preference this time around is the DCS (direct commercial sale) approach rather than FMS (foreign military sales). And we’re seeing sensible artifacts and sensible discussion around making sure the capability stays relevant through life.”

Duggan says Insitu’s experience operating with the ADF gives it a unique insight into the requirements. “I think that operational experience we’ve got – just under 45,000 combat hours with the ADF for ScanEagle – has clearly given us good experience,” he said. “All of that helps inform what we call the ‘unwritten things’. While there are requirements that might be written in a tender, our operational experience might help us judge requirements that Army really cares about.”

Insitu is also being coy about its Australian industry team, but Duggan did name Perth-based Orbital as its preferred engine supplier for its bid. “I won’t go into too many details about the teaming yet because we do feel there’s some key partnerships in there that differentiates us from the others,”

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LAND 129 PHASE 3

Duggan said. “You will see some obvious ones, but Orbital is one which has already been well-publicised as it already has a major role as the primary engine provider to Insitu.

“So we’re certainly going to be promoting that collaboration with Orbital,” he added. “Being an Australian company, all of that development work is done here, and the IP remains here, and we have the ability to tap directly into their headquarters capability over at Perth. We certainly see that as a big plus from an AIC perspective as part of our story.”

Duggan agrees that AIC is a key requirement of the tender, and says every contender is likely doing everything possible to maximise their AIC cases.

“How do we make this a strong, Australian-led offering with a strong Australian capability base?” he asked rhetorically. “And what are the options for upgrades through the capability’s life? So I think all the competitors will be thinking in that space. And I think, depending on what kind of story they pull together, that will certainly be pretty compelling to the Commonwealth.”

Duggan also says that AIC opportunities aren’t just restricted to the GCS and launch/recovery equipment. “While that’s certainly part of it, I think there are opportunities on the air vehicle itself too,” he said. “Orbital’s a good example there, but as seen with Orbital, Insitu is willing to look outside the US for its primary supply chain. There is opportunity there in the primary supply chain side of the house, and I think also in the sensing piece.

“And supporting the DCS side of the story, the ability to put on Australian specific sensors and adapt things to Australian conditions and Australian requirements is key,” he added. “So even on the aircraft, there are options for what we think are some pretty powerful AIC capabilities. But yes, the ground space and the integration with systems used by Army is obviously a key part of that story.”

The GCS integration with Bushmaster is likely to be one element that Boeing may have a head start over the competition following similar work on Bushmaster command vehicles for the JP 2072 Currawong Release 3 communications project.

“With the power of Boeing’s capability here in Australia, we have got a lot of experience in that space that they’ve already learnt a lot of lessons from,” Duggan said. “And the product they’re rolling out is certainly well regarded by Army.

So, yes, definitely. We’ll be keeping discussions at the appropriate level in line with Commonwealth guidance, but we’ll be talking with those guys on lessons learned in that space.”

Australian Army UAS operators may get a chance to get an up-close look at the RQ21A soon, with confirmation on June 18 that this year’s US Marine Rotational Force-Darwin deployment will include a detachment of the UASs.

These systems are expected to work not only with USMC and Australian Army ground forces, but also possibly with Darwin-based 1 Aviation Regiment (1Avn) Tiger ARH helicopters and USMC aircraft in a manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) role.

Textron Systems Australia As the manufacturer, sustainment, and training provider of the Shadow 200 system – through the company’s acquisition of AAI – Textron Systems Australia is OEM for the Australian Army’s incumbent TUAS. For LAND 129 Phase 3, Textron is offering its Australian-designed Aerosonde system in its latest Mk4.7 and HQ iterations.

The Aerosonde can trace its roots back to 1995 when the locally designed air vehicle performed a series of scientific and meteorological demonstrations, including a non-stop 38-hour trans-Atlantic flight from Canada to Scotland, and flight through hurricanes.

In the late 1990s through the early 2000s Aerosonde air vehicles were operated by the then Defence Science & Technology Organisation (DSTO) as part of its NERVANA tactical UAV program to test various payloads. And in 2003, the ADF deployed four of DSTO’s Aerosondes to Henderson Airfield near Honiara in the Solomon Islands under Operation ANODE, where elements from 131 Surveillance & Target Acquisition Battery, 161 Recce Squadron, and RAAF imagery specialists, conducted surveillance and communications relay missions in remote areas of the islands.

“There is significant Australian heritage in the aircraft we see today,” Managing Director of Textron Systems Australia Jack Kormas told ADBR. “We are an Australian company. We are doing significant engineering, design and development and manufacturing of the airframe here in Australia, out of our Notting Hill office in Melbourne.

“We continue to build on that heritage today and, without the great support of Textron, it wouldn’t be the product it is today,” he added. “They’ve really invested heavily in our Australian organisation to continue that design and development out of our Australian office.

The Aerosonde in HQ VTOL configuration. TEXTRON

ADBR

The Aerosonde is operational with the US Navy TEXTRON

“Army is demanding a proven and mature system with a really small footprint, and the Aerosonde system really has been designed to meet those requirements. It’s designed to be what we like to call ‘expeditionary’, both for land and sea-based operations.”

Kormas says Textron already has a significant Australian supply chain from which to draw upon to build an industry teaming. “We believe that we’ve already proven our bonafide when it comes to AIC,” he explained. “We are a sovereign capability and we’re doing that every day, and we’re exporting worldwide to the US and other parts of the world.

Our system components and our innovation are part of every Aerosonde system, and most of it is derived out of Australia.

“The other thing that we are doing to maximize AIC is that, last year, we conducted an AIC tour of Australia, where we went to every major city,” Kormas added. “There we put on the table about 22 different capabilities, ranging from advanced manufacturing, battle management system integration, combat system integration, composite structures, EW, and geospatial payloads, all the way through to training and simulation.

“And I still encourage those who didn’t make it to our AIC industry briefings to get on the ICN portal and continue to register, because the opportunities are still there to help grow and maximise our AIC wherever we can.”

Kormas says the Aerosonde has grown from what was originally a 12kg air vehicle to 46kg for the current HQ version, and that this has been enabled by continuous development. “It’s really come down to the whole hardware integration aspect,” he said.

“The aircraft itself lends itself to be flexible enough to do that.

“We’re listening to our customers constantly, and what they’re saying to us is smaller, smaller, smaller

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– everything is about being smaller. But they want to do more with this smaller platform, so we believe the Aerosonde has the capability to do more than what the current Shadow can do today while operating out of a much smaller footprint and being more agile and flexible and quieter as well.

“For example, if you look at the Aerosonde HQ, we’ve proven that the entire system can be loaded into a CH-47 Chinook on a standard 463L pallet with a crew of four and deployed forward.”

The HQ – which stands for Hybrid Quad – is a capability unique to the Aerosonde. Rather than running two different air vehicles, a quick change in the configuration with the addition of different tail booms with four rotors allows it to take off and land vertically.

“Think of it as a kit,” said Kormas. “You just replace the booms, but it’s the same fuselage, same tail, and same wings – it’s just the booms that change and now it becomes a VTOL platform.”

After transitioning to forward flight, the rotors stow neatly along the tail booms. “Obviously, there’s a hit to endurance,” Kormas explained. “Normally our aircraft is a 14-plus hour aircraft, and this will bring it back to less than ten.

For missions with a conventional launch and recovery, Textron has a trailer-mounted catapult and recovery barrier that has been sized to be compatible with Australian Army vehicles.

Like the other contenders, Textron says the Aerosonde has an open architecture system that will be compatible with new payloads as they are developed and introduced. “We’ve designed a system to have an open systems architecture to allow the Army to pick up particular payloads,” Kormas said.

“The whole avionics architecture is very open to allow them to do that seamlessly, and we can fly multiple payloads simultaneously as well – it’s doing the full motion video, the comms relay, the EW all simultaneously, depending on the mission.”

Similarly, the Aerosonde’s GCS is adaptable to however Army wants to configure it. “We will use the system architecture of GCS to work with Army to integrate that into a Bushmaster for example, along with our partners,” Kormas said. “We are definitely talking to key stakeholders within the defence network to be able to make sure that our system does get integrated seamlessly, or relatively seamlessly, into those systems.

“Additionally, there will be challenges around the RFT’s requirement to operate off an LHD,” he added. “We have enough experience to be able to work with the Army and Navy in this instance – and there’s obviously a SEA 129 link there too – because we have flown with the US Navy and done integrations with a number of their ships. The RFT is requiring integration into the actual ship’s combat systems, so we’re going to be looking at how we can work in partnership with the Army and Navy to do that.”

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LAND 129 PHASE 3

Raytheon Australia Raytheon Australia has teamed with Schiebel Australia to offer the vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL)-only system for LAND 129 Phase 3, the Schiebel Camcopter S-100. Unfortunately, Raytheon was unable to commit to an interview

by ADBR’s deadline.

A true unmanned helicopter, the S-100 is already well known in Australian skies due to its ongoing service with the RAN on its Navy Minor Program (NMP)1942 VTOL Maritime Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System – Interim Capability (MTUAS-IC) for which it was selected in February 2017.

NMP1942 seeks to inform the requirements for its SEA 129 Phase 5 Stage 1 and 2 UAS programs for the RAN’s new SEA 1180 Arafura class offshore patrol vessels (OPV) and SEA 5000 Hunter class frigates, respectively. The Army has also had an insight into NMP1942, and has leased an S-100 to conduct a number of payload trials as it sought to define its own LAND 129 Phase 3 requirements.

Featuring a composite and titanium fuselage, the S-100 is larger than the other three contender systems but, being a helicopter, does not require the same launch and recovery infrastructure. It has a maximum takeoff weight of about 200kg and can carry a 34kg payload of sensors for up to 10 hours.

It has a maximum speed of around 120kts and has recently been successfully integrated with a heavyfuel engine.

The integration of the heavy fuel engine was the final hurdle before the commencement of shipboard trials of the S-100, and means the air vehicle can share the same fuel used by ship gas turbine engines rather than separate and more volatile aviation gasoline (avgas) bunkerage.

The S-100 VTOL UAS has a beyond-line-ofsight capability out to 200km. Able to fly fully autonomously, it can be operated from a pilot control unit with missions planned and controlled via a simple point-and-click graphical user interface.

High-definition payload imagery is transmitted to the control station in real time.

Schiebel has successfully demonstrated the S-100’s manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) credentials, having conducted a trial with an Airbus H145 helicopter in April 2018.

Conducted with the support of the Austrian Armaments and Defence Technology Agency, the two aircraft flew a number of different scenarios including the detection of objects hidden in places not accessible by larger manned helicopters.

The tests were flown using the highest level of interoperability (LOI), LOI-5 which allowed the S-100 to be fully controlled and piloted by an operator in the H145.

Before teaming with Raytheon Australia, Schiebel established its commitment to Australia and the wider region when it set up Schiebel Pacific Pty Ltd (SPL) at Nowra, NSW and opened its facility in July 2019.

The company said the new entity will provide the Pacific region with a permanent and comprehensive program, logistics and sales hub for its S-100 Camcopter VTUAS and future products. It says it sees considerable potential in Australia and in the wider region, and is committed to developing a lasting and mutually beneficial presence.

“Establishing a permanent base in Australia, managed and run by Australians, is a logical next step for Schiebel as the Pacific region is of significant strategic interest to us,” Chairman of the Schiebel Group Hans Georg Schiebel said in an August 2018 statement. “We already have a strong working relationship with customers in the area and are committed to growing our footprint, delivering outstanding support for our current contracts, providing end-to-end servicing to potential clients, and backing local value creation.”

Schiebel Pacific also signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in June 2019 with aviation and engineering firm Air Affairs Australia (AAA) covering remotely piloted aerial systems (RPAS).

The MOU between SPL and Air Affairs included an agreement to “collaborate on the compilation and submission of RFT responses for RPAS opportunities in Australia and the Pacific region, as well as the subsequent close cooperation in contract delivery, support and services”.

“Building on our current contracts, we see enormous potential in Australia for Schiebel and our unrivalled CAMCOPTER S-100 RPAS due to several significant upcoming programmes and working with established Australian companies will be key to success,” Schiebel said in a June 2019 statement. “A strong physical presence through SPL and a MoU with a strong partner are logical steps in preparing for the tremendous opportunities in Australia, a nation at the forefront of embracing robotic technology and modernising its defence force.”

The Schiebel S-100 is a heavier air vehicle than its competitors, and is the only permanent VTOL system. ADF

ADBR

As part of its work with Army, Schiebel has demonstrated the ability of the S-100 to integrate and employ an ELTA Systems ELK-7065 HF COMINT/DF 3D system, and an Overwatch Imaging TK-5 Firewatch sensor during the Autonomous Warrior exercises near Nowra in December 2018.

The ELK-7065 is a flexible high-frequency (HF) communications intelligence (COMINT) system that provides rapid spectrum exploration, analysis, and detection of advanced HF communication signals in real time and with off-line analysis tools in challenging electromagnetic environments.

“The ELK-7065, integrated on the S-100 UAS, offers the essential capability of delivering time-critical intelligence in the most complex operational environments,” Schiebel Chief Technical Officer Chris Day said in a statement. “This is increasingly important for military, para-military and civilian applications.”

The Overwatch Imaging TK-5 Firewatch payload is said to bridge the gap between small drone mapping cameras and satellite mapping systems, and provides wide-area multi-band land mapping with automatic small object detection. Army has also tested an L3 Wescam MX-10 EO/IR sensor, and Leonardo’s PicoSAR radar on the S-100, and conducted operationally-representative tests of some of these sensors at Exercise Talisman Saber in 2019.

FTUAS While Australia’s LAND 129 Phase 3 and the US Army’s Future Tactical UAS (FTUAS) program are both seeking to replace the Shadow 200 systems in their respective services, and both are required to be runway-independent, FTUAS has the added requirement for its successful system to be capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL).

There is, therefore, currently only one common contender for the two programs: Textron’s Aerosonde in its HQ VTOL configuration. The Aerosonde HQ has been shortlisted for a FTUAS trial along with Martin UAV and Northrop Grumman with the V-Bat ‘tail-sitter’ system, the Arcturus UAV Jump-20 system, and L3Harris’s FVL-90 quadrotor hybrid system.

The Aerosonde HQ, Jump-20 and FVL-90 share similar configurations with nose-mounted or pusher propellers for forward flight, and rotors for VTOL mounted on extended tail booms. The Martin/ NG V-Bat takes off and lands on a large shrouded circular tail which contains a propeller, and rotates through 90 degrees for the transition to forward flight.

FTUAS is currently about a year ahead of LAND 129 Phase 3, with

‘...the S-100 is well known in Australian skies due to its ongoing service with the RAN’

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US Army soldiers of its 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division and other units currently conducting soldier-operated flight trials on all of the contender systems to evaluate their effectiveness, right up to brigade level field training exercises and a combat training centre rotation. But as this is reported to be just a capability demonstration phase, with more work to be done to ‘harden’ these systems, this may not be the final list of contenders.

THE NEXT STEP The LAND 129 Phase 3 schedule currently sees the winning tender announced at Gate 2 in the first half of 2021, although ADBR understands Army has reserved the right to further reduce the shortlist before then.

A series of trials of all four systems are planned to be conducted before the end of July, although it is unclear where this currently stands due to ongoing travel and social distancing restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite their different operating environments, there are also significant opportunities for commonality between Army and Navy TUAS projects. In a written statement to ADBR, a Defence spokesman said, “LAND 129 Phase 3 and SEA 129 Phase 5 are both taking a standards-based approach that ensures GCS interoperability between the two service’s systems.

“Army is working closely with Navy to develop complementary capability solutions between the two projects,” the statement added. “Although there are many commonalities in OEM UAS materiel requirements, the projects have significant contrasts in their intended role and operating environment.

Efficiencies across other fundamental inputs to capability are also being investigated, including joint approaches to training and sustainment.

“Capability trials conducted with Navy have been valuable for Army in developing many of LAND 129 Phase 3’s key requirements, including runway-independent operations, the fully integrated Protected Mobile Ground Control Station Bushmaster PMV mode of operation, improved deployability, and littoral operational capabilities.

Army will continue to collaborate closely with Navy to inform a suitable balance between individual service capability optimisation, inter-service commonality, and value for money.”

As to whether there might be a greater emphasis on AIC due to the current economic situation, the spokesman said “Defence is committed to AIC across acquisition and sustainment. There has been extensive effort across Defence to support industry through the COVID-19 crisis and ensure the delivery of capability.

“Defence is implementing the Defence industry policy and ensuring that AIC is actively considered in acquisition decisions and subsequently delivered under enforceable contractual terms.”

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RAAF UAS PROJECTS

RA AF UAS PROJECTS

AI.R POWER The RAAF prepares to operate up to three unmanned systems

BY ANDREW McLAUGHLIN

T

he first half of the 2020s will arguably see the greatest transformation of the Royal Australian Air Force in its 100 year history.

While the past 20 years has seen an almost complete recapitalisation of the RAAF’s aircraft fleet, the next five years will see the introduction of at least two and possibly three major unmanned combat systems, the RAAF’s first permanent unmanned capabilities.

But the RAAF has already metaphorically dipped it toes in the unmanned waters, having operated a number of leased IAI Heron I remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2014, and in Australia from 2015 to 2017. Under the noncapitalised Project Nankeen, these systems were leased from and supported in service by Canadian firm MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd (MDA), with reachback to IAI.

The Herons were leased after another project the RAAF had collaborated on in a trial at Woomera – the UK’s BAE Systems HERTI (High Endurance Rapid Technology Insertion) Fury UAS – was considered unsuitable for the ADF’s operational requirements in Afghanistan. Despite this, the UK’s RAF deployed a number of HERTI air vehicles to Camp Bastion in Helmand Province for an operational trial.

Operated by 5 Flight (5FLT), approximately 75 pilots and 75 sensor operators were trained on the Heron in its time in RAAF service. Between January 2010 and November 2014, RAAF Herons flew over 27,100 hours in support of operations in Afghanistan, while between April 2015 and June 2017 the two Herons based in Australia flew a further 710 hours.

The two Australian-based Herons mostly flew from Woomera in South Australia, but also from RAAF Base Amberley and Rockhampton Airport to participate in Exercise Talisman Sabre 2015.

ADBR

With Australia winding down its presence in Afghanistan in 2014 Defence elected to extend the lease on two Herons for operations in Australia for a further six years at a cost of $120 million, but this was renegotiated to end early in 2017. The Heron system flew its last mission for the RAAF from Tindal on 23 June 2017 when it flew the last of 17 sorties as part of Exercise Diamond Shield in support of the RAAF’s inaugural Air Warfare Instructor Course (AWIC).

By this time, the AIR 7003 Armed RPAS program was well underway, and the potential learning, training, and workforce development opportunities for the RAAF of a direct transition from Heron to the armed RPAS would have been invaluable.

Concept art of an MQ9B in RAAF colours.

TEAM REAPER

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But observers have noted that the costs of the lease, the difficulty of operating an uncertified aircraft in controlled airspace, and the Heron’s lack of armament were key factors in the Heron’s early retirement.

