After a protracted nine-year process from inception to RFT, Defence is now considering Air 5428 Pilot Training System Phase One bids primed by BAE Systems Australia and Lockheed Martin, offering two trainer aircraft with a shared DNA.
Expected to graduate its first course in 2017, the training system acquired under Air 5428 Phase One will replace both basic and advanced fixed-wing flying schools in the ADF, using a single turbine trainer type to take ab initio pilots through to wings award. This will supersede both BAE Systems’ 30 piston-engined CT4B basic trainers at its Tamworth Basic Flying Training facility and the 65 Pilatus PC-9/A aircraft in No. 2 Flight Training Squadron at RAAF Pearce in Western Australia, and Central Flying School in East Sale, Victoria.
It will also be a turn-key contract for service rather than an aircraft replacement program, with bidders proposing all aircraft, course materials, simulators and other synthetic training aids and suggesting the best mix of Commonwealth and private asset ownership as part of their RFT response.
Defence has a stated requirement to graduate 105 pilots per year. Of these, 44 Army pilots and 13 Navy pilots will move in to the new helicopter aircrew training system at Nowra. The Royal Australian Air Force will take 48 graduates, with at least 24 destined for fast jet training on the Hawk lead-in fighter. And Air 5428 will also provide development and continuation training for 36 qualified fixed-wing flying instructors per annum and support the Roulettes display team. The Commonwealth also has the option of procuring extra aircraft for use with the Aircraft Research and Development Unit at RAAF Base Edinburgh in South Australia, and the Forward Air Control Development Unit at RAAF Base Williamtown, New South Wales.
Industry teams The two contending teams have solid training pedigrees. Lockheed Martin Australia’s Team 21 includes Swiss trainer manufacturer Pilatus Aircraft and Australia’s Hawker Pacific, an aviation sales and support organisation with sites and capability across the Asia Pacific and Middle East, and current contracts delivering the B300 King Air aircraft capability to 32 and 38 Squadrons at RAAF Bases East Sale and Townsville. Team 21 offers the Pilatus PC-21, a latest-generation redesign of the Pilatus PC-9/A currently in service with the ADF, with Pilatus’s training systems and Hawker Pacific’s maintenance expertise.
Since 2006 the Team 21 consortium has operated a performance based flight training contract using the PC-21 to provide the Basic Wings Course (BWC) to the Republic of Singapore Air Force, at RAAF Pearce. The program has graduated 20 classes, using contractor-supplied simulators and synthetic training devices in addition to the training fleet.
BAE Systems has supported flying training and sustainment services for the Royal Saudi Air Force since 1988. In 2012 it assumed full responsibility for Saudi flight training, from basic to advanced, including introducing three new aircraft types and simulator and synthetic training packages. In Australia, BAE Systems has screened more than 3500 candidates and graduated more than 1500 pilots from its Basic Flying Training School in Tamworth, New South Wales, operated under a performance based contract to the ADF. For Air 5428 BAE Systems is teaming with prominent simulator and synthetic training device provider CAE Australia Pty Ltd, which will provide high fidelity level-six simulators and other flight training devices.
The consortium’s third member, Beechcraft Defense Company, is providing its Beechcraft T-6C, which began life as a modified and licence built Pilatus PC-9 design to bid the US Joint Aircraft Primary Aircraft Training System (JPATS) program in 1995.
Performance With both bidders proposing a single aircraft type, ab initio students will be flying a high performance aircraft from day one. While most civil pilots will conduct their initial training in aircraft with engines of less than 200 horsepower (150kW), both the T-6C and PC-21 are powered by 1600 shaft horsepower (1200kW) turbines in an airframe with a maximum take-off weight of around three tonnes in aerobatic configuration. That generates climb performance of 4000 feet per minute and low-level speeds of 320 knots, or nearly 600 kmh, giving the aircraft performance on par with that of some World War Two front line fighters.
The PC-21 is stressed for manoeuvres at up to +8G and -4G. Its hydraulically assisted ailerons and roll spoilers give the aircraft a roll rate of up to 200 degrees per second.
This surfeit of power and aerobatic ability is critical in moving a trainee pilot into thinking and operating (and eventually fighting) in three dimensions. But it holds traps for the unwary - even with ‘only’ 950 shaft horsepower, the torque effect of clumsy application of power in a PC-9/A with controls centred in landing configuration can roll the aircraft inverted if not identified and corrected quickly enough. Both Beechcraft and Pilatus have mitigated these issues with yaw-trim devices and digital engine controls that can restrict the amount of engine power available at low airspeeds. Prior experience in the simulator will also alert new pilots to the dangers and best responses before they turn a real propeller.
The advanced trainer is built for purpose. Single-point pressure refuelling helps minimise turnaround times and utility lines such as hydraulics and fuel are routed around the cockpit rather than through it in case of fire. Both the T-6 and PC-21 cockpits are compatible with night vision goggles and are pressurised to allow training at higher, less congested altitudes, even though pilots will still wear oxygen masks as part of everyday flight. Both have zero-zero ejection seats, offering escape from a parked aircraft, strengthened canopies designed to survive collision with a two kilogram bird at 270 knots and On Board Oxygen Generating Systems, using engine bleed air to create oxygen in order to do away with limited-life oxygen bottles.
