ARDU gears up for increasing workload

The RAAF's Aircraft Research and Development Unit (ARDU), based at RAAF Base Edinburgh, faces a jump in T&E tasking as the ADF prepares to order and field a host of new platforms and weapons.

ARDU has just completed a major restructuring designed to prepare it for these new challenges, and is building a network of partnerships with specialist T&E contractors such as Raytheon Systems Co Australia, Australian Flight Test Services, Nova Aerospace, Ball Aerospace Australia and Sverdrup Australia to ensure the required specialist T&E skills and knowledge are available to support the ADF.

Over the next few years the ADF will be introducing a variety of new aircraft and weapons. ARDU will play a key role in testing most of these and will have at the very least an advisory role where ADF Force Element Groups (FEGs) take responsibility for elements of their own Operational T&E.

ARDU is responsible for RAAF and Army aircraft and works closely with the RAN's Aircraft Maintenance and Flight Test Unit (AMAFTU), particularly on things like stores clearance, where ARDU has overall responsibility within the ADF, and also on things like embarking Army Blackhawks aboard the RAN's LPAs. It was ARDU with close support from AMAFTU, which conducted the first of class trials for these aircraft aboard HMAS Manoora.

The looming T&E job list involves platforms and weapons such as the Hawk LIF, C-130J-30, Hornet HUG, F-111 block upgrade, the Army's new Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter and its weapons, upgraded variants of the Blackhawk helicopter, Global Hawk (if this is procured), ongoing ASRAAM and AMRAAM missile testing, various RAAF air to surface weapons programs, including the AGM-142 and whichever weapon is eventually selected in Air 5418, and a number of EW-related trials.

ARDU has reorganised itself following the market testing of a number of in-house support activities two years ago, and now consists of six discrete sub-units to match its T&E functional specialisations:

* Aerospace Systems Test Squadron carries out T&E on RAAF and Army aircraft and associated systems. This squadron includes both test pilots/engineers/navigators and the vital test range operators

* Aircraft Stores Compatibility Engineering Agency is responsible for ensuring any stores carried by Commonwealth aircraft can be carried, employed and jettisoned safely and efficiently to meet the operational requirements of all three Services

* Aerospace Systems Engineering Squadron is responsible for designing aircraft modifications and trial fits (and sometimes permanent fits) to support ARDU and RAN trials

* EW Squadron is responsible for supporting all of the ADF's airborne EW

* Instrumented Range Operations section is responsible for maintaining and operating the test instrumentation at the Woomera Instrumented Range (WIR) and for enabling and supporting T&E operations elsewhere

* Aircraft Maintenance is now carried out under contract by Raytheon Systems Co Australia which provides aircraft maintenance engineers, technical tradespeople and machine shop personnel.

ARDU has a long history of relevance to the ADF, says its commander, GCAPT Mark Skidmore. Thanks in large part to ARDU, the ADF has a global reputation for expertise in managing and maintaining the airworthiness of aircraft and stores, he told ADM. But the ADF has until now lacked strength in the wider area of capability management; this is where ARDU can make a significant contribution in the future, he said, enunciating the organisation's future focus as a provider of "Integrated Operational Support".

Defence needs to mandate a holistic approach, which integrates the T&E process with the entire materiel process - from Capability Systems to the FEG. T&E delivers the most value at the front end of the project, so as one of the ADF's aerospace T&E authorities, ARDU needs to be involved in capability acquisition and enhancement, from operational requirements definition through concept demonstration, through-life T&E, aircraft stores clearance and EW support, Skidmore told ADM. ARDU is closely tied to the concept of life cycle capability management, he emphasised.

A perennial capability development and management challenge for Defence is maintaining continuity between the various players - Capability Systems, the DMO and the FEGs. All too often in the past, bodies like ARDU have provided the only link between them, Skidmore said; the creation last year of the DMO to ensure acquisition and support are treated holistically is a very welcome move, he told ADM.

And the T&E message is now more widely heard, Skidmore says: under the Defence Capability Management Cycle's new two-pass process for project approval, the second pass must now incorporate a Testing Concept Document which addresses the broader T&E issues inherent in this new capability.

But ARDU, like most small, specialist agencies within Defence, faces another perennial challenge - personnel. The challenge for organisations like ARDU and the specialist T&E contractors it works with is to retain hard-earned (and expensively-taught) knowledge and expertise and ensure it remains available to the ADF.

The commercialisation of some of ARDU's activities, such as aircraft maintenance and range support (by Raytheon) and the provision of aircraft for transport and flight test support (by AFTS), and ongoing T&E support contracts with these and other companies such as Nova, Ball Aerospace and Sverdrup, mean that while T&E skills and expertise are no longer concentrated in a single organisation, they remain within a small community clustered around ARDU.

ARDU is working more closely now with the FEGs than before. For example, the AMRAAM test firings at Woomera in May were organised, modified and cleared by ARDU but carried out by 77 Squadron from RAAF Base Williamtown using F/A-18 Hornets which had passed through phase 1 of the Hornet upgrade. ARDU will be working in a similar fashion with the F-111 community at Amberley on AGM-142 and EL/M-8222 jamming pod integration and trials and with the Tactical Fighter Group at Williamtown on ASRAAM integration and live firings, which are currently planned for later this year.

Last April also saw ARDU carry out live drops of the US Air Force's Small Smart Bomb concept demonstrator. This weapon is intended for the F-22 and Joint Strike Fighter and will be carried in their internal bomb bays. On behalf of the US Air Force Research Laboratory at Eglin Air Force Base ARDU dropped them from the internal weapons bay of an F-111 in order to help evaluate the effect of high-speed air flow on bombs being ejected from an internal bay. The trial involved 20 sorties and 16 weapon drops over the Southern Ocean and also evaluated some innovative concepts for shielding the weapons from a high-speed airstream without compromising the aircraft's stealth characteristics.

This is the kind of demanding, precise non standard modifications, aircraft stores clearance and flight test work at which ARDU has excelled over the years. But to maintain that excellence in the future will require investment in new equipment and facilities, and most crucially in the Woomera Instrumented Range (WIR).

The current instrumentation and sensor suite at the WIR is unsuitable for long-term use, Skidmore told ADM, and ARDU and DG Aerospace Development are studying long-term requirements for air weapons range and broader T&E capabilities. This process runs parallel with the commercialisation program for the Woomera complex, and the eventual selection of a private sector operator of the Woomera area may provide additional options for the future evolution of the WIR.

ARDU would welcome a partnership with industry to make the entire Woomera complex, including the WIR, sustainable, Skidmore says, but the WIR upgrade is still very much a separate issue from the commercialisation process.

By Gregor Ferguson, Adelaide