Following the retirement of the Heron, the Air Force commenced an exchange program with the USAF where RAAF RPAS operators flew USAF MQ-9A Reapers at Creech AFB in Nevada.. “Air Force has taken steps to retain and further develop medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) RPAS knowledge and experience, including embedding RAAF personnel in the USAF flying the MQ-9 Reaper,” an air force spokesperson told ADBR in a late 2017 response to written questions.

PROJECT AIR 7003 – MQ-9B SKY GUARDIAN In November 2019 the Commonwealth announced the selection of the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) MQ-9B Sky Guardian as its preferred version of the Predator B for the RAAF’s mediumaltitude long-endurance (MALE) armed remotely piloted aircraft system (RPAS) requirement. Previously marketed as the Certified Predator-B, the ADF selected the certified Sky Guardian over the similar USAF-common GA-ASI MQ-9 Reaper Block 5 model.

One key difference between Sky Guardian and Reaper is that the former will be certified so that it may operate in controlled airspace, an important capability for remotely piloted vehicles operating in proximity to civil air traffic. To this end, GA-ASI has developed a ‘detect-and-avoid’ radar for Sky Guardian.

The Reaper does not have a detect-and-avoid sensor, and is not intended to be certified.

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RAAF UAS PROJECTS

The AIR 7003 announcement came more than a year after the November 2018 Gate 1 announcement at which the Sky Guardian and the Reaper were shortlisted. The Gate 1 announcement itself came more than two years after Gate 0, and more than 18 months after the originally planned 2017 Avalon Airshow Gate 1 announcement was cancelled at the last moment following intense lobbying and a renewed effort

by Israeli Aircraft Industries (IAI) to pitch its rival Heron TP system.

The 2016 Defence White Paper and Integrated Investment Plan indicated between 12 and 16 systems would be acquired. “What we’re talking about at the moment is up to 12 MQ-9 Sky Guardian aircraft,” Head of Air Force Capability, AVM Cath Roberts told ADBR. “And then there is the support equipment and systems, mission control system, training systems, etc.”

The Sky Guardian will be based at RAAF Edinburgh near Adelaide with other key ADF ISR assets such as the P-8A Poseidon, the Project AIR 7000 Phase 1B MQ-4C Triton high-altitude longendurance (HALE) maritime ISR (see next page), the AIR 555 MC-55A Peregrine electronic warfare support aircraft, and the AIR 3503 Distributed Ground Station (DGS-AUS) intelligence unit which is responsible for the analysis of data collected from the various RAAF ISR platforms.

But while the ground control segment, support and sustainment force, and training facilities will be located at Edinburgh, it is yet to be determined whether the MQ-9B air vehicles will actually be based at Edinburgh or at a remote location such as Woomera.

Sky Guardian also forms the basis of the Protector RG Mk1 system being acquired for the UK’s Royal Air Force, although that program’s schedule may be at risk due to funding difficulties in the UK, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a looming Strategic Defence Review.

“We’ve been working with the UK on a whole number of fronts,” said AVM Roberts. “We’re about one to two years behind them and we’ve been talking to them about certification, about the capabilities, and about the best procurement approach to take for Sky Guardian.”

The RAAF’s acquisition for Sky Guardian is expected to be signed in 2021/22, for service entry in 2023/24, and an initial operating capability in “the mid-2020s”.

In preparation for the acquisition of Sky Guardian, the RAAF has posted a former 5FLT officer to be co-located with General Atomics at its Poway headquarters near San Diego in California. “At the moment we’ve got one permanently, and soon we will increase the team,” said AVM Roberts. “But it’s still fairly early days because we haven’t signed an agreement to purchase, but we can work with our UK colleagues.

A lot of the certification work has been done, and

the UK has had a team in California now for the last four and a half years.”

It is unclear how much commonality the RAAF’s Sky Guardian will have with the UK’s Protector system. “I wouldn’t say that we’re concerned with that yet,” said AVM Roberts. “Obviously, they have a slightly different environment in which they’re operating than us. We don’t want to create a unique capability; we want to be as common as we can.

“But there are capabilities that are ITAR controlled,” she added. “So there is a limit to how much we could work with the UK. Particularly on weapons, they’re a good partner and we would always work with them to reduce the cost-ofownership and have commonality as much as we could.”

One hinderance to any joint cost-of-ownership savings may be the extensive Australian industry team that has been established to support the Sky Guardian in RAAF service, and to develop and integrate Australian-specific capabilities for the system.

Announced in 2017, ‘Team Reaper’ comprises GA-ASI, Cobham Australia, CAE Australia, Raytheon Australia, Flight Data Systems, TAE Aerospace, Rockwell Collins, Ultra Electronics Australia, Airspeed, and Quickstep Holdings Ltd. “The Australian team are Australian companies or Australian subsidiaries,” AVM Roberts explained.

“So while they may share some of the same names, the smaller companies certainly do not. They’re Australian-unique, so it is a different support arrangement in terms of making sure we maximise Australian industry content. And the UK equally have to do the same for themselves.”

For Sky Guardian, the RAAF expects Team Reaper to sustain the system under a Platform Steward model, similar to those with Northrop Grumman on the KC-30A and C-27J, and with Boeing on the F/A-18F and EA-18G.

Concept art of the RAF’s Protector RG Mk.1 system loaded with Brimstone missiles. GA-ASI

ADBR

US NAVY

AIR 7000 PHASE 1B – NORTHROP GRUMMAN MQ-4C TRITON On June 17, the Commonwealth confirmed the acquisition of a third MQ-4C Triton air vehicle of a requirement for six systems, thus maintaining Australia’s current drip-feed-like acquisition model while that program continues its protracted development and the US Navy’s own uncertain acquisition schedule.

Originally approved through a Gate 1 (then First Pass) process in 2014, Triton was selected under Project AIR 7000 Phase 1B to complement the RAAF’s planned 12-15 AIR 7000 Phase 2 Boeing P-8A Poseidon manned aircraft to conduct long-range surveillance of Australia’s maritime approaches and interests.

To date, the ADF has committed almost A$2 billion to AIR 7000 Phase 1B, being for the initial three air vehicles, the $200 million co-operative program commitment, the construction of headquarters, maintenance, and training facilities at RAAF bases Edinburgh and Tindal, and the supporting information technology infrastructure.

The acquisition, training, and infrastructure phase of the project has a total budget of between A$3 billion and A$4 billion.

Unlike the Sky Guardian’s direct commercial sale (DCS) model, Australia is acquiring Triton through a cooperative development program with the US Navy, a $200 million investment that gives the RAAF a seat at the table when development and upgrade decisions are made for the system.

To this end, about eight RAAF and Australian Defence staff are embedded within the US Navy’s PMA-262 Triton project office at NAS Patuxent (Pax) River near Washington

‘...the ADF has committed almost A$2 billion... being for the initial three air vehicles.’

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DC to work on the aircraft’s development, while the RAAF now has an air vehicle operator working within the US Navy’s test fleet at Pax as well.

It appears the third RAAF aircraft is being ordered as part of the originally planned acquisition profile, rather than from a planned US Navy buy which has been proposed to be deferred by two years. As part of the US FY2021 President’s Budget Plan – which is due to be ratified as we went to press – the Department of Navy has allocated no funding to Triton production Lots 6 and 7 in FY 2021 and FY 2022. Therefore, in order to maintain production continuity and keep unit costs down, the US Navy and Northrop Grumman had been lobbying Australia to take those deferred slots.

“The President’s 2021 budget proposes to significantly increase funding for the multiintelligence configuration of the MQ-4C Triton aircraft system, known as IFC4,” Northrop Grumman Australia Chief Executive AVM Chris Deeble (Ret’d) told ADBR in a February 2020 statement. The budget also proposes pausing production of Triton in 2021 and 2022 while the development of IFC4 is completed.”

Fortunately, the US Navy and Northrop Grumman are confident enough that the delays in getting the IFC4 configuration to work are behind them. A 25 June 2020 US DoD contract announcement valued at US$333.4m (A$484.5m) for three Tritons including Australia’s third air vehicle and two for the US Navy reads; ‘This modification exercises options for the production and delivery of three low-rate initial production MQ-4C Triton unmanned aircraft… in an integrated functional capability-four (IFC4) and multiple-intelligence (MULTI-INT) configuration.’

The IFC4 configuration with MULTI-INT is considered by the RAAF to be its baseline configuration for its Tritons in order to achieve FOC. Looking back a few years, at Gate 1 the project schedule said Gate 2 was planned to occur in August 2017, but this was delayed to June 2018 due to ongoing US programmatic, funding, and development delays. That schedule also proposed that the RAAF’s first Triton – dubbed ‘AV1’ – would be delivered in early 2021, the second in August 2021, and then two air vehicles per year until a planned seventh aircraft in early 2024.

Initial operational capability (IOC) of three air vehicles was planned for mid-2022, while a fully operational capability (FOC) of all seven air vehicles would be declared in mid-2024.

The Gate 1 schedule also saw an RAAF training crew due to commence training on the system in the US in the second quarter of 2020, the first two operational crews in late 2020, and three more crews to be trained per year in Australia until FOC. The Gate 2 announcement subsequently reduced the RAAF’s planned buy to six air vehicles, and the current schedule now appears to be delayed by about two years from this plan.

But if the US Navy production slots are taken up – a decision that will likely be made in the coming

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RAAF UAS PROJECTS

months once the President’s Budget Plan is finalised – it may be possible to reclaim some of the lost schedule.

“We are trying to achieve the capability as we have programmed it,” AVM Roberts told us.

When news of the US Navy production pause emerged, the RAAF was faced with one of three choices – to continue as planned and realise a further delay, to take the US Navy slots and possibly reclaim the original schedule, or to walk away from the already delayed project. But ultimately, the compelling capability offered by the Triton won out.

“Of course that meant we had to consider what all of our options were moving forward,” AVM Roberts told us. “But the Triton really has a unique capability. In terms of persistent surveillance, there isn’t anything else out there that can achieve what it can at the attitudes that it works. So, when coupled with the P-8 it gives a very unique capability. And I think the thing that’s most compelling about it, is the fact that its range is not only to the north but south to Antarctica.”

Where once the RAAF saw Antarctica as very much a secondary mission well behind that of Australia’s northern approaches, the fact that the RAAF is now talking about the Triton being able to cover Antarctica is a reflection of the growing interest in that region.

Australia’s perceptions of the Triton’s capability have been buoyed by the recent deployment of two air vehicles to Guam as part of the US Navy’s Early Operational Capability (EOC), and some valuable observations of that deployment have been fed back through the RAAF’s cooperative program team.

“Because we’re part of the program, we get great insight into it,” AVM Roberts said. “So we can see what the US can see, about how well it operates, and what advantages it provides in terms of its surveillance capability. It’s high, it’s persistent, it sees, and it certainly hasn’t shown any significant deviations from what we expected it to be able to do in the surveillance role. Of course, it’s operating in the same region that we have a great deal of interest – what it’s doing there is showing us what we would be able to do there.”

Like Team Reaper, the RAAF expects to sign a platform steward sustainment and support arrangement for Triton. “A lot of the maintenance work will be done by contractors,” AVM Roberts said.

“That’s the current plan, but we’ll obviously have uniformed folk as well. Essentially you’ve got the operators in one location, and the aircraft in another with a support crew.”

It will be difficult for Tritons to operate into or out of Edinburgh in the initial stages because the system’s sense-and-avoid radar which will allow it to be certified for operations in controlled airspace isn’t planned to be ready until later this decade. So, the bulk of the early maintenance will need to be performed at Tindal. But supporting the air vehicles at Tindal will be a challenge, particularly in raising and retaining a suitable workforce at such a remote location.

“We haven’t made a decision on who the support contractors will be,” AVM Roberts added. “Northrop Grumman, obviously would be very interested in continuing that role for Triton, as they do for KC-30, the Special Purpose Aircraft, and C-27J.” With Triton and Sky Guardian air vehicle operators to be based at Edinburgh – regardless of where the air vehicles are operating from – they will likely work a ‘normal’ 8-10 hour day, hand over to a new crew mid-way through the mission, and then be able to go home to their families each night. Particularly with armed aircraft such as Reaper, this has been proven to have different psychological effects on airmen to those who are deployed to a theatre and are immersed in operations 24/7 for several months.

“The actual aircraft can operate from anywhere, and there have been some issues with pilots and all the different pressures when they’re at home and then coming to work and doing real missions,” AVM Roberts said. “So there’s quite a lot of psychological work we’ve got to do to make sure that we have a safe environment for them to operate in, and we have some really detailed analysis from the US and our experience with the UK.” While it has been confirmed that 11SQN will operate the new MC-55A Peregrine electronic support aircraft at Edinburgh, no decisions have been made on what squadrons will operate the Sky Guardians and Tritons yet, at least not publicly. “We obviously have to look across all of the inputs to capability and that includes the workforce and where it’s based,” AVM Roberts explained. “We’ve set up an ISR precinct in Edinburgh, and at this stage we are thinking, we are still looking at the synergies that we could get operators from there.”

LOYAL WINGMAN The first of three Loyal Wingman unmanned combat aircraft for the RAAF was rolled out by Boeing Australia and its industry partners in May 2020.

Announced at the 2019 Avalon Air Show, the Boeing Airpower Teaming System (ATS) is an Australian-designed and developed capability that is being developed in partnership with the RAAF under Air Force Minor Program DEF 6014 Phase 1. The RAAF has ordered three systems so far for development testing, with a view to possibly developing the concept of operating with a highperformance unmanned combat system.

The aircraft – which at 37 feet long with a 24 feet wingspan is the size of a small fighter – can fly at high subsonic speeds with various payloads. It has a degree of low observability shaping and materials, and features detachable noses of more than 1.5 cubic metres volume for sensors that could include radar, electrooptic/infrared (EO/IR), electronic and signals

‘Because we’re part of the program, we get great insight into it...’

ADBR

One of the key roles for the Boeing ATS will be high value asset (HVA) escort and protection. BOEING CONCEPT

intelligence (ELINT/SIGINT), and electronic warfare (EW) payloads.

Designed and developed by Boeing Australia in conjunction with BAE Systems Australia, RUAG Australia, and more than 30 other industry suppliers, the Loyal Wingman has more than 70 per cent Australian content. The system has been developed through extensive computer modelling and actual sub-scale autonomous aircraft flights to develop the concepts of flying in company with manned aircraft, autonomous swarming, and the levels of artificial intelligence required.

The first full-scale aircraft will soon begin systems testing before conducting ground and taxi tests, with the goal of taking its first flight at an undisclosed location – likely Woomera – by the end of 2020.

“This project is an excellent example of innovation through collaboration and what can be achieved working together with defence industry,” RAAF Chief of Air Force, AIRMSHL Mel Hupfeld said at the rollout. “This demonstrates the importance of the relationship Air Force has with Boeing Australia and defence industry more broadly. I look forward to exploring the capabilities this aircraft may bring to our existing fleet in the future.”

AVM Roberts also offered that the Loyal Wingman could assume air combat roles, and thus would be capable of employing air-to-surface or airto-air weapons. But she was quick to stress that the Loyal Wingman project is still developmental.

“I wouldn’t like to commit that it will be something that our air force uses,” she emphasised. “At the moment we’ve only committed to a protocol development program, an innovation program.

But the roles it could perform, really range quite considerably. It has that reconfigurable nose. You can put all sorts of different sensors and software and payloads in there, so anything that you can imagine – providing it operates correctly – it could be involved in.”

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Apart from ISR with some of the abovementioned payloads, the Loyal Wingman could also operate in a teaming role to enhance the sensor field-of-regard of manned combat aircraft, in a protective role with high-value asset aircraft such as the E-7A, P-8A, and KC-30A if the threat was deemed high enough, or when armed, to add mass to a strike or offensive/defensive counter air mission.

“The term ‘Loyal Wingman’ really came from the thought of it operating in this teaming arrangement with an aircraft, either to produce additional mass, or potentially in a protective role acting as an escort with some of their larger aircraft,” AVM Roberts said.

“I won’t say it’s a formal co-development program yet,” she added. “But certainly a lot of our own intellectual property is going into this design in terms of what things we would like it to do. We know what we need in terms of training, and we know what we need in terms of all of the air power capabilities that we need to achieve for the joint force.”

The RAAF is naturally keeping a close hold on what weapons the Loyal Wingman could carry, and observers found it difficult to see the configuration of the internal weapons bay or the external weapons pylons from the rollout photos or the full scale mockup. But one could imagine air-to-air weapons such as AMRAAM, AIM-9X and their follow-on equivalents would be likely, as would air-to-surface weapons such as HARM/AARGM, GBU-53/B (SDB II), and the GBU-12/38/49 family of precision-guided 250kg bombs.

Perhaps most interestingly, the ability to perform ‘red air’ training against the F-35 has been explored. With the proliferation of 5th gen fighters amongst our adversaries, a low-cost, low-observable training adversary integrated with advanced onboard and offboard radar and electronic sensors and air-to-air weapon emulators would be a valuable training system for the F-35 and other advanced combat aircraft.

“We’re really just going to be testing it in all those different roles, and taking it on that development path,” AVM Roberts said. “There are a couple of other programs in the UK and the US where they’re doing similar things, and it’s really about testing what it can do. And particularly when you add artificial intelligence to it, there are some quite sophisticated roles that we think it should be able to perform into the future. It really excites me as an engineer.”

When asked whether a successful Loyal Wingman development and concept demonstration program might lead to the system being part of the third tranche of Project AIR 6000, AVM Roberts said it was more likely that Loyal Wingman will help to inform which way that project may go.

This may result in the acquisition of the last 28 F-35As of Australia’s stated program of record for 100 jets, the retention and upgrade of the RAAF’s 24 F/A-18Fs to conduct manned-unmanned teaming operations, the formation of an operational Loyal Wingman unit, or a combination of all three.

UNINHABITED GROUND VEHICLES

DOWN TO EARTH

Eyes on the future of military UGVs

BY MAX BLENKIN

ADBR

W

arfare is evolving and the Australian Army, the largest operator of unmanned aerial systems in Australia, has more than just flying robots in its future.

In the conflict of the next decade, uncrewed armoured vehicles could deliver soldiers to combat then evacuate the wounded. Humans aboard scout vehicles could guide small uninhabited ground vehicles (UGVs) to inspect a choke point for mines or improvised explosive devices. And while there will always be a need for sweating soldiers to patrol, they will soon be accompanied by a robotic wheeled ‘mule’ to carry packs, water and supplies, or ammunition.

Army has long operated unmanned aircraft for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), and specialist tracked robots for bomb disposal. With UGV technology rapidly advancing, it is now thinking long and hard about its terrestrial robotic future.

Some of these new technologies have already been tried out in the field. During Exercise Talisman Sabre last year, the Army trialled the MAPS (Mission Adaptable Platform System) Mule, a six-wheeled robotic vehicle made by Queensland company Praesidium Global and able to transport a useful load of up to 850 kilograms.

It has also conducted trials with robotic M113AS4 armoured personnel carriers. These vehicles have been converted by BAE Systems Australia to be optionally manned, an emerging concept which permits the vehicles to perform certain tasks autonomously or by remote control. That could include evacuation of casualties from the battlefield.

It has also acquired a pair of quadruped robots made

by US company Ghost Robotics that resemble robotic dogs to assess the utility of legged robots.