Pedigree Like the bidders, both advanced trainer aircraft offered have already reached a maturity of operation. The Beechcraft T-6C is the third iteration of the T-6 Texan II design created for JPATS, designed to replace the US Air Force’s Cessna T-37B jet trainers and the Navy’s turboprop Beech T-34Cs. The T-6 designation and Texan name hark back to the radial-engined North American T-6 advanced trainer responsible for training the majority of allied pilots throughout World War Two. In turning a PC-9 in to a T-6 Texan II, Beech made extensive modifications to the airframe, including redesigning both the wing and rear fuselage, raising the rear seat to improve the instructor’s view, adding a canopy designed for pressurisation, modifying the engine cowling for ease of maintenance and selecting the more powerful “Dash 68” version of Pratt and Whitney’s PT-6, which brought with it digital engine control and a continuous inertial separator to separate foreign objects such as ice particles from the engine’s inlet airflow.
Since first acceptance in 2000 Beech has now delivered more than 850 T-6s to the US Navy and Air Force and international customers such as the NATO Flying School in Canada and Royal Hellenic and Israeli air forces. More recently, New Zealand has signed for 11. The combined fleet has flown more than 2.3 million hours. BAE Systems points out that four existing customers are also F-35 Joint Strike Fighter customers and that there are already US F-35, Super Hornet and Seahawk Romeo helicopter pilots who completed pilot training on the T-6.
Pilatus’s PC-21 is the latest in a long line of trainer aircraft that began with the piston powered P2 in 1949. Pilatus believes advances in digital systems control and avionics mean its PC-21 can now perform the roles usually requiring both elementary and advanced trainers and even lead-in jet training. First flown in 2002, the PC-21 was a development of the PC-9, introducing a higher rear instructor position and the same 1600 shp PT-6 turbine used in the T-6, but driving a five-bladed graphite scimitar propeller. Pilatus believes the aircraft’s abilities cover the requirements of both elementary and advanced turboprop trainers and that its high speed (up to 370 knots in a dive) even allows more advanced training to be completed in the turboprop before advancing to more expensive jet trainers.
To date five air forces have ordered more than 130 PC-21s, adding to the more than 800 sales of predecessor PC-9s and PC-7s, both of which are still available as alternatives to the premium end PC-21.
Training System BAE Systems Australia’s general manager of aviation solutions, John Quaife, said Air 5428 is about an integrated training system, not just an airframe, and will introduce advanced simulation training techniques not previously seen in the ADF’s basic Pilot Training System.
“What I think is new for Air Force Training Group as a whole is the introduction of flight training devices in that undergraduate pilot scheme,” he said. “Although most of the ADF pilots would have already been exposed to training on a simulator at the operational conversion unit, it’s really the first time that they would have used that device and asset to train ab initio students.”
Today’s simulators involve much more than a cockpit and graphics. CAE’s simulator is described as an ‘immersive environment’, with dynamic seats and G-cueing systems that impart the sensory feel of flight. The visual display has a 300 degree horizontal and 110 degree vertical field of view, connected to sophisticated databases allowing exercises over realistic Australian airfields and locations the students will use in the aircraft. And portable flight planning systems mean students will plan a sortie, then load that data on to a removable memory module for upload into either the training device or the aircraft. The system will then capture the entire mission including the time-position-space data of the aircraft and download it to support the mission debrief and post-flight review for use by student and instructor.
“This will allow instructors to observe and assess students’ competency levels, identify and rectify deficiencies earlier and ultimately contribute to enhanced flight safety,” John Quaife said.
And the aircraft will be part of that system, not an adjunct to it. Modern trainers are equipped with many of the systems formerly limited to front line aircraft, in order to train pilots in their use.
“The T-6C is an advanced military trainer fitted with many systems that equip today’s fourth and fifth generation aircraft,” said John Quaife. “For example, heads up displays, GPS, Inertial Navigation Systems, moving electronic maps and Hands On Throttle And Stick (HOTAS).”
And glass cockpit displays and avionics offer flexibility that was impossible with previous analogue systems, including emulating the layout and function of the displays in front line combat aircraft.
The download of mission data from mission planning system to aircraft can include emulations and exercises for which the aircraft is not physically equipped, such as radar simulations and weapons launch against radar targets generated by the on-board system. Air-to-ground weapons training can include simulated bomb weapon release including a synthetic air-to-ground radar and bomb scoring system. As a training system, digital displays allow the rear seat instructor access to training modes and displays independent of those in the front seat, to introduce exercises and data into training sorties for the pilot.
On this point, Pilatus makes much of the integration of its systems, with the company providing both its own ground based synthetic training systems and the avionics and flight displays in the aircraft. Pilatus says this frees users from any state controls or third party licenses that could jeopardise future supply or upgrades. During a PC-21 demonstration tour in 2010, Pilatus Australia’s Rob Oliver explained.
“The PC-21 was designed, from the initial concept stage, to provide flexibility to the curriculum developers and training schools, both in the use of the aircraft and systems, but also in the ease of changing software and displays,” he said. “The aircraft was designed to provide a complete training system, and not to be a standalone platform that the training system needs to be designed around. This is essential to satisfy the complex and challenging requirements of a tri-service Defence Pilot Training system.”
