Most stories about Air Force capability tend to focus on either the platforms themselves, or in the case of the combat elements, the weapons they employ, but underpinning all of this capability is the engineering and maintenance system.
Nigel Pittaway | Melbourne
Without an effective and robust system of engineering and maintenance even the most capable platform or weapons system will not remain serviceable beyond a short period and desired rates of effort and their subsequent effectiveness and availability will rapidly decline.
Proof that the RAAF’s engineering capability is indeed both effective and robust is readily found in the mission success rate of its aircraft deployed to the Middle East in support of Operation Okra, which has consistently been maintained at or above 95 per cent for more than a year.
Some of this inherent serviceability is without doubt a tribute to the design of the platform by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and the maturity of the logistics supply system; but it is perhaps worth remembering that although the Super Hornets, KC-30A and E-7A Wedgetail are all new platforms, the ‘Classic’ Hornet currently flying daily operations against IS forces has now been in service for more than 30 years and is, by any measure, an ageing airframe.
To deliver this fundamental input to capability, the Air Force maintains a large technical workforce, but it also partners extensively with industry. Every platform has a different maintenance philosophy, with some requiring periods of deeper maintenance at fixed intervals for example and others employing a ‘phased’ approach, whereby smaller work packages are executed more frequently.
Because there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ solution to its engineering and maintenance requirements, the Air Force maintenance regime therefore has to be extremely adaptive.
Maintenance considerations
In broad terms, maintenance requirements are divided into two categories: Operating Maintenance (OM, known as Line Maintenance in the civil world), which is defined as everything needed to generate sorties off an otherwise serviceable aircraft and Deeper Maintenance (DM) which, as the name suggests, requires an aircraft to be taken off-line for a longer period of more intensive maintenance work.
"The Air Force system of maintenance is, by necessity, geared towards periods of very high workloads on ooperations."
Taking these requirements into account and also considering the wide range of applications of platforms across Air Force, a range of solutions are applied and as a consequence the split between uniformed civilian maintenance varies from type to type.
“Our arrangements are based on a blend of considerations around the individual needs of the platform, recognising that different types of aircraft sometimes require quite radically different type of maintenance and support solutions,” explained Air Commodore Philip Tammen, Director General, Airlift and Tanker Systems for CASG.
“So the actual need is quite variable in the first instance and then there are other considerations, such what we need to be able to do to support the aircraft itself in the Air Force mission and there are quite a range of outcomes we’re trying to support there.”
At one end of the spectrum is the RAAF’s Special Purpose Aircraft (VIP) fleet which is maintained by Northrop Grumman Integrated Defence Services with very little Commonwealth involvement other than a small cell for maintenance planning purposes. In this instance industry is able to conduct all maintenance, from planned servicing, en route maintenance, through to the deeper maintenance, because the Special Purpose Aircraft (SPA) fleet does not require access into contested or sensitive areas, where a military workforce would be the preferred option.
At the other end of the spectrum is the RAAF’s fighter force which, as a highly deployable weapons system, all day to day maintenance is done by military personnel because Air Force needs the capability to support and track operations in potentially contested theatres of operation.
Between these two extremes are the RAAF’s larger aircraft such as the KC-30, Wedgetail and AP-3C Orion which are less likely to operate from airfields in a contested area but require flexibility and agility to deliver the desired effect, so a military OM workforce is also retained.
From a Deeper Maintenance perspective, Air Force relies more heavily on industry partners; for example Airbus Group Australia Pacific (AGAP) provides support for the AP-3C and C-130J Hercules, BAE Systems for the Hawk Mk.127, Boeing for the E-7A, Hawker Pacific for the PC-9/A and King Air and NG IDS supports the KC-30A (with reach-back into Qantas, as an experienced A330 maintenance organisation. It is also worth noting that Northrop Grumman purchased the former Qantas Defence business in 2013 that did the original conversion work).
“The contemporary Defence organisation is optimised for delivery of operations, and where possible in the last 20 or so years we’ve been increasingly testing, finding and delivering opportunities to reduce the need for uniformed military people in support and enabling areas, where the military skill set is not essential,” AIRCDRE Tammen said to ADM.
Further considerations
The decision whether to use a uniformed workforce, industry, or a mix of both is also influenced by factors such as US Government ITAR restrictions, intellectual property considerations or whether it is the mission systems, rather than the ‘green’ airframe which provides the most Deeper Maintenance complexity – Wedgetail or P-8A being examples where the contracted industry organisation may have the primary systems expertise.
"The preferred Aerospace Systems Division approach is to construct a rolling wave sustainment contract for all of the sustainment services."
The relatively small fleets of aircraft in Australia are also a factor in whether it is cost-effective to carry out Deeper Maintenance on-shore, especially where a global alternative exists. An example of this is the C-17A, where the eight RAAF aircraft are supported by the US Air Force as part of their fleet of around 200 aircraft.
“In the case of the C-17A, we have a large, global partner in the USAF and the most effective solution for us is to deliver those aircraft back into North America for heavy, deeper maintenance and some modifications,” AIRCDRE Tammen explained. “We get enormous cost savings and a lot of access to quality maintenance support there for the fleet.”