Army is also examining what benefit it could gain from uninhabited watercraft, of potential use for riverine scouting or ship-to-shore resupply.

left Man (and woman’s) best friend with a difference: the robotic ‘dog’ used in field trials to assess utility of legged robots. ADF above

The Mission Adaptable Platform System Mule, a robotic vehicle with an 850kg carrying capacity. ADF

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But this isn’t just about robot platforms. The Army is also looking at how robotic systems and artificial intelligence (AI) could help commanders make better, faster decisions. All this is in step with the Army’s Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS) Strategy, released in October 2018.

The RAS strategy emerged from the Army Innovation Day in 2017, and leading this effort is LTCOL Robin Smith, staff officer for robotic and autonomous systems within the Army’s Future Land Warfare Branch.

“It was obvious to the senior leadership that autonomous and robotic systems were coming more to the fore in terms of the availability of the tech in civilian and military world,” LTCOL Smith told ADBR. “That talks to the over-arching premise that Army is operating under at the moment which is ‘Accelerated Warfare’ – this idea that Army or defence or the nation is in persistent competition.

“That technology is out there,” he added. “Remote control cars have been around forever, and they are getting better and better. The human interface to those machines is improving with things like virtual reality and augmented reality. It is now on your phone. The seniors appreciated that these type of systems would become increasingly important.”

Other than its bomb disposal robots, the Army is a relative latecomer to robotic ground technology.

Army and the RAAF have operated UAS in Iraq

‘We tolerate human failure, but machine failure we do not ’

and Afghanistan since 2004, while the Navy is operating some small uninhabited underwater vessels (UUVs).

LTCOL Smith says that’s because air is much more straight forward than ground, amply demonstrated by the technical challenges of self-driving cars. Vast sums have been spent by carmakers and technology firms such as Apple and Tesla, and while great progress has been made there is as yet no viable self-driving car. And that’s because humans have zero tolerance of machine failure.

“We tolerate human failure, but machine failure we do not,” he said. “About 1,200 people a year are killed on Australian roads. Even if driverless cars were half as good, there would be 600 more people alive next year. That’s not good enough – two people have died in proper autonomous cars over the time of the project over the last couple of years, and the project has nearly come to a standstill.”

Other nations have fielded UGVs in various roles.

Late last year US Army announced it planned to buy 624 General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) MUTT (Multi-purpose Equipment Transport) UGVs, essentially to lighten soldiers’ loads. Similar to the Australian Mule, MUTT has been acquired under

The US Army General Dynamics MUTT UGV is capable of multiple autonomous roles.

GENERAL DYNAMICS

ADBR

Israel has pioneered the operation of UGVs with the IAI Guardian, armed Jeep-sized vehicle (above) for patrolling the border with Gaza and the Panda (below) capable of turning a D9 bulldozer into an armoured robot . IAI

the long running Squad Multipurpose Equipment Transport (S-MET) program. Each MUTT costs around US$100,000 (A$146,000).

Like Australia, the US appreciated that, in recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers were more heavily laden than ever before. Patrolling in baking heat or arctic cold, soldiers are now often required to carry near or more than their own body weight in water, body armour, ammunition, radios, batteries, night vision equipment, medical supplies and rations.

MUTT features basic remote and autonomous operation and comes in three variants, with the larger eight-wheeled model able to carry a load of up to 550kg to support a nine-soldier squad for three days.

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Arguably the world leader in the operation of UGVs is Israel. With its particular strategic circumstances, Israel has fielded a range of systems to meet its needs. That includes the IAI Guardium, an armed Jeep-sized vehicles used for patrolling the border with Gaza.

IAI also produces the Panda, a kit which turns a Caterpillar bulldozer up to the massive D9 in size into an armoured robot with varying degrees of autonomous operation. Panda can undertake remote construction, off-road trailblazing, and removal of suspicious obstacles without risk to a human operator.

Russia’s Uran-9 armed UGV entered service at the start of 2019. This is a remote controlled tracked 10-tonne vehicle intended to provide fire support to troops using its anti-tank missiles and a 30mm gun. But the Uran-9 reportedly performed poorly during trials in Syria after repeatedly losing contact with its operator.

The Australian Army is keeping a very open mind.

A key consideration is that whatever is acquired will have to deliver an eventual benefit. It will have to be much more than just an item of cool kit. “We can do anything with enough time and enough money.

We have to target those things which are not just the low hanging fruit but the most valuable,” LTCOL Smith said, adding that the RAS Strategy defined a vision and the value proposition.

“There are no specifics about whether we want a thing that does X or Y, because that is too prescriptive,” he added. “The idea of the strategy is to take people on the journey.”

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But the strategy states this is a necessary journey. In the strategy document’s introduction, Chief of Army LTGEN Rick Burr states, “To ensure Army can maintain a capability advantage and meet future threats, we must start thinking about how Army can best use RAS capabilities, determine what human-machine teaming could look and operate like, and consider how we could operate with and alongside machines.”

This will be much more than simply acquiring new equipment. “In addition to exploring what RAS capabilities can offer, Army needs to consider what changes will need to occur to doctrine, concepts and force design to support the use of RAS capabilities,” LTGEN Burr said. “This will include adapting current acquisition processes to be more agile to ensure Army can keep up with the rapid rate of technology development and improvement.”

The central approach is learning through doing – hence the acquisition of small numbers of robots to trial and assess their capabilities to figure out their value to the defence of Australia.

The Army has trialled the Throwbot, made by US firm Recon Robotics. This is a 1.8 kilogram dumbbellshaped robot deployed by throwing, after which it scuttles into position and transmits imagery to its operator who might only be a few metres away. This is especially useful in high risk building clearance.

Then there’s the pair of quadruped robots that have been acquired to assess the value of legged robots. These robots have been named Kuga and Horrie in honour of two distinguished Australian army working dogs.

The Army has no vision of packs of robotic dogs preceding diggers into combat, and neither Kuga nor Horrie can do what a real dog can do such as sniffing out IEDs or bailing up insurgents. But they could be used to conduct surveillance in a high threat or contaminated environment. Like the more widespread program to distribute small UAS across the ADF, the idea is to get Kuga and Horrie into the hands of soldiers to see what ideas emerge.

LTCOL Smith said Army had identified a number of areas where robots could deliver a benefit, the main being lightening the soldiers’ physical and cognitive load. With the US acquiring MUTT and Australia conducting field trials of the Mule, this would appear to be closest to reality for the modern soldier.

But Army has adapted these for other uses.

“We discovered for instance that if you want to build a fuel installation you need a lot of sandbags, and moving sandbags is bloody dull, and it’s hard work,” he said.

So instead of up to a dozen soldiers, the UGV can move sandbags back and forth from fill point to where they’re needed autonomously and almost endlessly. Otherwise it can operate by remote control with a soldier providing directions, or in a follow-the-leader mode.

There are also many ways automated systems could enhance command and control. “Think

about how we fuse together all the data feeds in a headquarters,” LTCOL Smith said. “You have feeds from the different sensors, you have communications feeds, you have location data and logistic data. If we can fuse that into a rich picture autonomously, as in ‘done for you’, the human in the headquarters are using human traits – creativity, imagination, and conceptualisation, rather than processing information.

“That allows them to potentially have more time and space to make better decisions,” he added.

“I am not proposing we have AI decision makers, but certainly AI can do the hard yards.”

Russia’s armed UGV, the Uran-9, is representative of other forces’ robotic armament development, but has been met with mixed reviews after poor performance in Syria.

WIKICOMMONS

‘So, how can we use robotic and autonomous systems to help make us more present, more lethal on the battlefield? ’ That potentially means a smaller and more survivable headquarters on a future battlefield.

While well-equipped, by world standards the ADF is small, so robotic systems could enable the generation of substantial additional mass. “We are a pretty modest sized organisation,” LTCOL Smith said. “So, how can we use robotic and autonomous systems to help make us more present, more lethal on the battlefield?

“That isn’t necessarily just having a whole bunch of robots with guns,” he added. “We can have more sensors in more places and more effectors in more places, which means we can be more effective on the battlefield.”

ADBR

The Throwbot from US firm Recon Robotics has been trialled by the ADF for its tactical imagery capability in building clearance operations. RECON

One approach is the optional crewing of armoured vehicles, an advanced concept which the US Army has also investigated in its search for a replacement for its M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFV). But this effort has proved to be challenging, with the third US Army program grinding to a halt in January 2020 when just one company managed to meet the deadline to submit a prototype for evaluation.

Australia is also exploring this concept, contracting BAE Systems Australia to convert the aforementioned pair of M113 Armoured Personnel Carriers (APC). This trial came about through a fortuitous confluence of factors – BAE has a longheld interest in autonomous systems, and more than a decade ago developed the technology for autonomous operation of a Supacat vehicle.

Glenn Logan, BAE Systems Australia director of technology and product development and lead engineer on autonomous systems, said BAE had joined the Trusted Autonomous Systems CRC (Cooperative Research Centre), taking the lead role in the land autonomous side.

CRCs have been around for a long time uniting the research efforts of industry, universities, and government agencies to address particular technical and other problems. Logan said their CRC decided that what was needed was a realistic common test platform. Rather than each organisation coming up with their own platform, they could use the common platform to test their sensor or effector or system.

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“We basically looked around and came to the conclusion that with our already strong background with the M113, it made sense to us,” Logan said.

“We knew there were a lot of M113s there in good state of repair.”

The M113 is a Vietnam War-era APC. BAE conducted an extended and costly upgrade program in the late 1990s and early 2000s, modifying 431 vehicles to the more advanced and robust M113AS4 configuration. While these are probably the best M113s in the world, their basic 1960s design has left them vulnerable to modern threats so they are set for replacement from 2024 through Project LAND 400 Phase 3.

Following the release of the RAS strategy, Army has become more focused on autonomous technology, and gave the go-ahead for the conversion of the two M113s. Logan said the conversion wasn’t too difficult, requiring the integration of sensors, a datalink, an autonomous ‘black box’, an additional braking system, plus mechanical actuators for throttle, brakes and gears.

The key autonomous IP resides in the black box, steadily developed and used in a number of aircraft and vehicles including the original Supacat. A version with triple redundancy will operate flight controls on Boeing’s Loyal Wingman. This is sovereign technology, fully developed in Australia.

The Army is now considering a fleet of 20 vehicles to fully explore the concept of mass use of autonomous vehicles on the battlefield. That leads to the concept of swarming, usually applied to large number of small UAVs mutually cooperating to attack a target such as a ship.

LTCOL Smith says swarming remains immensely challenging. Even a Chinese PLA demonstration of a large number of small UAS apparently programmed to be at a particular place at a certain time did not amount to true swarming.

For that, each would need a high level of autonomy and AI through complex and expensive onboard systems. A step down is for a master drone to tell others what to do, but both options require a complex communications network.

Both BAE Systems and the Army are adamant this isn’t a plot to re-purpose the M113 fleet; it’s intended solely to explore the potential of this concept.

LTCOL Logan said, from a technology readiness level (TRL) viewpoint, the autonomous M113s are around levels six or seven. That’s pretty good, meaning the system has been validated in simulated and real environments.

“We have demonstrated it in a representative environment,” he said. “There is still a fair bit work to do to make it a viable system, but we have reduced significant technology risk around this.

“It has really helped no end that the government has really had a focus on Australian industry and allowed … a lot of people to commit time and energy and funding towards this with a sense of certainty that this is going to pay off for Australia.”

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He added that there were a whole range of scenarios where not having a crew in the vehicle was a benefit. “Obstacle breaching is the most dangerous activity in the direct fire battle zone.

If you didn’t have to have a human in the breaching vehicle, we are potentially saving a life.

“So we are just teasing through those concepts,” he added. “We are not trying to do capability development. We are trying to do concept development that leads to the user requirements to say I want to be able to do this or that.

“That is a really important point from my perspective – to try to create those ideas in people’s minds and broaden horizons and then see opportunities that are not there right now.”

These vehicles can be operated by remote control, in follow-the-leader mode, and can travel cross-country autonomously using GPS waypoints for which it needs a collision avoidance system. “It doesn’t need to be good enough to drive around a city centre. It needs to be good enough to not ram into a tree,” LTCOL Smith said. “With fairly rudimentary collision avoidance you can actually operate successfully around the battlefield.”

In a recent demonstration, to the Army’s senior advisory committee, the two robot M113s arrived at a suspected ‘enemy’ position and offloaded the robot dogs who confirmed the position was clear.

Crewed platforms then delivered soldiers forward and the soldiers then dismounted and searched the position. The soldiers subsequently discovered a

casualty who was loaded aboard one of the M113s which autonomously returned to a casualty collection point.

Casualty collection is an appealing capability. In the 1982 Falklands War, some wounded from the attack on Mount Tumbledown had to wait significant periods of time for treatment while the assault proceeded. In Afghanistan, procedures for casualty treatment and speedy evacuation were so effective that soldiers frequently recovered from wounds which would once have proved non-survivable.

LTCOL Smith said such a regime was possible in Afghanistan but might not be possible in an intense peer-on-peer conflict. “Could we do better in a future conflict? My view is that automating some of that could be useful.”

Individual health monitoring systems could summon autonomous transport to move the wounded soldier to a casualty collection point.

But a cross-country ride in a UGV could worsen a spinal injury. “There are a whole bunch of reasons why it could be very hard to do,” LTCOL Smith added. “But if you just conceptualise it for a second, it could be useful.”

The US is examining similar concepts, and the supply chain appears to offer many opportunities for robotic systems. LTCOL Smith said the current echelon supply system which is, “essentially a small pile ready to deploy at short notice, a slightly larger pile further back, and a really big pile where we think it is safe”, isn’t much different to North Africa in 1942.

The M113AS4 in action as part of an Army training exercise. BAE Systems is involved in conversion of two APCs into autonomous vehicles. ADF

ADBR

‘What is the robot doing for you, and is it better than the alternative?’

The K-Max-derived UAS developed by Lockheed Martin and Kaman Aerospace forthe US military, remote area supply applications . USMC

“We are better at it than we were then, and we deal with different volumes,” he said. “Could we do that better? If we know more about what was being consumed, we could only then move what we need to move. Could we get robotics system to deliver to vehicles? Could we refuel an IFV of the future autonomously? Of course we could. We just haven’t asked to do it.

“This comes down to what do we want the robot to do,” he added. “Do we want it to do only one thing and is it better (or safer) than a human?

This is a question we ask ourselves all the time.

What is that robot doing for you, and is it better than the alternative?”

In Afghanistan, the US military successfully trialled a pair of Kaman K-Max unmanned helicopters to transport supplies to remote outpost bases. LTCOL Smith said a similar task using UGVs would probably be too difficult given the current state of technology and the sheer complexity of the ground environment.

But many other types of resupply tasks could be performed robotically. For example, a robotic refuelling forward point for helicopters, or UGVs delivering supplies to a forward point for collection.

Defence is examining providing a degree of autonomous operation to the Army’s big trucks for long-haul convoy operations, say from Adelaide to Darwin. The lead vehicle would be driven by a human or advanced unmanned capability, with others in follow-the-leader mode.

As Army embarks on its UGV journey, there are plenty of other considerations.

One is the overall network, with compromises between the degree of autonomy and the network

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capability for re-tasking and mission updates. “The requirement for a network and the protocols, and the architecture, and the interfaces that all these systems will need to have, both from an army and a joint perspective, are really important,” LTCOL Smith said. “We can get cool robots and we can trial them, but how do we knit this together in a (whole-of-) Defence way to create a holistic capability.”

Then there’s the practical matter of controllers: would each platform require a unique controller with different protocols, or could there be a standard controller for all UGV and UAS? In some circumstances, a controller may not even be necessary. For example, the Defence Science and Technology (DST) Group is experimenting with hand gestures to control robotic systems in the field.

Any discussion of autonomous defence system inevitably leads to that old trope – killer drones. Though Defence is pursuing uncrewed capabilities across all three services, there is no program on the horizon that could allow a machine system to inflict lethal force without the input of a human operator.

Smith says defining an autonomous weapon system is hugely problematic. Phalanx close-in weapons systems (CIWS) on Navy warships can operate in autonomous mode, only because reaction times to respond to fast moving missiles are beyond the ability of humans. In an operational environment that is unlikely to endanger a passing fisherman.

In closing, the RAS strategy says there are many moral challenges that Army will need to address, including legal and ethical issues around the use of autonomous weapon systems and application of force.

“These issues primarily revolve around where the human features in the decision cycle ‘human-in-theloop,’ ‘human-on-the-loop’, or ‘human-off-the-loop’,” the strategy reads.

“All weapons systems developed and deployed by Army, including RAS, will be compliant with Australia’s obligations under international law.”

LTCOL Smith said understanding of the application of lethal force was often overlooked.

“Why do we apply lethal force? It’s to persuade, influence or create momentum on the ground,” he said. “Lethal force is generally applied as part of a mission because the armed adversary wouldn’t move, or they couldn’t be persuaded in another way to do that.

“We wouldn’t design a system we couldn’t control in the same way that we can control a human.

Sometimes it is much more powerful to not apply lethal force,” he added. “The threat of the use of forces is often enough.

“Sometimes people get carried away with the killer robot idea, but they don’t really unpack what is it they mean by an ‘autonomous’ system. We would not deploy a system that doesn’t comply with our international obligations. This is true of all systems, not just those with autonomy.”

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ISR SHOOTDOWN

GRE Y ZONE

ISR SHOOT DOWN

Reducing operational risk through teaming

BY JOHN CONWAY

A

s Western militaries finalise the long and slow withdrawal from counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism operations in the Middle East, an even more complex problem arises: the problem of re-calibrating operational risk for activities below the threshold of conventional warfare in ‘grey zone’ competition.

While the enemy in the deserts and the mountains chose to avoid direct conflict, the type of adversaries we may face in the future could even choose to deny the very existence of a conflict.

We must therefore seek an advantage through superior decision-making, and that advantage relies on understanding what is happening in both the physical and the virtual operational domains.

Grey zone conflict is nothing new – politics and war have always existed on the same continuum. But the new problem is that success in the grey zone depends on our understanding of a situation, not just awareness. Situational awareness is a dynamic, tactical phenomenon typically associated with the physical world, whereas situational understanding provides an insight into the broader asymmetries and intent in the grey, multi-domain battlespace.

Situational understanding has strategic value: it buys you time and space in all domains and originates from intelligence collection operations which enable the application of national power in

precise, targeted times and locations. This national power may be military, it may be diplomatic, or it may be economic. But in each case it requires knowledge, and it is the getting of this knowledge that carries the operational risk.

Yet history has shown that operational risk associated with intelligence collection has a habit of rapidly exploding into political and reputational risk.

Poor operational risk management manifests itself as strategic surprise, which immediately denies time and space and hands the initiative to the adversary.

Consider the following scenario: In broad daylight, in international waters over the Sea of Japan, North Korean fighter aircraft shoot down a US signals intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft. The aircraft had launched from Atsugi Naval Air Station in Japan and was scheduled to land at Osan Air Base near Seoul. The routine collection mission had occurred hundreds of times in the past, and involved long, predictable transits and orbits off the coast of the DPRK. Thirty-one US servicemen are killed in the attack. North Korea claims the aircraft penetrated sovereign airspace and was shot

‘Success in the grey zone depends on our understanding of a situation, not just awareness’

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An after-action review points out the risk of operating intelligence mission aircraft close to threat systems without adequate or ongoing force packaging.

