AI.R POWER RAAF UAS developments

RAAF UAS PROJECTS AI.R POWER

The RAAF prepares to operate up to three unmanned systems

BY ANDREW McLAUGHLIN

The 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.

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. 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.

Concept art of an MQ9B in RAAF colours. TEAM REAPER

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.

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

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 ‘...the ADF has committed almost A$2 billion... Australian Defence staff are embedded within the US Navy’s PMA-262 being for the initial three air vehicles.’ Triton project office at NAS Patuxent (Pax) River near Washington 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

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 Advanced 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 ‘Because we’re part include radar, electrooptic/infrared (EO/IR), electronic and signals of the program, we get great insight into it...’

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.”

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.