A further consideration is whether to maintain the aircraft on or off-base, where the existing Defence Estate provides a strategic advantage in terms of facilities and where an aircraft can be rolled into a maintenance facility, rather than being flown away.
“It allows us to initiate maintenance easily, even if the aircraft wasn’t airworthy at the start of that maintenance period, so we’re always mindful of the trade-offs between maintaining our own estate on bases and using industry’s own facilities,” AIRCDRE Tammen continued. “We also recognise that sometimes it’s difficult for industry partners to find the right volume of work to fit in commercial facilities and that’s one of the reasons you see a number of different solutions.”
Industry involvement
When industry is contracted to provide maintenance support, the preferred Aerospace Systems Division approach is to construct a rolling wave sustainment contract for all of the sustainment services, including Deeper Maintenance, whereby the period of a contract is for five years, with a ‘rolling wave’ extension process.
Credit: Defence
“Each year we consider performance and, where it is delivered to an acceptable level, we’ll offer a further year’s extension. So typically at any given time you are five years from completion of the contract, but it can roll up to 15 or 20 years in total,” AIRCDRE Tammen said to ADM.
“Should you lose a year through poor performance, many of our contracts will include buy-back provisions. Subject to subsequent exemplary performance you can recover a year to get back to a maximum of five.”
Air Commodore Tammen said that Air Force is looking at providing blended workforce solutions for the future, along the lines of the C-130J model where uniformed personnel are embedded in the AGAP workforce and gain additional experience by moving between OM and DM maintenance.
“With the C-130J the OM is led and staffed by the military and the DM venues are led by industry partners but have some military staffing,” he said. “It allows us to surge, defer the full industry costs and it also helps a little bit with individual skilling, in terms of uniformed personnel gaining experience in a different environment.”
Challenges
By the time the ‘Classic’ Hornet leaves service in the early part of the next decade, the oldest RAAF platform will be the C-130J, which entered service in 1999. Accordingly the Air Force will not suffer ‘block obsolescence’ or ageing aircraft issues for some time, however the relatively small fleet sizes for some types will continue to present challenges.
"The generation of younger maintainers are actually very energised by being a part of the operational and heavily deployed Air Force."
“If you have larger numbers of aircraft the amount of maintenance tends to smooth out into a constant flow, but if you have a smaller fleet the maintenance work can tend to become discontinuous and that is quite a challenge for us both from a commercial point of view,” AIRCDRE Tammen described.
“If you look at Wedgetail for example, with a fleet of six aircraft the amount of deeper maintenance that we need - and it’s the same for the modification program we are running alongside that – doesn’t result in a full floor load for every day of the year,” he said. “That becomes quite a challenge; how do you protect the contractor’s investment in maintenance professionals and retain capability without carrying overheads that are unreasonable?”
Recruitment and retention
Air Commodore Tammen said that recruitment and retention of the RAAF’s technical workforce is currently not a problem and a least in part he credits this to the high levels of operational tempo experienced over the last decade.
“I think people’s expectations have shifted quite a long way. The generation of younger maintainers we have out there are actually very energised by being a part of the operational and heavily deployed Air Force,” he reflected. “The maintenance community is very heavily involved in supporting deployed operations and when I look around our younger airmen, almost all of them have decorations for operational deployments, which I think they find a very strong validation of their service.”
From a retention standpoint AIRCDRE Tammen said that the retention factors have more to do with the ‘pull’ factors outside Defence – the pressures in the wider community – rather than the move to increasingly contract maintenance to industry.
“I think that overall, our people are very happy with the balance,” he said. “I’m not seeing any significant signs that the progressive change to our maintenance in-house activity is really affecting the judgements of the contemporary generation.”
Regarding the recruitment of young technicians and engineers, he said the proposition that Air Force puts out into the market place is still very attractive and again sees no concerning trend which may affect future manpower or capability levels.
“Actually at this moment in time as we change the structure of how we are doing maintenance, we actually have a slight surplus in terms of our maintenance workforce, so we’re actually in a very strong position for maintainers overall,” he added.
“However it is important to remember that we are also bringing extra KC-30s and extra C-17s into service. We also have the Growler and P-8A coming in as new platforms soon, along with the retention of Super Hornets and we are building up our workforce for the Joint Strike Fighter, so we are managing a long and complex set of transitions in the maintenance space.”
For the last few years Air Force has been working on a Maintenance Productivity Improvement Program (MPIP) which, among other things, is built on considering Air Force being a primary technical training organisation, who recruits and trains technical personnel to perform maintenance on its aircraft, and optimising the regime of supervision, conduct and inspection of maintenance to get as close to civil productivity standards as possible.
The Air Force system of maintenance is, by necessity, geared towards periods of very high workloads on operations and the long duration and regular frequency of deployments while maintaining a low risk tolerance of maintenance errors.
“So we have two conflicting pressures there, where we’re a primary trainer and we need to bring inexperienced people through our business and skill them up, but at the same time we’re busy, we deploy hard, we train hard, we exercise hard and we’re very risk averse to maintenance errors,” AIRCDRE Tammen concluded.
“So the MPIP is an effort to go back and benchmark ourselves against other civil and military operators and try to really understand the overall compromises in the design of our maintenance systems that have put us into the posture that we’re currently in.”
This article first appeared in the February 2016 issue of ADM.