FAST-FORWARD, REWIND

Shot down ... 31 US servicemen died when North Korean fighters attacked a Lockheed EC-121M SIGINT platform over the Sea of Japan in April, 1969.

WASHINGTONPOST.COM

down in self-defence. The Pentagon is unable to determine the circumstances of the shoot-down, and the US Administration struggles to mount a credible response. A carrier strike group sails to the area as a show of force but, lacking detailed information on North Korean intent, the US is unwilling to take further action. The Secretary of State later says the US response during the crisis was “weak, indecisive and disorganised”.

The US investigation, aided substantially by National Security Agency (NSA) insight into activities in the electromagnetic spectrum, concludes the attack was a deliberate and premeditated act of aggression by North Korea.

It highlights systemic failings in the command and management of US SIGINT collection capabilities.

This scenario actually happened on 15 April 1969. The aircraft was a Lockheed EC-121M SIGINT platform, callsign ‘Deep Sea 129’, operated by US Navy VQ-1 Squadron, and the mission was considered low risk.

Even though the EC-121M shootdown happened more than 50 years ago, the scenario could easily describe contemporary activity in the Sea of Japan or the South China Sea. This feature examines the decade in the leadup to the shootdown of Deep Sea 129 and the development of the force application model which involved the team of manned, unmanned, and space-based systems which characterised the US intelligence gathering apparatus. It highlights the ongoing role of technology, resources, and the time imperative when seeking access to an operational domain.

In conclusion, it considers the impact of operational failure and identifies the weakest link in what we today call Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) and multi-domain command and control.

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ISR SHOOTDOWN

COLD WAR DARK CLOUDS The USAF and the CIA are both a product of the same National Security Act authorised by President Truman. Signed on 26 July 1947, the Act established the foreign policy framework to fight the Cold War and sets out the priorities for winning.

For the intelligence community, the policy framework quickly yielded results. By the early 1950s Clarence ‘Kelly’ Johnson had advanced the design of the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft at Lockheed’s ‘Skunkworks’. With a similar sense of urgency the USAF Logistics Command established a covert rapid aircraft modification program office called ‘Big Safari’ at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

Johnson had previously designed the P-38 Lightning, C-49/C-121 Constellation, F-104 Starfighter, and many other successful designs.

But the USAF rejected the unusual U-2 in favour of in-house integration of proven platforms at Big Safari such as the numerous C-130 and RC-135 variants. Eisenhower, however, directed the CIA to progress with Johnson’s blueprint, and the U-2 flew its first sortie in August 1955 from Groom Lake in the Nevada Desert.

A year later a CIA-operated U-2 overflew the Soviet Union for the first time to conduct photographic reconnaissance of Red Army missile sites. But the U-2 overflights were to be short-lived: in 1957 the Soviet S-75 Dvina (NATO codename SA- 2 ‘Guideline’) surface-to-air missile (SAM) system became operational.

After four years of covert operations, the USAF was becoming increasingly concerned about the operational risk associated with the CIA’s U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union, in particular, the fate of the U-2 pilots if they were to be shot down and captured. CIA U-2 pilots were civilians, but they were all drawn from the USAF ranks, having resigned from active duty with a guarantee of a return to the USAF without loss of seniority or rank.

As concerns mounted about the SA-2, the Big Safari office engaged Ryan Aeronautical to examine alternative unmanned options for the mission. Ryan (which was acquired by Teledyne in 1969 and, 30 years later by Northrop Grumman) proposed the conversion of a Q-2C Firebee target into a strategic reconnaissance drone, and a proposal was delivered to the Air Force in April 1960.

THREATS EVENTS

Space Systems Technology Resources Time Access Manned Unmanned Systems Systems

ISR FORCE PACKAGE COLLECTION THREATS

On May Day, two weeks later, a CIA U-2 was launched from Peshawar in Pakistan to overfly Soviet missile and nuclear facilities, and land at Bodo in Norway. The U-2 was shot down by an SA-2 battery and the pilot, Gary Powers, was captured by the Soviets and would spend the next three years in prison.

The political fallout from this event was significant and prolonged. Eisenhower was forced to trade-off operational capability for political capital, and the Cold War took a turn for the worse. He immediately cancelled manned U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union and accelerated the work on satellites, while the USAF accelerated work on drones.

Operational complacency – and by extension, command – was identified as a major factor in the shootdown. The political fall-out spread to other theatres which limited CIA U-2 access and, given the immaturity of satellite technology at the time, provided a window of opportunity for the UAV.

The Lockheed U-2 was developed in secret at Groom Lake, Nevada, and performed its first operational overflight just one year after its first flight in 1956. Groom Lake is better known as Area 51. CIA

The Lockheed A-12, known by various code and project names like Oxcart, Cygnus, and Archangel, was also developed in secret at Groom Lake, The aircraft made its first flight in 1962, entered service in 1964, but was replaced in service by the USAF’s similar SR71A Blackbird in 1968 and mothballed. This rare photo show nine of the 12 A-12s built, and the sole A-12T trainer (second from right) at Groom Lake in 1963. CIA

RED WAGON Following the Gary Powers shootdown a tender was issued for a new unmanned reconnaissance system dubbed Red Wagon. The USAF were strong advocates for the UAV as was the CIA, but Red Wagon faced stiff competition from the growing power of the US space community who had by now successfully launched the Corona reconnaissance satellite, Discoverer 14 in August 1960.

Red Wagon also had to compete with another classified CIA program called Oxcart, which was a very high speed manned high-altitude reconnaissance which resulted in the Lockheed A-12, codename Archangel. The A-12 was designed to use height and speed to access the interior of the Soviet Union and China and survive the increasingly lethal SAM threat and, once again Kelly Johnson was the chief engineer. The Mach 3.5 CIA A-12 could fly at 90,000 feet, and would later evolve into the USAF’s SR-71A Blackbird.

The Red Wagon UAV project was therefore cancelled, and the USAF continued modification of its manned aircraft at Big Safari. But of greater significance was the formation of the secretive National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in 1960 to synchronise and integrate the policy, process and technology aspects of the USAF, CIA, and later US Navy’s strategic ISR platforms. And the NRO had very deep pockets.

In 1962, the NRO funded the ongoing development of the highly-classified USAF prototype Q-2C Firebee drone, which was dubbed the Model 147A FireFly. The Model 147A carried a wet film camera from the U-2, and was designed without landing gear, was launched from the wing of a modified C-130 Hercules drone control aircraft, and was recovered awkwardly by parachute.

Later the same year, US intelligence was alerted to the build-up of Soviet SA-2 SAMs and medium and intermediate range nuclear missiles in Cuba.

At this point the Corona satellite capability was still no match for the U-2, so CIA U-2 reconnaissance

missions – flown by USAF pilots this time rather than civilians – confirmed the missile locations on 14 October 1962.

Two weeks later a U-2 flown by Maj Rudolph Anderson was shot down by an SA-2. Maj Anderson was killed in the incident which once again triggered renewed interest in the unmanned FireFly, so it was prepared for immediate deployment. But then USAF Chief of Staff, Gen Curtis LeMay chose to hold it back due to the immaturity of this secretive ‘black’ program: he only had two prototypes and wanted to protect their existence from the Soviets.

So U-2 sorties over Cuba re-commenced, and the FireFly missed its chance for an operational debut. But this period would mark the beginning of an extraordinary level of UAV development for the USAF funded substantially by the NRO. As the threat and operational risks continued to escalate, the FireFly would experience a decade of successful combat employment alongside manned platforms in South-East Asia and beyond.

LIGHTNING BUG The FireFly code name was compromised in 1963, so it was re-named as the Lightning Bug. At this stage, it was still operated in strict secrecy.

Once again, it would be an international incident which would trigger the shift in the operational risk profile, and it was the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 which provided the impetus to deploy the Lightning Bug to Kadena AB in Japan. From there it overflew predominantly Chinese targets, but in 1965 its mission was expanded to Vietnam following the highprofile shootdown of a USAF F-4C Phantom east of Hanoi by an SA-2 in the early stages of Operation Rolling Thunder.

This time, the Lightning Bug would prove its utility as an expendable platform used to detect and transfer, by real-time datalink, the sequence of acquisition, tracking, guidance, and warhead fusing signals associated with the SA-2 and its radar, codenamed FANSONG.

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Teamed with manned DC-130, RB-47, or EC-121 platforms stationed over the 7th Fleet in the South China Sea, the Lightning Bug allowed the US to develop countermeasures and tactics which likely saved the lives of dozens of aircrew throughout Operations Rolling Thunder and Linebacker I and II. As in all cases, though the threat adapted and North Vietnam’s air defences improved, especially through the acquisition of the MIG21 from the Soviet Union. By 1966 the air-to-air threat forced the U-2s and other manned ISR platforms to fly further away from Hanoi and other key targets which resulted in the Lightning Bugs taking on a broader spectrum of roles and higher risk missions. The expansion in roles included high and low-altitude photographic and electronic reconnaissance, surveillance, airborne decoy, electronic warfare, SIGINT, battle damage assessment (BDA), chaff laying, and psychological operations.

Air combat activity in North Vietnam peaked in 1967 and, in early 1968, events on the ground diverted the USAF and USN air operations away from Rolling Thunder in the north to support the siege at Khe Sanh in the south. The Tet Offensive at the end of January further diverted attention, and President Johnson finally ordered a halt to the bombing campaign in April 1968. But air operations in the broader region continued, with aircraft such as the EC-121, operated by both USAF and US Navy by now, continuing the ISR missions as part of the 7th Air Force and 7th Fleet respectively.

When access allowed, manned ISR platforms such as these and the A-12, and later, the SR-71A remained the most effective and efficient way of conducting ISR missions although satellite technology, and the associated datalinks were improving rapidly under NRO direction. Unmanned systems had their utility for special missions, but still had relatively basic navigation systems and rudimentary methods for landing and takeoff, and were becoming increasingly expensive to operate.

For the time being, at least while wartime NRO budgets held up, there was a place for spacebased, manned, and unmanned capabilities.

MISSION FAIL Intelligence collection missions continued to have convoluted command and control arrangements with overall accountability shrouded in organisational complexity. For example, EC-121 SIGINT missions could be controlled by the NSA, the USAF, or US Navy, depending upon the nature of the collection.

The EC-121 shot down in 1969 was operating under an established NSA mission called ‘Beggar Shadow’, but it was actually tasked to conduct a US Navy mission in support of 7th Fleet. The profile had been flown hundreds of times before without incident, so the aircraft also contained a training crew and others planning on using the low-risk mission to take liberty in South Korea.

This time the shootdown was not caused by an SA-2 but a pair of MiG-21s. As was the case with Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson before, it was now President Nixon’s turn to deal with the political fallout and the denial of decision-making time and space.

The EC-121 was subsequently withdrawn from the mission and was replaced by the higherperformance, loosely teamed combination of manned EA-3B Skywarriors, the Lightning Bug Model 147TE (modified for the SIGINT role carrying an NSA payload with a real time datalink and a more powerful engine), and the U-2.

The shootdown also prompted the US Navy to develop a faster and more capable platform than the slow piston-engined EC-121. This new aircraft entered service in the 1970s as the Lockheed EP-3E Aries, a modified P-3 Orion. Apart from a more modern airframe, the most significant changes were the result of a specific recommendation calling for the integration of SIGINT with operational information at command and control centres, where real-time decisions could be made based on all-source inputs.

This saw the establishment of the National SIGINT Operations Centre (NSOC), which endures today as the National

A well-used Lightning Bug shown shortly after release from a DC-130 mothership.

WIKICOMMONS

‘The biggest changes in the way we conduct future ISR operations will be determined not by technology, but by humans and events’

ADBR

Security Operations Centre with its responsibilities expanded after the 11 September 2001 attacks.

By the mid-1970s satellite technology had improved to the point where it could perform digital image processing and sophisticated SIGINT missions. The NRO therefore divested itself of the U-2, SR-71A, and Lightning Bug drones and, with them, the generous budget, which by now was under intense pressure due to the cost-cutting following the Vietnam War. As the money dried up, the USAF could no longer justify the expense of operationally-limited unmanned systems, so humans were put back into higher-risk missions supported by increased investment in electronic warfare and stealth. Despite a few limited appearances in the interim period, including the Gulf War, drone advocates would have to wait until 1994 before the next significant unmanned ISR deployment, that of a Predator to Bosnia.

REWIND, FAST-FORWARD In August last year the USAF released the Next Generation ISR Dominance Flight Plan. USAF Deputy Chief of Staff for ISR, LtGen VeraLinn ‘Dash’ Jamieson, says of the Flight Plan, “the future will consist of a multi-domain, multi-intelligence, government/commercial-partnered collaborative sensing grid.”

While the Flight Plan references machine intelligence and automation in the processing of intelligence, the cross-domain collection capability

THREATS EVENTS

Space Systems Technology Resources Time Access Manned Unmanned Systems Systems

Force Protection

Force Projection

Situational Understanding

Command

COMMAND – THE WEAKEST LINK

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is still a mix of high altitude, multi-role, and spacebased platforms. The idea of teaming manned, unmanned, and space ISR assets might be over 50 years old, but many of the value-for-money trade-off decisions remain substantially the same.

But the difference now is the maturity, and the reduced cost of technology and information management. It is no longer a choice between manned or unmanned, unmanned or spacebased systems. Technology enables them to be considered as a complementary team and a system-of-systems to mitigate human limitations and meet the ever-increasing demand for decision-making advantage.

Technology enhances force application, situational understanding, force projection, and force protection functionality by allowing smarter force packaging and more flexible ways of managing operational risk. But technology alone is not the answer. There is an enduring need to adapt and synchronise the policy, legal, process, organisational, and operational elements of a multi-domain ISR effort. Unified command and control is essential to manage operational risk.

The most important factor is integration, without which the weakest link in ISR force application is exposed, forcing us to re-calibrate our operational risk and give up time and space to an adversary.

History tells us the weakest link is the command human factor. Complacency and lack of domain expertise compound errors that go unnoticed for years, the phenomenon of ‘Risky Shift’ causes groups to unknowingly tolerate a greater risk than they would have accepted as individuals, cognitive bias introduces systemic errors in our thinking, and there are many more. This weak leak provides a vector from where we can be deceived, denied, disrupted, or destroyed – the principle effects of the counter command mission.

On the other hand, failure has been central to the development of air and space power; failure which changes priorities, forces the recalibration of operational risk, and a strategic shift in investment.

Like the previous U-2 shootdowns, the EC-121M incident did not result in significant retaliation from the US or a declaration of war, but it did drive the development of the more effective, survivable, timesensitive ISR systems that we see today. It has provided us with the architecture and apparatus of our own sophisticated counter command capability.

The biggest changes in the way we conduct future ISR operations will be determined not by technology, but by humans and events. Events which start as routine ISR missions in the grey zone, but become international incidents and potential triggers for wider conflict. When the next ISR mission incident occurs in the South China Sea it will be a result of the weak link introduced by human factors. It will force us to change our calculation of risk and ask why we became complacent.

This story is not a new one.

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FEATURE TITLE

STaR SHOTS DST targets high-impact technological problems

BY MAX BLENKIN

A

s old strategic certainties become increasingly less certain, and our part of the world becomes more contested, Australia faces some problems which can only be confronted with serious science.

Take space for example. The ADF and the Australian community rely on space-delivered capability, from communications and surveillance to TV broadcasts and Google maps. Yet that means overwhelming reliance on other people’s satellites which, at crunch time, may be degraded or simply unavailable.

Australia is acquiring new submarines and antisubmarine warships, but our vast ocean surrounds still provide a haven for other people’s submarines which, in time of conflict, could halt fuel imports and exports of everything we sell.

And there’s more: while the COVID-19 pandemic has delivered a small taste of what may lie ahead, the ADF has never had to operate in a contested chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) threat environment.

To enable future ADF operations in these domains, the Defence Science and Technology

(DST) Group has come up with eight of what it calls STaR (Science, Technology and Research) Shots, a term inspired by the technological challenge in putting humans on the moon half a century ago.

The new DST Strategy – entitled More, together: Defence Science and Technology Strategy 2030 – was released in May. It intends to concentrate strategic research on a smaller number of specific and challenging problems, up there with the scale and impact of the world-leading Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN).

Chief Defence Scientist Professor Tanya Monro told ADBR this is a significant shift that DST cannot achieve on its own. “The problems Australia needs science and technology for in defence are much bigger than DST alone can solve. I am not going to be able to grow my workforce anywhere near enough. To do it we need to harness the capabilities of Australian industry and Australian universities.

“We need to much more effectively communicate the challenges and much more effectively partner.

“Partly it’s also about getting better at transitioning things out of DST – not holding on to things just because they were invented

Priority number one: delivering efficient spacebased communications, surveillance, navigation and positioning capability without reliance on international assets.

SMARTSAT

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Professor Tanya Monro, DST Chief Defence Scientist: ‘We need to much more effectively communicate the challenges, and much more effectively partner.’ DST

DST’s proud history includes development by David Warren in the 1950s of the iconic Black Box flight data recorder. DST

here but actually seeing our success as them being ‘used’ and advanced by others.”

Professor Monro says this is a big cultural shift that will take a decade.

DST is Australia’s second biggest publicly funded engineering and scientific research institution after the CSIRO. DST has about 2,100 personnel with an annual budget around $600 million against CSIRO’s 5,000 personnel and $1.6 billion. DST does its work at eight locations, with the main sites Edinburgh Parks in Adelaide and Fisherman’s Bend in Melbourne.

Australia has a rich history of defence science dating back before World War I when the Inspector of Explosives was called to troubleshoot production of .303 ammunition. Along the way, Australian defence scientists developed aircraft for WW2, participated in nuclear tests, and launched Australia’s first satellite.

One of the most recognised achievement remains the aircraft Black Box, or flight data recorder, developed by defence scientist Dr David Warren in the 1950s. Descendants of his technology are now aboard commercial and military aircraft around the world.

But much of what DST does isn’t about developing all-new defence capability. It’s about meeting particular technical challenges, such as developing anechoic tiles for the Collins submarines, or getting the best out of existing platforms and systems – fatigue testing of aircraft to determine lifespan for example.

It’s also about responding to emerging issues at short notice. DST is now front and centre of Australia’s response to COVID-19, conducting trials on virus survivability and working with universities on pandemic modelling. Notably DST, in collaboration with Adelaide company Axiom Precision Manufacturing, performed the rapid development, prototyping and production of face shields for Australian medical personnel.

That was possible because DST and Axiom engineering teams knew each other and could ramp up quickly, Professor Monro said. Axiom

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has previously produced components of Collins submarines and electronics for improvised explosive device (IED) countermeasures devices supplied to the Afghan National Security Forces.

Professor Monro says the new strategy designates a set of desired, priority capability outcomes not currently possible with existing technology and for which new science and technology are needed.

“These are things that have come through deep reflection on the strategic environment but also a lot of conversation with capability managers about what they see coming down the pipe and what they are going to need in the future,” she said. “This will engage universities and industry, ranging from the large primes to SMEs, a rich source of innovation.

“My very clear view, which has come through a lot of thinking and listening and learning, is that we are spread a bit thin … and that we need to have greater scale and focus on things only we (DST) can do.”

She added that Australia has a “fantastic R&D sector, majority-based in universities, unlike other five-eyes countries where R&D is more commonly based in industry.”

Professor Monro sees an expanding role for small innovators, SMEs and entrepreneurs in addressing the emerging challenges. She said DST’s role was to generate and translate knowledge for impact in the ADF and for Australia’s benefit.

Some of that comes from DST researchers working directly with the ADF, “but much of it is delivered through industry,” she said. “We have strategic alliances with all the big defence primes and have very clear areas of focus with them. A lot of our support inside Defence from our innovation program goes to SMEs, and that’s something I am looking to grow.”

Professor Monro said she saw significantly more innovation potential from those SMEs, though some were under pressure at the moment. “We can do more,” she said. “I am really keen to bring SMEs closer to our activity.

“That is an important thing about this new strategy,” she added. “We are developing industry pathways for the transition from the start in each of the STaR Shots. We are inviting companies big and small to join the conversation and help us develop the implementation plans.”

DST isn’t approaching its STaR Shots with any particular solution in mind. Professor Monro said she wanted this to be technologyagnostic, not considering a particular challenge and assuming it can only be solved by one type of technology.

“By articulating the problems we are trying to solve and not pre-judging what technologies will solve them, we actually open up the aperture a lot more to people with good ideas, or suggesting unexpected things, or allowing us to exploit converging technologies to create new technologies,” she said.

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A digital render of the Equitorial Australia launch facility in the Northern Territory, one of two Australian space launch sites under development.

NT GOVT

This isn’t just a new strategy for DST group.

It’s the Defence Science and Technology strategy for the whole of Defence, with the Chief Defence Scientist taking an additional role of Capability Manager for Innovation, Science and Technology across Defence.

STaR Shot number one – the one at the top of the list, not necessarily the highest priority – aims to provide “resilient global communications, position navigation and timing (PNT) and Earth observation capabilities direct to ADF users, enabled by a low earth orbit (LEO) SmartSat constellation”.

Without space-delivered communications, navigation, surveillance, and positioning, the ADF would be at a significant disadvantage. “Our heavy dependence on space capability allows us to punch well above our weight, but it’s also a potential weakness,” wrote Australian Strategic Policy Institute senior analyst Dr Malcolm Davis.

“If we lose access to space, our military won’t be able to undertake modern information operations.

Our reliance on space could be an Achilles’ heel in a conflict, and our adversaries could try to exploit that vulnerability.”

The problem is that almost all this capability is delivered through other people’s space assets.

Military communications come mostly through the US WGS satellite constellation of which Australia is a partner, and through a hosted payload on the Optus C-1 satellite which was launched in 2003 and is now well past its expected life.

SATCOM works really well, delivering reliable highbandwidth comms to meet the insatiable defence appetite for data. But in time of crisis, this could quickly become congested, degraded, or unavailable.

The ADF does have a communications alternative through an HF system which will soon undergo an upgrade through the JP9101 EDHFCS project.

But positioning and navigation comes by way of the US GPS satellite constellation, again super reliable but also likely to be a prime target at the

outbreak of any future conflict. It’s not for nothing that others have developed their own sovereign satellite navigation capabilities – China with Beidou, Russia’s Glonast, and the European Galileo systems.

Surveillance – like navigation and positioning – is as much a civilian issue as it is for the military.

GPS delivers vital civil services, from navigation to agriculture and mining. For civil and military surveillance, Australia relies on multiple providers, none of which we could really call our own. This isn’t always to our advantage – for example other people could see imagery of our crop yields before we do, and there were no satellites available for dedicated monitoring of the recent 2019/2020 bushfires.

So what to do? Australia needs its own satellites along with a launch capability. Neither is far beyond reach, tied in with the national civil space renaissance marked by formation of the Australian Space Agency in 2018.

‘If we lose access to space, our military won’t be able to undertake modern information operations’ Two commercial launch sites are in development: the Equatorial Launch Australia facility in the Northern Territory, and Southern Launch in South Australia. However, at crunch time, launches can be just as easily conducted from an Outback paddock.

DST is a core partner in the new SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), launched last year to unite research organisations, universities, primes, and SMEs in the development of new satellite capabilities. With a government contribution of $55 million, SmartSat has total research funding of $250 million.

Professor Monro said this was an exemplar of what DST is trying to do. “We have taken a defence

ADBR

The Compact Hybrid OpticalRF user terminal know as CHORUS, a collaboration between DST and SmartSat. SMARTSAT

DST is using the Slocum Glider, a small commercially available, undersea vehicle capable of long-term monitoring of oceanographic parameters, to develop, assess and demonstrate cost-effective approaches to unmanned undersea surveillance for the ADF. DST

problem, we have taken some defence money, and we have been able to align agendas and resources and leverage investment from industry and from government and from universities to the same end. That’s exciting.”

Professor Monro said developing a sovereign satellite and launch capability was well aligned with the national resilience agenda. “This technology step to moving to a constellation of what can be self-healing, reconfigurable multi-purpose small satellites, is something that breaks down some of the hurdles that have kept Australia out of space,” she said.

“It is a much lower cost point and you can adapt it as you go. It’s also a leap ahead in terms of capability. The intent is to have the user on the ground to be able to get information directly from the cloud without having to go through ground stations.”

Defence has already taken significant steps.

In May, it signed an agreement with Queensland company Gilmour Space Technologies to develop rocket technology to launch small satellites. The Office of National Intelligence has also issued a request for tender for a provider of research and engineering services for development, test, launch and operation of a prototype smart satellite.

Also, in May DST announced its first collaborative venture through the SmartSat CRC to research integration of laser-based optical and radio frequency communications technologies in a single SATCOM user terminal. Known as the Compact Hybrid Optical-RF User Segment – or CHORUS – this venture aims to address congestion in the RF spectrum by developing a capability for secure laser communication to and from satellites.

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The STaR Shot for remote undersea surveillance says the challenge is to develop above and below water sensors, information processing, communication, and data fusion systems to provide remote surveillance of undersea environments over Australia’s area of maritime responsibility.

The obvious answer is autonomous vessels.

Professor Monro said she often had to restrain her enthusiastic and capable scientists because they jumped to a solution.

“It’s easy to think what we need are autonomous vessels of this or that kind. I am sure autonomous vehicles will play a critical role in any solution,” she said. “But there might be some clever things we can do with other forms of sensing technology with other forms of information technology that might still give us a solution on how do we surveil to protect Australia’s interests.

“It’s a good problem,” she added. “Again I am always just forcing this discipline to not assuming it is going to be this or that technology. Paint the problem.”

Professor Monro notes that autonomous capabilities feature in a number of the STaR Shots, with the intent of keeping humans out of harm’s way and maximising the ability of a small defence force to operate over a vast area.

Constellations of small military satellites and a capability to spot submarines far out in the Indian or Southern Ocean might seem just a little farfetched, even in this era of strategic uncertainty.

However, Professor Monro says all of these STaR Shots came together when it was decided that the focus really needed to be prevailing in a contested environment.

“Once you take that central concept, which is very powerful in the current strategic context, it’s ... no longer about discrete named operations. This is about that grey zone of increased global uncertainty.

We need to be able to protect Australia’s interests.”

Professor Monro came to DST in March last year – the first female to hold this position – succeeding Dr Alex Zelinsky. Her appointment followed a distinguished career in academia, researching optoelectronics in Australia and the UK. She attributes her interest in science to an inspirational high school teacher, and that has translated into a passion for STEM and lifting the national level of STEM literacy.

This isn’t just about getting more students into research labs. “I want us to have a society where more of our decision makers can look at evidence and make evidence-based decisions and understand and interpret data,” she said. “I find it quite terrifying how poor we are culturally in that regard and that it is acceptable in many social contexts for people to say they are no good at maths. I have never heard anyone say they couldn’t read and feel proud of that.

There is some weird societal thing there.

“We can change it, but we have to start young.

We have to somehow blast out of the water the idea that science is hard and maths is hard, because it does us a real harm.”

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COLLABORATIVE TARGETING

OFFBOARD ONBOARD

E

merging long-range, high-speed threats are placing a premium on networking to enable disparate sensors and weapons to detect, track and engage.

In the ongoing global defence buzzword bingo tournament, few phrases score better than ‘collaborative targeting’. Augmenting endless industry and program PowerPoint presentations, this missive is usually flanked by pictograms where outsized platforms stalk the airspace, coastline and territory of an

unidentifiable nation linked together with brightly-coloured arrows.

But search for a workable definition of the phrase and one is disappointed. Even the bible of military phraseology – the US Department of Defense’s Dictionary of Military Terms – contains no definition. Instead, one is driven to compose one’s own interpretation, which for the purpose of this article, will define collaborative targeting as the use of offboard and onboard sensors, communications systems, kinetic or electronic effectors to engage targets originating from over-the-horizon ranges.

ADBR

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ENGAGEMENT

The latest developments in collaborative targeting

BY DR THOMAS WITHINGTON

The RAN’s ‘Hobart’ class employs the AN/USG-7B variant of the CEC hardware allowing these ships to participate in the US Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability. RAN

IN THE BEGINNING Collaborative targeting is not new. Indirect fire is arguably its ancestor, and the desire to blindly engage an enemy while remaining unseen is as old as warfare itself. Milton Wylie Humphreys took an important step towards the formalisation of indirect fire during the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865.

Humphreys enlisted in the Confederate Army in March 1862, initially serving with Bryan’s Battery of the 13th Virginia Light Artillery. It was during engagements with the Union Army in West Virginia that Humphreys had the opportunity to test

the theories of indirect fire which he had been formulating. During one attack on a Federal fort he calculated the elevation required for his guns to shoot over pine trees shielding his position from visual detection based on his knowledge of the target’s range from his guns, and the range of his own weapons.

This was an exercise in trigonometry. Humphreys was able to visualise his engagement of the fort as an obtuse triangle. The triangle’s horizontal side resting on the ground was the range from the gun to the fort, the hypotenuse was the trajectory of the shell as it left the gun.

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COLLABORATIVE TARGETING

The magic number for Humphreys was the third side of the triangle from where the shell met its maximum range, lost energy and would drop onto the target: Assuming that the fort was a range of 4km from Humphreys’ guns, and that his cannons had a maximum range of 5km, he would need to ensure that his cannons had an elevation of circa 38 degrees to give the shells a chance of falling onto the fort. To provide further assistance, Humphreys positioned an artillery observer on a nearby hill who could see the target and advise on adjustments to the gun’s positions to improve the accuracy of the fire.

The historical record says that Union troops experienced relatively light losses of two killed, nine missing and seven wounded. The main damage, however, may have been psychological; union troops could not determine where the fire was coming from.

Humphreys had effectively devised indirect fire in its modern form, and even used the term to describe his action. Yet he was modest, saying “I claim no credit for the invention, the thing is so obvious. In fact, if I invented it, I did not do it at Fayetteville, but in my daydreams when I was about eight years old.”

THE MISSILE AGE Collaborative targeting takes the principles pioneered

by Humphreys and others, such as the Russian Army’s Lieutenant Colonel KG Guk who, in 1882, took the concept a step further when he published Field Artillery Fire from Covered Positions.

The principle has a similar approach: to engage targets which may be out of detection and tracking range either visually, optronically or electromagnetically, of the platform performing the kinetic engagement.

Collaborative targeting has three components; the sensor detecting the target, the platform or effector engaging the target, and a battle management/command and control component to coordinate the engagement and the communications necessary to knit these elements together.

While artillery was the main driver for the development of indirect fire techniques, it is the threat posed by ballistic and hypersonic missiles which is arguably

‘Humphreys had effectively devised indirect fire in its modern form’

spurring the development of collaborative targeting approaches, and nowhere is this arguably more apparent than the naval domain.

Ballistic and hypersonic missiles pose unique challenges as they can travel long distances at high speeds. Ballistic missile speeds vary according to the phase of their flight.

They are travelling at their slowest during the boost phase immediately after launch when they are flying upwards through the atmosphere. They will accelerate as they reach their mid-course phase as the missile reaches apogee, and then begins its fall towards earth. Finally, the terminal phase is when the warhead has detached from the rest of the missile and is descending rapidly towards its target.

A Short-Range Ballistic Missile (SRBM) which will typically have a range of under 540nm/1,000km and may reach average speeds of 2,915kts.

Medium-Range Ballistic Missiles (MRBM) can reach distances from 540nm to 1,619nm/3,000km and speeds of 4,859kts, and Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) can hit speeds of 9,719kts across ranges of 1,619nm to 2,970nm/5,500km.

By far the fastest are Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) with ranges above 2,970nm which can reach velocities of 12,959kts.

Regarding ICBMs, a Russian RS-24 Yars/ Topol-MR (NATO reporting name SS-27 Mod.2/

Hypersonic missiles are emerging as major threats, particularly in the maritime domain. The ability to network multiple platforms, sensors and weapons to combat them is essential. US DOD

ADBR

Russia’s 9K720 Iskander (NATO reporting name SS26 Stone) can cover long distances in a comparatively short time; precisely the sort of threats that collaborative targeting techniques could be optimised for. VITALY KUZMIN

SS-29) missile fired from Teykovo in western Russia, would take a mere six minutes to travel the 1,442nm/2,671km to London.

The situation is similarly vexing regarding hypersonic threats. Hypersonic missiles can reach speeds over 3,333kts. While not quite matching the velocities of their ballistic missile counterparts, they can nonetheless, achieve impressive ranges. Russia’s NPO Mashinostroyeniya 3M22 Zircon (NATO reporting name SS-N-33) reportedly can hit speeds of 5,953kts across distances of up to 270nm/500km. If such reports are true, this would mean that the 3M22 could hit a target at its maximum range in just two minutes and 43 seconds.

These timings provide a guideline as to how quickly one must navigate Colonel John Boyd’s famous OODA Loop (Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act) to detect a ballistic or hypersonic missile and engage it successfully. As one can see, in such scenarios time is of the essence, but is not the only complicating factor.

To successfully intercept such a target, rapid detection and tracking is essential. This translates

Missile

Maximum range

Speed

Flight time for maximum range

SRBM

540nm

2,915kts

11 minutes

MRBM

1,619nm

4,859kts

20 minutes

IRBM

2,970nm

9,719kts

18 minutes

Hypothetical flight times of different ballistic missile types based on their maximum range and average speed.

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into the ability to detect the target as soon after launch as possible, and here things get complicated.

Ballistic missiles are typically detected using two mechanisms – satellite-based infrared sensors which spot the hot exhaust plume of the missile as it launches and begins its flight, and ground-based air surveillance radars or their ship-based counterparts.

OTH radars can ‘see’ distances of thousands of nautical miles and are able to look deep into hostile territory to spot a missile launch. This is achieved by using High Frequency transmissions (3MHz to 30MHz) which cannot penetrate the ionosphere, an ionised layer of the atmosphere between 60km and 1,000km above the Earth’s surface. Instead they are bounced back to the ground beyond the curvature of the Earth, hitting flying objects like ballistic missiles as they go. The transmissions bounce back to the radar as echoes, registered as targets and tracked.

However, OTH radars such as the Australia’s Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN), which transmits on frequencies of 5MHz to 30MHz to provide instrumented ranges of between 540nm and 1,619nm, are large contraptions which must be housed at a fixed site. For example, JORN uses four transmitters located in Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia. This means that fixed OTH radars can only look at a specific area, typically where a threat is expected to come from – in JORN’s case the northern and north-western approaches to Australia.

Warships offer a perfect platform for a deployable radar which can detect ballistic missile launches as and when they occur near their point of origin.

Ideally, the best time to intercept a ballistic missile is when it is at its slowest and lowest during the boost phase. Lockheed Martin’s AN/SPY-1 series of S-band (2.3GHz to 2.5GHz/2.7GHz to 3.7GHz) naval surveillance radars offer instrumented ranges in excess of 100nm/185km, while Thales’ SMART-L L-band (1.215GHz to 1.4GHz) radar takes this detection range to 1,079nm/2,000km for ballistic missiles.

SCENARIOS Collaborative targeting not only assists with ballistic missile interceptions, it is also a valid technique for engaging conventional air-breathing targets.

Consider this scenario: A Royal Australian Navy Hobart class destroyer is underway in international waters off the coast of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Suddenly, her AN/SPY1D radar detects several aircraft which have taken off from known Korean People’s Army Air Force (KPAAF) airbases. Anti-Air Warfare (AAW) officers onboard watch their radar screens.

It soon becomes apparent that a large armada of aircraft is assembling over the DPRK and is heading south-west into the Yellow Sea. The AAW officers are now closely watching the aircraft which have switched

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off their transponders and have turned on a south/ south-west heading towards Taiwan. To make matters worse some of the aircraft are attempting crude, yet largely ineffective, electronic warfare (EW).

For all intents and purposes the intentions of the KPAAF aircraft appear hostile, but as they are flying in international airspace and, with the exception of deactivating their transponders and performing some half-hearted EW, have yet to perform a hostile act. It is impossible to say at this stage whether the KPAAF’s actions are aggressive or merely an exercise, which prevents the destroyer from being authorised to take any offensive action against the aircraft.

To the south a pair of US Navy Arleigh Burke Flight-III destroyers is underway in Taiwanese territorial waters. The ships have just been performing exercises with their Republic of China Navy counterparts, despite predictable opposition from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). They have continued to patrol in Taiwanese waters with the blessing of the Taiwanese government, while demonstrating US commitment to the bilateral Taiwan Relations Act. Both the US destroyers are equipped with Raytheon’s AN/SPY-6(V)1 S-band/X-band (8.5GHz to 10.68GHz) naval surveillance radar. The instrumented range for the AN/SPY-6(V)1 has not been published, yet some reasonable calculations in the public domain have speculated that it could detect and track a ballistic missile target at distances of almost 300nm/550km.

For now the KPAAF aircraft remain outside the gaze of these radars. Nonetheless, the US ships receives notification from the Hobart class that the aircraft are heading in their direction. This gives the crew valuable additional moments to prime their radars to detect the aircraft and ready the ship’s Raytheon RIM-66 SM2 and RIM-162 ESSM series SAMs to intercept the jets.

CEC NETWORK This fictious, though plausible, scenario typifies the philosophy behind collaborative targeting. It is this philosophy which is at the heart of the US Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC). The CEC is a communications network which allows aircraft and warships to share their radar data with one another in real time. This improves the detection of air and missile targets, and the coordination of the response to such threats.

Navies can already share track information regarding targets between warships and aircraft using protocols such as the Link-11 (2MHz to 29.9MHz, 225MHz to 399.975MHz) and Link16 (960MHz-1.215GHz) tactical datalinks used throughout NATO and allied forces.

While the exchange of track and other tactical data is intrinsic to deepening theatre-wide situational awareness and improving command

and control, CEC takes this a step further by enabling the radar picture to be shared between platforms, providing an even deeper level of comprehension.

The architecture of the CEC would merit an article by itself, although it is possible to summarise how the capability works. Raytheon is leading the initiative which will see an array of surface vessels, aircraft, and land-based radars belonging to the USN and USMC equipped with the AN/USG-2/3/4 CEC Common Equipment Set (CES). The AN/ USG-3 will equip the US Navy’s Northrop Grumman E-2D Hawkeye AEW&C aircraft, accompanying its Lockheed Martin AN/APY-9 Ultra High Frequency (UHF: 420MHz to 450MHz/890MHz to 942MHz) radar letting the E-2C share its air and maritime radar picture in real time.

Likewise, surface vessels will use the AN/ USG-2 to convert and share their radar imagery, for example allowing a Ticonderoga class cruiser to see the radar picture generated by the Raytheon AN/SPY-3 X-band multifunction radar furnishing the USN’s new Gerald Ford class aircraft carriers.

An example of the AN/ SPY-6 is seen here undergoing tests in Hawaii.

The radar represents a notable enhancement in US Navy anti-ballistic missile capabilities. RAYTHEON

‘The RAN...to date is the only force beyond the USN to have received the CEC capability’

ADBR

Part of Australia’s JORN radar is shown here. This complex of several large arrays can look thousands of miles beyond Australian territory but is neither mobile nor transportable.

BAE SYSTEMS

Even land-based radars such as the USMC’s Northrop Grumman AN/TPS-80 G/ATOR (Ground/ Air Oriented Task Radar) S-band ground-based air surveillance radar will be linked into the CEC network using the AN/USG-4 kit.

Capabilities used by other services can also plug into the CEC. The US Army’s Raytheon Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defence Elevated Netted Sensor System – better known as JLENS – is an aerostat-based Very High Frequency (133MHz to 144MHz/216MHz to 225MHz) airborne surveillance radar and X-band fire control radar. It is capable of detecting surface-to-surface cruise missiles, lowflying aircraft, and surface vessels at ranges of up to 300nm/550km, and can connect to the network using the AN/USG-5 system.

These CESs possess the necessary hardware and software to form the CEC network in the form of the Cooperative Engagement Processor (CEP) which turns the platforms’ analogue radar data into secure traffic, which is then sent to the equipment’s Data Distribution System (DDS). While there appears to be no specific details in the public domain, it is reasonable to assume that this radar imagery is then shared with other platforms across secure V/UHF (30MHz to 3GHz) wideband line-ofsight datalinks.

The DDS also receives radar data from other CEC-equipped platforms in the network, converts this information from digital to analogue formats which can be viewed by the crew in the operations room. Such is the quality and timeliness of the radar imagery that can be shared across the CEC, that the US Navy says it will be sufficient to enable the offboard targeting of weapons against OTH threats.

The RAN has performed a series of tests to evaluate the performance of the CEC architecture outfitting the Hobart class vessels and their USN counterparts and, to date, is the only force beyond the USN to have received the CEC capability.

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During 2019 both HMAS Hobart and HMAS Brisbane participated in live fire surface-to-air missile tests involving US Navy warships off the US west coast, demonstrating the abilities of these vessels to send and receive radar imagery over the CEC. During a test in October 2019 HMAS Brisbane performed a live SAM test using data sent remotely over the CEC, while in 2018 HMAS Hobart demonstrated her ability to send and receive radar imagery between her and the USS John Finn using the CEC during exercises in the US Pacific Test Range off Hawaii. The Hobart class uses the AN/USG-7B variant of the AN/USG-2 terminal earmarked for non-US naval vessels.

Other platforms in the Australian armed forces earmarked to receive CEC terminals include the RAAF’s Boeing E-7A Wedgetail AEW&C aircraft, plus the RAN’s planned nine Hunter class frigates.

NEXT STEPS The RAN and US Navy are not the only two forces looking to exploit the advantages collaborative targeting brings. The French Navy is moving ahead with its Veille Coopérative Navale (VCN/Naval Cooperative Surveillance) project.

Much like CEC, VCN will let aircraft and vessels in a task group share their radar pictures for the engagement of OTH targets using offboard sensors and effectors. Radar imagery will be carried across the French Navy’s RIFAN-2 (Réseau IP de la Force Aero Navale/Naval Aviation and Internet Protocol Network) V/UHF communications.

Trials of the VCN involving Horizon and Aquitaine class frigates and the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle have already been performed.

The French Navy expects the VCN to be declared fully operational onboard these ships by 2022, with the capability rolled out across the rest of the fleet thereafter.

Likewise, the Indian Navy is moving ahead with a collaborative targeting initiative and, in 2019 performed tests off India’s west coast during which Israel Aerospace Industries’ (IAI) Barak-8 active radar homing SAMs were launched using radar data shared between the navy’s Kolkata class destroyers INS Chenai and INS Kochi, with one ship passing radar imagery from their IAI EL/M-2248 S-band naval surveillance radar to the other.

Basketball legend Michael Jordan once said that “talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.” Jordan’s maxim is as applicable to combat as it is to the court. Individual platforms, sensors and weapons will always face limits in their ability to engage high-speed threats with OTH ranges. Bringing these platforms, sensors and weapons together immediately makes them stronger than the sum of their parts. Initiatives such as the CEC, and its counterparts, mark an important step in this direction.

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LINK 16 MODERNISATION

INF OR M AT ION A D VA N TA GE

LINK 16 MODERNISATION Link 16 Modernisation Challenges and Risks

BY FELIX DEFENCE

I

n the pursuit of an information advantage to meet the increasingly complex need for decision advantage, one of the key challenges is to improve capability without endangering interoperability.

This feature analyses Link 16 and its modernisation in detail. It examines the effect upon a user’s Tactical Data Link (TDL) capability and the impact, both good and bad, on allied and coalition interoperability.

Link 16 remains the ADF and US Department of Defense’s primary TDL and is essential in enabling secure situational awareness, integrated fire control and command and control capabilities. Consequently, any change must be carefully managed across the services to ensure the ADF strengthens its capability edge while remaining interoperable with our closest operational partner – the United States. And change is on its way.

WHY MODERNISE? In contemporary networks, system and cyber security threats continue to evolve which could lead to Link 16 being unable to operate in a highly contested environment, or worse still, – a denial of the capability.

Furthermore, the demands on Link 16 networks from the user community continues to grow, both through the addition of new Link 16-equipped platforms and the introduction of new command and control capabilities. This drives a huge increase in information exchange requirements and the ability to exchange time critical data. In essence, Link 16 is being modernised to enhance survivability and manage the increased demand on Link 16 networks.

WHAT IS LINK 16 MODERNISATION? In simple terms, Link 16 modernisation introduces four new enhancements to the Link 16 terminal/ radio which will be described in detail. The four enhancements are Cryptographic Modernisation (CM), Frequency Remapping (FR), Enhanced Throughput (ET) and finally Concurrent Multi-Netting (CMN)-4. Both ET and CMN-4 are described as advanced capabilities with the latter providing dual functionality in concurrent multi-netting and concurrent contention receive.

However, these enhancements must be applied to a variety of Link 16 terminals in operational use and each variety includes several variants. These range from the older hardware defined terminals such as the MIDS Low Volume Terminal (LVT) variants through to several software defined radios (SDR). While there are numerous SDR on the market supporting a range of requirements, the SDR of choice is the MIDS Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS). To compound this mix of terminals/radios further, some platforms employ their own proprietary system to exchange Link 16 information. For instance, the fifth-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is fitted with the Communications, Navigation and Identification (CNI) system.

‘In contemporary networks, system and cyber security threats continue to evolve’

ADBR

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LINK 16 MODERNISATION

CRYPTOGRAPHIC MODERNISATION

ENHANCE SURVIVABILITY

FREQUENCY REMAPPING

LINK 16 TERMINAL/RADIO

ENHANCED THROUGHPUT Advanced Capabilities CONCURRENT MULTI-NETTING-4

CRYPTOGRAPHIC MODERNISATION Cryptographic modernisation (CM) is an ongoing wide-reaching joint effort, led by the US Defense Department and National Security Agency (NSA) to enable information assurance and thus improve secure data exchange. And it’s not just Link 16 terminals and the associated cryptographic key devices that are affected; it’s every single radio and crypto device that the US, coalition and allied armed forces employ.

For Link 16, CM provides increased security by introducing a new software-defined cryptographic chip. This chip is either pre-installed on the newer SDR Link 16 radios or replaces the existing cryptographic chip within the MIDS-LVT. The older chips used the same fixed algorithm that could not be changed and was therefore unable to meet the dynamic threats that tactical data exchange faces.

However, this is not true of the new chip. Ultimately, CM is the most important of all four enhancements, in that it enhances survivability and by doing so maintains essential allied and coalition capability.

FREQUENCY REMAPPING As described in the January/February edition of ADBR, Link 16 terminals/radios operate, or hop, across 51 frequencies but also share the frequency band with civilian aeronautical radio navigation systems. Within the US, an agreement has been reached to implement from 1 January 2025 a process where up to 14 of the 51 Link 16 frequencies can be used by civilian systems.

However, this use is authorised during peacetime within specific regions in continental US airspace only.

MANAGE INCREASED DEMAND

Frequency Remapping (FR) is set during the network design process and is where the network designer prohibits up to 14 of the 51 frequencies.

Those frequencies which are prohibited, are thus agreed for use by civilian systems that will operate in the same geographical region as the Link 16 user.

This deconfliction allows those civilian systems to operate knowing that Link 16 users will not cause any detrimental effect and hence ensure flight safety.

So how does FR actually work? The word remapping is key. A FR algorithm is incorporated within all Link 16 terminals/radios to enable this functionality. When the terminal hops in accordance with the discrete frequency-hopping pattern set by the transmission security (TSEC) and is due to hop on a prohibited frequency, the FR algorithm simply remaps the transmission to an authorised frequency.

This is seamless and transparent to the user.

ENHANCED THROUGHPUT Enhanced Throughput (ET) is a capability to transmit more data and by doing so helps manage the increased demand on Link 16 networks. The data portion of each Link 16 time slot can be packed using one of the four packing structures, with each packing structure allowing between 3 and 12 words to be transmitted. ET introduces five new packing structures allowing between 40 and 123 words to be transmitted within the data portion of a single time slot. The more words that can be packed within a time slot, the more data a Link 16 platform can transmit.

ET introduces five new packing structures allowing

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LINK 16 MODERNISATION

7.8125ms

ET Rate 4

SYNC

TIME REFINEMENT

HEADER

DATA 123 WORDS ONCE

PROPOGATION/ GUARD

41 x Air Tracks Once

ET Rate 3

SYNC

TIME REFINEMENT

HEADER

DATA 108 WORDS ONCE

PROPOGATION/ GUARD

36 x Air Tracks Once

ET Rate 2

SYNC

TIME REFINEMENT

HEADER

DATA 93 WORDS ONCE

PROPOGATION/ GUARD

31 x Air Tracks Once

ET Rate 1

SYNC

TIME REFINEMENT

HEADER

DATA 61 WORDS ONCE

PROPOGATION/ GUARD

20 x Air Tracks Once

ET Rate 0

SYNC

TIME REFINEMENT

HEADER

DATA 40 WORDS ONCE

PROPOGATION/ GUARD

13 x Air Tracks Once

Pack 4 Single Pulse (P4SP)

SYNC

TIME REFINEMENT

HEADER

DATA 12 WORDS ONCE

PROPOGATION/ GUARD

4 x Air Tracks Once

Pack 2 Double Pulse (P2DP)

SYNC

TIME REFINEMENT

HEADER

DATA 6 WORDS TWICE

PROPOGATION/ GUARD

2 x Air Tracks Twice

Pack 2 Single Pulse (P2SP)

JITTER PERIOD

SYNC

TIME REFINEMENT

HEADER

DATA 6 WORDS ONCE

PROPOGATION/ GUARD

2 x Air Tracks Once

Standard Double Pulse (STD-DP)

JITTER PERIOD

SYNC

TIME REFINEMENT

HEADER

DATA 3 WORDS TWICE

PROPOGATION/ GUARD

1 x Air Track Once

between 40 and 123 words to be transmitted within the data portion of a single time slot. We already know that the more words that can be packed within a time slot, the more data a Link 16 user can transmit.

Figure 2 illustrates the relationship between packing structures, number of data words and approximate throughput based upon the J3.2 Air Track message.

This 10-fold increase while allowing a considerable increase in throughput, is not as straightforward as it sounds. While the terminal/radio may be equipped with this capability the user’s host system also needs to be modernised to enable the ET capability. The user’s host system now has to manage not only a large increase in data when transmitting, but also when receiving from other ET-capable platforms.

Furthermore, there are several other disadvantages when ET is employed.

Firstly, signal to noise ratio is affected and as such this reduces the effective range of Link 16.

Secondly, the anti-jam features inherent within Link 16 are significantly reduced and this decreases survivability. Finally, the use of ET and the standard packing structures must be managed at the network design stage to ensure all platforms that are both transmitting and receiving within the same time slot are capable of the packing structure used. For example, if a platform employed one of the ET rates and the receiving platform was not capable, the receiving platform would simply discard the data.

The result being a loss of situational awareness with the transmitting platform not knowing their data was never received and the receiving platform never knowing that data was transmitted.

CONCURRENT MULTI-NETTING (CMN)-4 Concurrent Multi-Netting (CMN)-4 is the capability to receive more data and, once again, assists in managing increased demand. CMN-4 comprises two capabilities, concurrent multinetting and concurrent contention receive. It is important to remember that all Link 16 terminals/ radios operate in semi-duplex mode in that when transmitting they cannot receive and vice-versa.

Existing hardware defined terminals such as the MIDS-LVT only have a single Link 16 receiver and thus a user can only be on one FHP/net number per time slot, limiting network functionality.

Users could be separated by net number during network design, and as a consequence a receiving platform could only tune their single receiver to one net number and only receive one transmission within the time slot. CMN-4 adds three further Link 16 receivers (not to be confused with channels) and has been introduced as a capability within the MIDS-JTRS terminal only.

CONCURRENT MULTI-NETTING Concurrent Multi-Netting (CMN) allows a user to receive on up to 4 net numbers per time slot at the same time. During the network design process, the network designer sets each of the 4 receivers to receive data within the same time slot on 4 different net numbers, and by doing so increases the amount of data the user can receive.

DATA THROUPUT

PACKING STRUCTURE

TIME SLOT

ADBR

AN EXAMPLE OF CCR

AN EXAMPLE OF CMN

Four Link 16 receivers each set to receive data at the same time, in the same time slot, on the same net number (Net Number 1).

Four Link 16 receivers each set to receive data at the same time, in the same time slot, on different net numbers.

LINK LINK 16 NETWORK 16 NETWORK

LINK LINK 16 NETWORK 16 NETWORK

Net 127 Net 127

Net 127 Net 127

Net 3Net 3

Net 3Net 3

Net 2Net 2

Net 2Net 2

Net 1Net 1

Net 1Net 1

Net 0 Net 0

Net 0 Net 0

12-second 12-second frame frame

Channel Channel 1 1 - Link- Link 16 16

12-second 12-second frame frame

MIDS-JTRS MIDS-JTRS

CONCURRENT CONTENTION RECEIVE CMN-4 also introduces a simultaneous benefit – Concurrent Contention Receive (CCR).

Contention is when users share a specific time slot on a specific net number to transmit data.

Prior to the introduction of CCR, when more than one platform employed contention they transmitted data at the same time within the same time slot on the same net number. The result being the receiving platform would only receive the closest transmission otherwise known as closest terminal capture.

With the introduction of CMN-4, the receiving platform can now receive up to four transmissions either on 4 different net numbers, or alternatively on the same net number and by doing so greatly improve their situational awareness. A further benefit of CMN-4 is that during the network design process, two receivers could be set to employ CMN and the remaining two set to CCR. However, CMN-4 is a feature that is limited to only those platforms equipped with MIDS-JTRS, which begs the question, “so what?”

In short, we now have the situation with Link 16 platforms operating a variety of terminals/radios, but

‘No matter the path chosen, all users must implement cryptographic modernisation’

Channel Channel 1 1 - Link- Link 16 16

MIDS-JTRS MIDS-JTRS

they all have vastly different capabilities. When platform and terminal interoperability is affected, it affects operational capability and the ADF’s ability to be fully interoperable with our coalition and allied partners.

HOW TO MODERNISE There are basically two ways in which to modernise, either upgrade the current MIDSLVT or procure the SDR of choice, a MIDSJTRS. However, how to reach that decision has many contributing factors ranging from cost and availability through to how long a platform will remain in service. No matter the path chosen, all users must implement cryptographic modernisation (CM).

Frequency remapping (FR) has no effect on operational capability and any user who implements CM is FR-enabled as part of the modernisation process anyway. It is the choice on whether to implement ET and CMN-4 that must be carefully managed. To choose not to implement these advanced capabilities will undoubtedly result in the platform becoming a disadvantaged user within modernised Link 16 networks.

In the next article, we shall explore further how capability managers can manage Link 16 modernisation to ensure that they continue to grow their capability, but not at the detriment of interoperability. After all, a platform that is not interoperable may just as well be operating on their own.

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The PLN Type039 Song class submarine, successor to the older Type035A, B and G boats. CHINA MIL

The INS Shakra Shakra,, a Russian (NATO designated Akula class) attack sub leased by the Indian Navy.

INDIA NAVY

Singapore’s Type218SG believed to be based on the Type216 and with a rudder design suited to shallower waters.

SINGAPORE NAVY

ADBR

OSINT

QUIETER, FASTER, FURTHER Inside the race to develop more potent regional submarine forces

BY PETER KNOTT

M

odern diesel-electric submarine technology has improved by leaps and bounds in recent years. Newer classes of such boats are getting quieter and have the ability to move faster, further from land, and to stay at sea for longer periods, arguably outstripping the ability of anti-submarine forces to find them.

That has not escaped the notice of regional military planners, and one of the features of the recent military build-up in the Asia Pacific has been a steady build-up of regional submarine forces. This is hardly surprising, given that the region is primarily maritime in nature, with long coastlines, extensive littoral zones, natural chokepoints, vital maritime trade routes, and natural resources found in its waters.

Throw in myriad territorial disputes over islands and features – mostly involving an increasingly assertive regional power whose behaviour skirts close to the line into bellicosity, and a superpower that is struggling to extricate itself from the Middle East and is increasingly flirting with isolationism despite being allies or security partners with many regional nations – and you get a formula for an increasingly edgy region seeking to bolster its maritime capabilities.

While admittedly of little use in fisheries disputes or anti-piracy operations, an underwater warfare capability has the potential to be a game changer in a sea-denial, or the Anti-Access, Area Denial (A2/AD) mission. Knowing that there is potentially an adversarial underwater threat lurking beneath

the waves would give any surface warfare officer pause and complicate their calculus, turning even a modest submarine into a force-multiplier in a maritime conflict.

CHINA Back during the Cold War, China’s submarines were regarding as something of a joke, often being derided as noisy and unreliable, both fatal flaws in the world of submarine warfare. That is no longer the case, with China’s nuclear and conventionally-powered attack and ballistic missile submarines understood to have improved by leaps and bounds as the country progressed technologically over the past decades.

This has no doubt been helped by the acquisition of 12 Kilo class diesel-electric attack submarines (SSKs) from Russia beginning in the late 1990s. The two initial boats were of the standard Project 877 export standard, while the remaining 10 are Project 636 Improved Kilos. All 10 boats were delivered by around 2007.

The Kilos are armed with a mixture of torpedoes and the 3M54E Klub-S anti-ship/land-attack cruise missile, and are joined in the PLAN by several domestically-built submarine classes. The PLAN still has the older Type 035A, B and G boats in service, although these are being rapidly superseded by the Type 039 Song class and the larger 039A (Yuan class) boats.

Despite the similar nomenclature, there are very little similarities between the Type 039 and 039A,

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with the latter class inheriting only the tail design of the former. The newer Yuan class is bigger (3,600 tonnes submerged, 77.6 metres long compared to the 2,250 tonnes, 75-metre length of the Song class), dives deeper and features improved noisereduction features. The class is further divided into four sub-classes with minor differences such as the addition of flank sonar arrays or changes to the configuration of the conning tower.

The PLAN also has nuclear-powered submarines for operations further afield. The early, and very limited Type 091 Han class nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) are quickly being replaced by more modern 7,000-ton Type 093 and 093G – both known as the Shang class – which are equipped with vertical launch tubes for cruise missiles in addition to torpedoes. These are capable of launching YJ-12, YJ-18, and YJ-82 anti-ship missiles, with the 093G (known by the US DoD as the 093A) said to be capable of launching landattack cruise missiles.

Chinese sources claim the 093s are as quiet as the improved Los Angeles 688(I) class or Russian Akula class SSNs, while the US Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) puts their noise level as on par with the 1970s-era Soviet Project 671RTM/ RTMK Victor III SSN. The Chinese appear to be not fully satisfied with the design, as Type 093G production ceased after just three boats and the PLAN is moving on to developing a new class of SSNs known as the Type 095.

Performing the sea-based nuclear deterrent role for the PLAN is the Type 094 Jin class nuclearpowered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN). These 11,000-ton boats each carry 12 JL-2 nuclear-tipped submarine-launched ballistic missiles, each with a range of 7,000 kilometres.

That would mean that in theory, a Type 094 positioned north-east of the Kuril Islands would be able to strike most of North America. The ONI’s assessment that these boats are slightly noisier than the Soviet Project 667BDR Delta III SSBN from the late-1970s, meaning an effort to reach and maintain a patrol line there during times of conflict would be a challenge for the PLAN. This could change with the forthcoming introduction of a new class of SSBNs. Known as the Type 096, these will bolster China’s sea-based nuclear deterrent, with construction due to start in the early 2020s.

Owing to a lack of prominent identifying features or pennant numbers painted on China’s submarines, together with the country’s lack of transparency in reporting, it is almost impossible to independently keep track of the number of submarines in service.

However, the Pentagon’s 2019 China Military Power Report says the PLAN has 50 SSKs, six SSNs and four SSBNs, although a 2018 study of commercial satellite imagery shows that there are at least five Type 094 SSBNs.

JAPAN Japanese submarine technology is widely accepted as being the most advanced in the region. Beginning with the commissioning of its first post-war domestically-built boat – the Oyashio – in 1960, Japan has made quiet, steady progress in submarine design and construction since then.

The current class of submarine operated by the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) is the Soryu class. Japan plans to have a total of 12 of these boats, the first of which was commissioned into the JMSDF in March 2009.

The Soryu class is an 84-metre, 4,200 tonnes submerged diesel-electric design equipped with six 21-inch torpedo tubes that can also fire the UGM84 Harpoon anti-ship missile or lay mines. Top speed is 13 knots on the surface and 20 knots submerged.

Each boat has a crew of 65, and the class is widely claimed to be the quietest diesel-electric submarine in service today.

Eleven of the class are now in service, with the latest – the Ouryu – joining the JMSDF only in March this year. The boat made history by being the first operational submarine fitted with lithiumion batteries, a technology Japan has pursued for its submarines as far back as 2002, with testing beginning in 2006. The batteries are manufactured

by GS Yuasa and are lithium nickel cobalt aluminium oxide (NCA) batteries. The JMSDF says the new battery technology requires less maintenance and is capable of longer endurance at high speeds while submerged compared to lead-acid batteries.

The use of lithium-ion batteries will be carried over to the follow-on submarine class Japan is already planning. Currently known only as the 29SS class, these will be an evolution of the Soryu class, although one of the key differences is believed to be the use of pump-jets on the new boats instead of a conventional propeller.

Japan’s Soryu class (above), a diesel-electric boat with the latest of its type making history with lithium-ion batteries. JMSDF

ADBR

INDIA

The conventionallypowered Indian Navy Scorpene-Kalvari class boat (below). Two have been commissioned and two more are undergoing sea trials.

INDIA NAVY

The world’s second most populous nation and its largest democracy has a relatively powerful submarine fleet. This is unsurprising, given India’s interests in the expanses of the Indian Ocean and the geopolitics of its neighbourhood, and especially more so given its strategic rivalry with China has spilled over from its land border and Pakistan into the ocean with China’s increasing naval presence in the Indian Ocean.

India’s past alignment with the Soviet Union and Russia, coupled with its increasingly warm relations with the West. has led to the Indian Navy’s submarine arm being a mix of Russian and Western designs. The fleet is a mix of nuclear and conventionally-powered boats, including SSBNs as part of its nuclear deterrent.

This is the Arihant class, a 111-metre, 6,000 tonne (surfaced) design whose lead boat was commissioned into service in 2016. The class is powered by an 83MW pressurised light water reactor equipped with four vertical launch tubes for 12 K-15 Sagarika nuclear Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs) with a range of 750km, or four longer-ranged K-4 SLBMs. The INS Arihant undertook its first deterrence patrol two years after commissioning. The second boat – Arighat – is currently undergoing sea trials, two other boats are under construction, and one more is planned.

The Indian Navy operates another nuclearpowered submarine, the INS Chakra, a Russian Project 518 (NATO Akula class) attack submarine.

India does not own the 8,140 tonnes surfaced Chakra, instead operating it on a 10-year lease deal signed in 2011.

The remainder of India’s attack submarine inventory are all conventionally powered, these being split among three classes. The oldest of these are

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the four boats of the Shishumar class, which are a lengthened, heavier variant of the German HDW Type 209 boats. The first two boats were built in Germany and commissioned in 1986, with two more built at India’s Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders and entering service in 1992 and 1994. The two older boats are due to undergo mid-life upgrade program

by Mazagon in conjunction with TKMS, with work scheduled to start sometime this year with completion planned for 2021.

Also undergoing an upgrade are India’s Kilo class submarines. India acquired a total of 10 Project 877KEM versions of the Kilo, which entered service between 1986 and 2000. These have been upgraded to Project 8773 standard and are slated to undergo further upgrades at shipbuilder Sevmarsh in Russia to extend their lives, and to improve their combat capability with the integration of the Klub land-attack cruise missile.

Not all the boats will undergo this latest upgrade however, with one, the INS Sindhuvir, to be transferred to neighbouring Myanmar later this year.

Meanwhile, the Indian Navy is slowly introducing the Project 75 Kalvari class diesel-electric submarine into service after several delays. First mooted as far back as 1997, Project 75 was to have acquired 24 submarines, but this was later scaled back to 12 boats to be built at two local shipyards, and then trimmed further to just six to be built at Mazagon.

From the outset the French Scorpene class was the choice of Project 75 design due to the capability to fire the Exocet missile and inclusion of air-independent propulsion (AIP). A contract was signed in 2005 for the submarines, with one to be delivered per year from 2012. Steel was cut in 2006 with construction commencing in 2007, but by 2014 the project was four years behind schedule.

An option for three further submarines was cancelled in 2016, and the first boat was finally commissioned in mid-December 2017 followed by a second in 2019. Two other boats are undergoing sea trials, while the last two are still being built.

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in-country by Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME).

The Sohn Wonyil boats measure 65 metres long and displace 1,860 tons submerged, and are fitted with a SPHINX-D Radar System supplied by Thales Defence Deutschland with a low power transmitter with Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) properties.

The third phase of the KSS program, KSS-III will see South Korea seeking to build nine submarines for introduction into service from 2025. These will be the biggest submarines operated by the country, with the design displacement expected to be 3,000 tonnes equipped with vertical launch systems for land-attack cruise missiles or conventionally-armed ballistic missiles.

A South Korean Sohn Wonyil class boat (left), a Type 214 submarine developed under the second phase of the KSS Attack Submarine Program.

DEFENCE PK

NORTH KOREA

SOUTH KOREA South Korea’s submarine capability was limited to midget submarines until 1993, when it put the first Chang Bogo class boats into service under the multiphase KSS Attack Submarine program. These were 1,200 tonne variants of the HDW Type 209 boats, and South Korea eventually bought nine of these, the last entering service in 2001.

These boats are still in service, although it is unclear if ambitious plans to upgrade the class were undertaken owing to economic and other factors.

However, at least some of the boats were given the capability to fire the UGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missiles which were part of the proposed upgrade package that, if implemented fully, would have lengthened the boats to 61 metres and increased the displacement to 1,400 tons.

The improved design has definitely seen service however, with Indonesia acquiring three such boats under a US$1.07 billion (A$1.54 billion) contract in 2011. The three submarines – known in Indonesia as the Nagapasa class – were commissioned between 2017 and 2019. Indonesia has signed a contract for three more boats, although it was reported that, as of May this year the south-east Asian nation has missed an initial payment for the deal (see IndoPacific Wrap this edition).

The second phase of the KSS program, KSS-II, saw the introduction of the larger and more capable Type 214 boats into South Korean Navy service.

Known locally as the Sohn Wonyil class, the nine boats were ordered in two batches of three and six in 2000 and 2008 respectively, and were built

Like much of its military, most of North Korea’s submarine fleet is old and obsolete as a result of its self-enacted isolation and international sanctions over its nuclear weapons program. Most are 1960s or 1970s Soviet-origin conventional and midget submarines, with estimates putting the number of such submarines as high as 70 hulls, although there are question marks over current serviceability or survivability in a full-scale conflict.

Nevertheless, these elderly boats have proven they could still be useful for the North’s clandestine activities during the uneasy peace that hangs over the Korean peninsula, with both North and South Korea still technically at war following the 1953 ceasefire that silenced the Korean War. For example, in 1996 a North Korean Sang-O submarine ran aground on South Korea’s east coast during an infiltration mission, which resulted in the North Korean special forces team executing the 11 crew of the submarine before sparking a massive 49-day manhunt by South Korean troops. In 2010, the sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan in March 2010 was attributed, by an international investigation, to a torpedo fired by a North Korea Sang-O or a Yono class boat.

North Korea’s Kim Jong Un (below) inspecting what is reported to be a dometicbuild nuclear weaponscapable sub.

NORTH KOREA STATE MEDIA

ADBR

But the lack of access to foreign technology has not stopped North Korea from developing its submarine force and, unlike other nations, it has eschewed developing submarines for the conventional attack role, instead choosing to build a submarine to support its growing ballistic missile program. As far back as 2014, reports quoting South Korean and US intelligence sources indicated North Korea was developing submarine-launched ballistic missiles and submarines to carry them.

Satellite photos of the Sinpo South shipyard from 2016 suggests that possibly two ballistic missile submarines were being built.

North Korean state media has shown a close-up of one such submarine in August 2019 and claimed the successful test launch of a Pukkŭksŏng-1 SLBM from a submarine later that year, although further details are scant. These two boats have been designated as the Sinpo-B and Sinpo-C and, in the absence of hard information, it has been suggested by various sources that North Korea has reverseengineered a Russian Golf class submarine, with the Sinpo-C reportedly having AIP and a submerged displacement of 3,000 tonnes.

SINGAPORE With an economy highly dependent on the seaborne commerce that traverses the busy and confined maritime trade routes surrounding it, the small island nation of Singapore has south-east Asia’s most advanced military and has made protecting its sea lines of communications and trade the primary mission of its small navy.

The Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) dipped its toes into submarine operations in 1995 with the acquisition of a Swedish Sjöormen class submarine. This was soon followed with the acquisition of three similar boats in 1997. These 51-metre, 1,400-tonne boats originally entered Swedish service in the late 1960s, and were extensively modified by Kockums to enable them to be more suited for operations in the tropical waters found around Singapore before

A cutaway illustration of the Singapore Navy’s Type 218SG currently undergoing sea trials.

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being put back into service as the Challenger class in the 2000s.

The submarines allowed the RSN to build up a cadre of submariners and to build up its own submarine warfare doctrine and tactics. Singapore soon followed up with the acquisition of more laid-up Swedish submarines, this time a pair of Västergötland class submarines that joined the RSN after another refit program by Kockums that saw Sterling AIP engines added in addition to modifications for the tropics.

The two refurbished Västergötland boats were built in the late 1980s, and entered service with Singapore in 2011. But by that time Singapore was already looking for new-build submarines with the retirement of two of the elderly Challengers. The natural solution would have been to turn to Kockums – then owned by TKMS – but it was reported that the former was not allowed to offer a solution to Singapore, which instead turned to the German parent company for two new submarines in 2013.

The new class was designated the Type 218SG, and is believed to be based on the Type 216 offered

by TKMS for Australia’s SEA 1000 program married to the X-rudder configuration found on the smaller Type 212 submarine. The rudder design is conducive for shallow littoral water operations, which is right up Singapore’s alley.

The initial order was followed by an order for two more boats in 2017. The Type 218SG is 70 metres long and displaces 2,200 tonnes submerged, and is powered by a pair of 120 KW PEM fuel cells and AIP. The first boat, named the Invincible was launched in 2019, and is currently undergoing sea trials in Germany with delivery expected in 2021.

Elsewhere in the region, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Taiwan also have their own submarine fleets, with the latter seeking to design and build an indigenous class of boats due to the reluctance of potential sellers to export to Taiwan for fear of upsetting China. The Philippines and Thailand have their own ambitions to do likewise, but the former will find it difficult to introduce a very complex and expensive capability on its limited budget, while the latter has suspended a plan to acquire Chinese submarines due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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SUPPLY CHAIN

S U P P LY C H A I N

GET SMART Building a post-COVID 19 defence innovation system

BY DOUGAL ROBERTSON

F

inding a balance between encouraging Australia’s domestic manufacturing to ensure supply chain security for critical sectors, and not violating freetrade agreements by introducing tariffs and subsidies for ‘strategic industries’, will be a tough task for the Australian government.

Defence faces significant risks in any disruption to supply chains. The planned capital investment budget for 2019/20 is a shade under $12 billion. Chunks of this will be spent in Australia, including building the Army’s Hawkei protected mobility vehicle and Arafura class offshore patrol vessels, but most of our supply chains reach directly back to the US. Equipment delivery and munitions are secure in the interim, but COVID-19 disruption highlights the paucity of defence equipment manufactured here.

The ‘onshoring’ of defence manufacturing isn’t realistic for Australia because there’s not much we can build without major structural re-adjustments to defence policy and the economy.

And while the political, military and intelligence relationship with the US is close, there are different rules in play for the US defence industry. The US approach has always been America first, and that’s no surprise. And Australian dollars can’t compete – USAF funding for FY20 is US$204.8bn (A$294bn), for example. While Australia spends around A$105m per day on all of Defence, the USAF alone spends eight times that amount.

The proposed US FY2021 Department of Defense (DoD) budget request is US$740.5 billion, of which US$106.6 billion is allocated to Research, Development, Test and Engineering (RDT&E) activities. The DoD is investing in emerging technologies that it refers to as Advanced Capabilities Enablers (ACEs).

The ACEs are ‘focused on the high-end fight’ according to the DoD. That means middle powers such as Australia have even less influence with US defence prime contractors to deliver small, flexible systems for the ADF’s diverse mission set, including complex and information-heavy maritime surveillance and domain awareness missions.

Programs such as the Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton show how little say Australia – despite being a cooperative development partner in that program – has in the production and development of high-end weapon systems, when the manufacturing base is in the US. Australia has a stated requirement for six Tritons, and has so far ordered three airframes. On 18 June 2020, Defence Minister Senator Linda Reynolds announced Australia had ordered a third airframe. The USN and Northrop Grumman have lobbied Australia to take FY2021/22 US Triton production slots to keep the line open during a planned US Navy production freeze, although this is yet to be finalised.

EXPORTS NOT THE SOLUTION Australia will rely on the US and to a lesser extent Europe for major equipment for the foreseeable future because production setup costs for building military systems in-country would be out of all proportion to the value of the contract.

Nor will the 2018 Defence Export Strategy provide much impetus for building local defence manufacturing. Dr Nan Tian from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) points out that Australian defence exports are unlikely to create intra-industry spill over effects, face competition from multiple producers including allies, don’t have an existing diversified export base, and don’t have a range of products that can be sold on the international arms market.

According to research by SIPRI, total global military expenditure rose by 3.6% in 2019. But disruption to the global economy from COVID-19 will likely reduce future military spending.

Exporting our way out of supply chain insecurity is not the answer.

Instead, it would be smarter for Australia to develop design and technology solutions that maximise human performance and information advantages. Some defence technologies in robotics, artificial intelligence, and precision engineering could have dual use in industries such as agriculture, education, and health.

‘The onshoring of defence manufacturing isn’t realistic for Australia’

ADBR

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INDEPENDENT SUCCESS

AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE R&D ENVIRONMENT

The success stories in Australian defence industry typify the clever application of ideas and human capital.

In 2019, then Defence Minister Christopher Pyne unveiled the Boeing Airpower Teaming System (ATS) at the Australian International Airshow. The ATS was established as a research and development activity and, out of this activity came a concept demonstrator – the Loyal Wingman Advanced Development Program (see page 26).

Dr Brendan Nelson, President of Boeing Australia, New Zealand & South Pacific told ADBR that the ATS is a testament to the Australian Government’s desire to rapidly develop and field new systems. “We collectively saw we could leverage the best of Boeing working with Australian industry to offer a global solution with innovative flexibility.” Dr Nelson, a former Liberal leader and Defence Minister says that, in 2019 alone, Boeing invested $70 million in R&D and innovation in Australia, the company’s largest investment outside of the US. “Boeing realises the benefits Australia can offer and has established a unique research and product development model which involves the collaboration of two innovation-focused organisations, Boeing Research & Technology and Boeing’s Phantom Works,” he said. “The Boeing Research & Technology-Australia group is focused on working with academia and research organisations to further technology for long-horizon research and technology solutions, while Phantom Works International is largely responsible for advanced prototyping and development of near-term transformative technological solutions for largely military customers.”

Dr Nelson says he is positive about the Government’s approach to innovation. “The programs we are focused on are funded and globally led. They fit with defence priorities, but we aren’t just thinking of an Australian environment.

“Our innovation, R&D and investment strategy has been to work closely with university and industry through small-to-medium enterprises while leveraging the benefit of Defence’s investment in these groups and hubs. We continue to engage with the Commonwealth of Australia to seek collaborative opportunities to leverage investments, and alongside that we continue with our investment so that both can benefit the innovation ecosystem.”

Currently, investment is split between the Next Generation Technologies Fund and the Defence Innovation Hub. The Fund and the Hub are allocated $73 million and $64 million respectively per year.

Both focus on small-to medium enterprises and provide limited grant allocation. For larger businesses, any R&D money comes out of profits.

Cost allowances for R&D are only available after a contract is awarded, which puts all the development risk onto the contractor.

While concessions are available from the Tax Office, R&D investment is a deduction from earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation that only becomes available at the conclusion of a financial year, and is further delayed through the payment claims system.

More than a third of Australia’s federal R&D budget goes through tax incentives to the finance, mining, and technology sectors. Israel applies the opposite approach – the Israeli Innovation Authority actively disburses funds to develop solutions to challenges facing the ‘Israeli innovation ecosystem’, and supports industry R&D. To avoid becoming just integration, assembly, and sustainment providers, Australian defence industry must invest in R&D. Unfortunately, Defence mostly retains a central-planning mindset of picking winners instead of taking a collaborative approach to solving problems. This limits ‘innovation’ to developing solutions to problems already defined by Defence and avoids engaging with or incubating emerging and disruptive technologies.

There are local success stories such as the ATS, advanced phased array radars from CEA, and the ongoing development of the Nulka active missile decoy built by BAE Systems. But this hardware is all supplemented by innovative and new thinking. An innovation ecosystem needs the space for ideas to grow.

The fourth industrial revolution provides multiple avenues for disruptive technology to emerge in artificial intelligence, computer-aided decision-making, and autonomous and teamed systems. Mastering these technologies will be less resource intensive than manufacturing physical equipment and systems, but will require a similar investment in capital.

The answer to defence supply chain disruption isn’t necessarily building equipment in Australia. It certainly isn’t in rebuilding the tariff walls that were pulled down in the ’80s and ’90s. The answer must come from using our human and information advantages to empower industry and academia to maximise Australia’s security.

The key to this will be effective Australian R&D.

The Army’s Hawkei protected mobility vehicles along with the Arafura class patrol boat build take up a ‘chunk’ of the 2019-20 budget. DEFENCE

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INDIAN OCEAN REGION

S T R AT E G Y

INFLUENCE PROJECTION Quadrilateral military cooperation is an imperative in the Indian Ocean

BY PETER HUNTER

A

ustralia’s recent experience in confronting a range of unprecedented strategic challenges, from the catastrophic summer bushfires to the COVID19 pandemic, has raised questions about the validity of some of our long-sustained paradigms regarding national security. From our over-dependence on fragile global supply chains, to the role of our military in deterring China’s statecraft, these multi-dimensional challenges demand a tough-minded re-think about Australia’s security partnerships.

While the challenges Australia confronts on the Pacific side of the Indo-Pacific – from the maritime disputes of the South China Sea, to China’s growing influence in Australia’s near neighbourhood – have been extensively analysed, the strategic consequences of the competition playing out in the Indian Ocean generally do not receive the same level of attention.

But the Indian Ocean region (IOR) has become a cockpit of geostrategic rivalry. With a multiplicity of actors vying for access and influence, and with crucial maritime trade routes at stake, Australia’s alignment with regional security partners including India, Japan and the US will be crucial to responding to these challenges.

What are the contours of this competition?

Unsurprisingly, the major driver of change here is China. On the one hand, Beijing’s increasing influence in the region is natural extension of its growing military and economic weight – rising powers traditionally expand their military operations to match their interests abroad – and China’s dependence on the maritime trade routes passing through the IOR mark the region a logical nexus for Chinese interest. But on the other, China’s palpable intention of rewriting the regional order to suit its

own interests, and its use of coercive statecraft to achieve those ends, are increasingly drawing the attention of other regional powers.

China’s interest in projecting power into the IOR, whether by expanding its options for military basing or by more frequent deployments of its naval forces (especially its submarines), is particularly troubling to India, Japan, Australia and the US, who share concerns about the threat to sea lines of communication, and regional stability.

And although the Chinese government – for now – is pursuing its maritime basing interests through ‘dual use’ leases on commercial port facilities in locations including Sri Lanka, Djibouti and Pakistan, few regional players are under any illusions regarding the likely militarisation of such facilities. As one Chinese scholar has argued, “Setting up overseas military bases is not an idea we have to shun: on the contrary, it is our right.”

This is particularly significant in light of the proliferation of submarine capabilities in the region, with Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Vietnam and Indonesia all joining the ranks of those already operating submarines, including Japan, India, South Korea, Australia and, of course, the US. Should China secure a deep-water port facility in the IOR to extend the reach of its submarine operations, then a crowded underwater environment in the IOR can only become riskier.

And while the increasing prevalence of conventional submarines will affect the security of maritime trade passing through, it is the spread of nuclear armed submarines that is complicating the region’s strategic risk calculus.

India, for its part, sees China’s maritime power projection

‘Australia’s alignment with regional security partners ... will be crucial’

ADBR

China ‘s navy is playing a significan role in the Indian Ocean power play. CHINA MIL

into the Indian Ocean, and its access to bases in Pakistan, as a growing threat to its own security.

And although India’s shared border with China (and, of course, the long-running tensions with Pakistan) complicate Delhi’s views regarding its external partnerships, India is nevertheless looking to broaden and enrich its security cooperation with the US, Japan, and Australia to counterbalance these challenges.

Similarly, Japan has begun to play a more proactive role in the IOR, concerned by China’s actions. For more than a decade China has sought to intimidate Japan through increasingly frequent incursions into its airspace, and by challenging Japan’s sovereignty over the Senkaku islands.

Moreover, as Satoru Nagao has suggested, “China’s expansion raises concerns that Japan’s sea lines of communication will be vulnerable to attack from Chinese submarines.”

Although Australia doesn’t face the same immediacy of military incursion as Japan and India, the prevalence of China’s political warfare activities against Australia, and the threat to our economy from any compromise to our maritime trade routes, underscore Australia’s interest in working more closely with regional security partners.

And while the US retains a strong interest in the region, and for now maintains military superiority above any other regional power, it is also evident that major shifts are underway. This is shown in the Trump administration’s expectation that its regional security partners will do more to pull their own weight, with or without US assistance, and in the extent to which US technological military superiority will persist.

That said, it is clearly in the region’s interest to have the continuing stabilising effect that a US presence brings, as evidenced by Australia and Japan’s continuing commitments to their respective alliances with the US.

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THE POWER OF 4 So, notwithstanding some differences in perspective and capability between Australia, India, Japan and the US, their shared strategic interest in bolstering the rules and norms of the regional order underscore a renewed interest in the quadrilateral security dialogue, commonly referred to as the ‘Quad’. China’s efforts to rewrite the regional order have driven home the need for closer cooperation among the Quad partners on economic imperatives, diplomatic messaging, military cooperation, and standard setting.

All four have a shared interest in deterring the use of coercive, forceful measures in the political, economic, and legal affairs of the region, and in preventing any regional state from becoming dominant. And with their economic wellbeing contingent on the continued free movement of maritime trade through the IOR, the Quad members have a vested interest in ensuring the region’s sea-lines-of-communication remain free from interference. As Lavina Lee has argued, “from a strategic perspective, the primary value of the Quad is to signal to Beijing that the four states share the intent to counter and thereby deter future Chinese actions to further change the status quo”.

And, as we’ve seen in the South China Sea, China’s coercive statecraft is not limited to the military sphere. Rather, its extensive program of state-sanctioned influence involves the coordinated deployment of all the elements of its national power to ‘win without fighting’.

Moreover, all of this is happening despite the Quad partners’ acquisition of advanced networked warfighting platforms. This suggests that the possession of these highly-capable systems is a necessary, but not sufficient, response to China’s holistic approach to wielding influence. Indeed, as Mike Scrafton has argued, Australia can’t

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INDIAN OCEAN REGION

materially alter the course of these events – or even mitigate their consequences – just by increasing military spending.

This raises the question of how Australia’s instruments of national power, including its air and space power, should be employed in the Indian Ocean region to counter these problems and, more positively, to create opportunities to enhance Australia’s interests. As former US Defense Secretary, Robert Gates recently argued, “as essential as it is to build and maintain a strong military, it is just as – or more – important to know when and how to use it”.

In the IOR, this points to the benefits that will arise from cooperation in non-traditional aspects of military operations. While traditionally the military focus has been on combat power and the delivery of force, the contemporary proliferation of alternative vectors for influence, including in the information and economic domains, has lent a new urgency to considering more holistic models. NATO has suggested that, “even lethality, the ultimate penalty of physical force, is giving way to abstractions of perception management and behavioural control, a fact which suggests that strategic success, not tactical victory, is the more coveted end-state”.

So, where previously our armed forces have focused on force projection as a key requirement, the time has come to weave defence’s capabilities into whole-of-government options for ‘influence projection’. Rather than narrowly focusing on dominating the battlespace with forward-deployed force elements, air and space power can broaden its value by complementing whole-of-government efforts to out-position rival powers in economic, diplomatic, and informational influence campaigns.

As China has aptly demonstrated, coercion does not necessarily involve the application of physical violence; influence comes in many forms and can apply to peacetime and wartime situations, as well as those between.

A fundamental dimension of Australia’s ability to do all this will be the extent to which its tools of statecraft have the necessary access, presence, and persistence to wield influence in the IndoPacific. This underwrites the potential strategic benefit to be gained from a reinvigorated Quad.

Closer cooperation between India, Japan, Australia, and the US offers rich potential for enhancing each of those partners’ influence in the region.

MARITIME DOMAIN AWARENESS – A STRATEGIC INFLUENCER For our military forces to contribute to the Quad’s ability to enhance maritime security in the IOR, information sharing among the partners takes on a strategic quality. As former US Navy Admiral James Stavridis observed, “shining a light through intelligence and information sharing can deny an adversary the ambiguity he seeks. This can be done

by linking international partners to observe and record activities”.

It makes sense for Australia to explore options for unclassified information sharing with its Quad partners. Considering the significant expansion of submarine threats in the region, this is where the issue of maritime domain awareness becomes particularly important. As Christian Bueger and Anthony Bergin have argued, “maritime securityrelated issues represent some of the most valuable security areas for cooperation. A key to addressing these challenges regionally and nationally is maritime domain awareness”.

The intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities available through air and space power provide significant opportunities for such cooperation. Information sharing could involve the exchange of data in areas such as commercial shipping traffic, climate, meteorological and oceanographic data. This could have significant benefits in building shared perceptions and understanding of the flow of seaborne traffic in areas of joint strategic interest. As confidence among Quad partners grows, it could contribute to higher-end capabilities such as anti-submarine warfare (ASW).

Moreover, such information sharing among Quad partners can expose China’s cyber, electronic warfare, propaganda, and psychological warfare campaigns. By contributing to information sharing options among the Quad partners, Australian air power can bolster regional resilience against these coercive methods.

Thinking about aerospace cooperation within the Quad needs to go beyond traditional platform-centric models. By taking an incremental approach which builds confidence through information sharing on maritime domain awareness, the partners can, over time, develop new concepts of cooperation in influence operations that specifically target China’s coercive tactics that fall below the military threshold.

Sri Lanka’s Port Hambotota is just one example of China’s reach into commercial ports with potntial for military basing . HAMBOTOTA

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ON TARGET - SIR RICHARD WILLIAMS FOUNDATION

On Target

Defending south of Australia’s ‘First Island Chain’ Part 3

By Brian Weston

he two recent On Target columns in the Jan-Feb and Mar-Apr issues of ADBR noted the strategic importance to Australia’s security of Australia’s ‘First Island Chain’,‒ the island chain stretching from Sri Lanka through the Indonesian archipelago and Papua New Guinea, to Fiji. The most recent column concluded that, given the geo-political changes taking place in the IndoPacific, perhaps it is time for Australia to focus on the preparedness of the ADF to conduct credible operations in this vast theatre.

Without downplaying the importance of the Australia-US alliance, global issues might dictate that anticipated levels of US military and logistic support fall short of Australian expectations - a not unreasonable assumption given the commitments the US has in the Indo-Pacific (Japan, South Korea and Taiwan), in Europe (especially in Eastern Europe and the Baltic), in South Central Europe and the Black Sea, and in the Middle East.

Across the globe the US – facing a militarised China under the rule of an autocratic, nationalistic, aggressive and belligerent Communist Party of China – might be forced to focus its limited IndoPacific military resources on matching China’s capabilities from established US bases in Japan,

T

South Korea and the Central Pacific. That could lead to the US leadership ‘delegating’ to Australia the conduct of all military operations south of Australia’s First Island Chain.

The two On Target columns concluded that, although not by desire but necessity, Australia might find itself almost wholly responsible for the defence of its island continent and its approaches, and of the Australian (and US) logistic and enabling bases therein. The columns further concluded Australia should, therefore, pay more attention to the expansive theatre of operations extending outwards from continental Australia to Australia’s First Island Chain.

A useful starting point, especially given the pace with which militarisation is occurring in the Indo-Pacific, would be to assess how well the capabilities outlined in the 2016 Integrated Investment Program (IIP) have prepared the ADF for unilateral military operations in the operational theatre south of Australia’s First Island Chain.

Second, given the speed with which technology is advancing military capabilities in the IndoPacific, this assessment should be a nearer-term assessment – such as 2025 – rather than a longer-term assessment out to 2035.

Australia’s ISR capability combined with operational theatre potential will be delivered through the combination of MQ-4C Triton (below) and P-8A Posiedon. ADF

ADBR

The P8-As (top) and Triton will further combine with EW support from the MC-55A Peregrine (above) based on the Gufstream G550. ADF

Accordingly, this column will make some observations on how well Australia’s 2016 IIP force structure has prepared the ADF to respond to the challenge of an adversary venturing into Australia’s ‘front yard’ to coerce and intimidate, to ensure Australian deference to a superior military power.

Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities are the foundation of national security. But in the past, Australian defence policies have used ISR in the strategic context of ‘warning time’, rather than in an operational or tactical context. In this strategic context, the role of ISR is to warn of the emergence of threats as they emerge so that they are recognised and responded to by a corresponding upgrade in national defence capability.

Today, there seems little doubt Australia is in ‘warning time’. Indeed, that realisation appears to have come a little late, with some 2016 IIP defence capabilities not scheduled to begin to appear until the mid-2030s. Capabilities that will not begin to materialise until the mid-2030s and later will be of little use in 2025.

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Fortunately, many of the ISR capabilities Australia has prioritised also have immense value in an operational theatre. These include the acquisition of six MQ-4C Triton unmanned systems and 12 P-8A Poseidon manned aircraft ‒ both recommended in the 2016 IIP. The IIP also foreshadowed an increase to 15 P-8As which, at a mission availability rate of 75 per cent, translates into 11.25 ‘mission-available’ P-8As. The MQ-4C and P-8A are complementary and, when combined with four long-range electronic warfare support aircraft based on the Gulfstream G550, the Jindalee OTH Radar Network (JORN), and coalition Australia-US ISR capabilities, Australia will possess a modest but impressive operational ISR capability.

But is this ISR capability enough to sustain ongoing operations out to Australia’s First Island Chain? And, is it possible for these ISR capabilities to sustain ongoing operations, simultaneously, in two areas of operations such as in the North Coral Sea and off the North West Shelf?

Noting the US Navy allocates five MQ-4Cs to an operational node from which to sustain 24/7 ISR operations, the Australian MQ-4C capability will support only one node of 24/7 unmanned ISR operations. Whether this is adequate is debatable given long-range ISR operations are asset intensive ‒ as illustrated by the heavy AP-3C commitment in the mid-1990s search and rescue operations for round-the-world yacht racers; their heavy tasking in operations against illegal Patagonian Toothfish fishing boats; and in the search for MH370. So, getting the MQ-4C and P-8A operational fleet sizing balanced will be critical to the efficiency and effectiveness of the operational ISR capability.

But one positive from the introduction of the MQ-4C is that it relieves the manned P-8A of most of the long duration and repetitious surveillance activity, freeing the P-8A ‒ armed with mines, torpedos and anti-ship missiles (ASM) ‒ to focus on anti-submarine and anti-surface roles.

Given the changing maritime power balance in the Indo-Pacific, this refocus of P-8A operations is timely and, arguably, provides justification for the early acquisition of the three additional P-8As foreshadowed in the IIP. The changing maritime power balance in the Indo-Pacific has also stimulated the development of new, technologically advanced, US ASM capabilities (noting recent US reports of a possible foreign military sale of AGM-158C LRASM to Australia for carriage on F/A-18F Super Hornet). And with the AGM-158C likely to be cleared for carriage by the P-8A in the mid-2020s, there is a strong case to arm RAAF P-8As with the AGM-158C. With both the P-8A and F/A-18F armed with the stealthy, heavyweight, sophisticated and long-range

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ON TARGET - SIR RICHARD WILLIAMS FOUNDATION

LRASM, the ADF will possess a strong deterrent to threatening foreign naval incursions south of Australia’s First Island Chain.

Air dominance is the prime role of the F-35A, although the in-theatre distances will make F-35A operations generally reliant on AAR support. The F-35A with its stealth, AIM-120D AMRAAM, longrange targeting ability, and networked operations, is a potent air dominance capability. As 2025 approaches, the operational capabilities of the F-35A will be further enhanced by the Block 4 upgrades which, apart from system and weapon upgrades, could include the integration of the Joint Strike Missile (JSM) or another ASM, and the possible acquisition of the follow-on AIM-260 JATM long-range air-to-air missile.

The air force operates six E-7A Wedgetail Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft, a world-class, critical enabling capability for both air and naval operations. But a fleet of just six aircraft translates into only 4.5 missionavailable E-7As, so while the 2016 IIP includes a significant upgrade to the AEW&C systems, its failure to increase the AEW&C fleet to eight aircraft (which would provide six mission-available E7-As) leaves the ADF deficient in the key operational and tactical co-ordination and control nodes critical to mission success.

The E-7A is also reliant on AAR support. A mission of about 10 hours, for a task at 1,500 km distance, involves five hours in transit and five hours on-station. Therefore, to sustain a 24/7 on-station E-7A presence, 4.8 missions must be tasked ‒ not achievable from the current fleet of six aircraft.

But E-7A on-station time can be achieved with AAR support. By increasing mission duration to 15 hours, which also increases on-station time to 10

‘Deficiency in AAR support puts at risk ... operational effectiveness’

hours, AAR realises a 100% increase in E-7A on-station time. With AAR support, only 2.4 missions are needed to sustain a 24/7 on-station E-7A presence. This example also demonstrates that enabling AAR generally flows straight to the bottom line of increased on-station presence. AAR support confers similar dramatic increases in on-station presence to the P-8A, EA-18G, F/A-18F and F-35A. The 2016 IIP expanded the Medium Range Tanker Transport (MRTT) capability to seven aircraft and foreshadowed a further increase to two aircraft ‒ nominally to support P-8A operations. But even a fleet of nine MRTTs – with 6.75 missionavailable MRTTs – is insufficient to provide the necessary AAR enabling capability to conduct credible air operations at task force level in our region. In short, this deficiency in AAR support puts at risk the operational effectiveness of an otherwise potent Australian air combat and sea denial capability upon which successful Australian air and naval operations must be based.

In conclusion, the 2016 IIP has provided a framework of complementary air capabilities that, in 2025 and with some augmentation, will pose a formidable challenge to any hostile air and naval incursion south of Australia’s First Island Chain.

But the IIP has not recognised the criticality of the E-7A AEW&C capability to successful conduct air and naval operations in the theatre, and of the necessity to increase enabling AAR capability to support the range of likely concurrent air and naval activities.

Air dominance is the prime role of the F-35A, but operations will be heavily reliant on AAR support. ADF

Brian Weston is a Board Member of the Sir Richard Williams Foundation.

He served tours in Defence’s Force Analysis Division and the HQADF Force Development Planning Branch.

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