With the Boeing P-8A Poseidon established in US Navy service and the Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton well into its test and evaluation program, the US Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) project is being monitored closely by the ADF as it seeks to inform its broadly similar Air 7000 program.
US Navy use of the Global Hawk-based BAMS-D (Demonstrator) in the Middle East has also gathered valuable operational experience, which has been fed back into BAMS and will also be used to shape Air 7000, particularly in respect to mission crew requirements.
Late last year it was announced that the ADF would continue Heron unmanned system operations in order to provide further inputs to the development of a concept of operations (CONOPS) for Air 7000.
Air 7000 and BAMS will use the same platform mix of P-8A and MQ-4C, but Australian requirements differ to those of its major ally.
To learn how BAMS has shaped Air 7000 and the ADFs CONOPS, ADM recently spoke with Group Captain Alan Lawrence, Acting Director General Air Development with the Capability Development Group (DGAD CDG).
“The US Navy is designing both P-8 and Triton as a family of systems. So there’s a capability link and you can choose between either, because the roles are quite unique in some perspectives but also very complementary in others,” GPCAPT Lawrence described.
“Our roles are broadly similar but we have some specific differences as well, so we need to understand what those deltas are and what they mean in terms of the capability and where would we like to see it go in the future.”
Australia signed a memorandum of understanding with the US in 2009 to participate in the P-8A development program and was also a co-operative partner in the system design and development phase of the Triton between 2006 and 2009.
“In that SDD phase we told the US Navy we wanted a 360-degree radar, a wing de-icing system and we the wings strengthened as well. So in RAAF service Triton could not only operate at very high altitudes, but capable of descending to lower altitudes for closer investigation of contacts and they have inbuilt those requirements into their baseline Triton now, even though we got out of that co-operative programme back in 2009,” GPCAPT Lawrence said.
“So we would like to re-engage in the co-operative program, so we can influence future requirements. However we have work to do within Defence to prove that re-entering a co-operative program is a viable use of public money from a cost-benefit perspective. But it’s a risk-reduction activity that the project would like to progress, given our success with the P-8A Poseidon co-operative program.”
US Navy operational experience has proven the P-8A extremely serviceable and capable of a rate of effort much higher than the P-3C Orion. However involvement in the recent search for Malaysian Airlines MH370 highlighted the lack of a search and rescue response capability in the baseline design.
“The initial P-8A did not come with a search and rescue store, so the US Navy can do search, but they can’t do rescue. We have impressed upon the US Navy that we require a search and rescue capability and, through our co-operative program, we’ve been able to bring that SAR store forward, such that our first P-8A will be delivered with that capability,” GPCAPT Lawrence explained.
“The US Navy has generated an urgent operational requirement to insert a SAR store onto its current P-8A fleet and so that’s an example of the influence that we’ve actually had into the community.”
The BAMS-D concept leverages work on the earlier Global Hawk Maritime Demonstration program and is being used operationally in the Middle East by the US Navy’s Persistent Maritime Unmanned Aircraft Systems (PMA-262) program office.
While the BAMS-D platform is not representative of the full maritime ISR capability to be delivered with Triton, it is providing the ADF with valuable information with regard to persistent ISR operations.
“We’re seeing how BAMS-D manages their (mission) shift crews, how they manage their briefings, their actual operations and post-flight debriefs, to understand how that system works,” GCAPT Lawrence noted.
“And that’s been replicated in Patuxent River, so we have people there to engage with these activities and understand how the Triton program is progressing, gain an increased understanding and awareness of what the capability is and we will feed that back into our requirements here.”
Group Captain Lawrence also makes mention of the support provided by the manufacturer in developing Australia’s requirements.
“We’ve also been really well supported by the Northrop Grumman community here in Australia. They’ve really tried to understand what the risks are, They’ve done risk assessments, analyses and research off their own bat, to assist the project in understanding the risks and mitigators in more detail,” he detailed.
“We’ve been very appreciative of their work and I think this capability is going to be a game changer. We’re very excited about it and it is just a matter of understanding those risks and planning to bring Triton into service at the appropriate time.”
The lessons learned operating the Heron unmanned system in Afghanistan are also informing Air 7000 and these will be further developed over time following the decision to retain the capability in Australia.
The US Navy’s Triton CONOPS is to establish a number of continuously manned orbits at several locations around the world, but Australia’s requirements are spread over a complex range of tasks.
“Supporting our naval task groups is a critical requirement for us as well as wee as border protection. Particularly from a persistent surveillance perspective. Triton will be a fundamental change in what we’ve seen with the AP-3C contribution,” GPCAPT Lawrence explained.
“It will open up other areas of Customs and Border Protection requirements, including our increased surveillance over the Southern Ocean, because we will have the capacity to do that. It wall also free up P-8As to undertake the response tasks, so it’s going to be quite a change in the way we do that.”
Triton is designed to integrate into the existing US C2 network and understanding how the capability will integrate into Australian sovereign networks and those of a wider coalition is also important, as is certification for operations in Australian airspace ant, not least, the transition from the current AP-3C.
Although transition from the manned AP-3C to the manned P-8A is relatively straight forward, the migration of personnel to the Triton system is more problematic, particularly given the short timeframe between P-8A and Triton entry to service.
“Triton will bring a lot of unique challenges. In a manned platform we know that we can’t be airborne 24/7, there are limits of human endurance. But to exploit Triton’s potential, we will have to perform shift work on occasions to achieve the persistence that we need for those long range or high level of persistence missions. That will be a challenge to design the workforce to meet that requirement,” GPCAPT Lawrence predicted.
“We certainly know the mission crew for a Triton will have very similar characteristics and skill sets to a mission crew for a P-8, but the pilot community is quite a different system in itself and certainly in the western world we’ve got some more work to do in regards to understanding the real requirements for an unmanned aircraft system operator who is currently a pilot.”
From the US perspective the FAA requires that UAS operators are command instrument rated pilots and this will initially be the case in Australia as well, but there is potential for that to change over time, as the systems demonstrate inherent safety and reliability.
For the meantime however, the challenge will be to manage the transition of pilots and Air Combat Officers to Triton in a timeline where there isn’t the scope to allow them to convert first to the P-8A, complete an operational tour and then transition to Triton within the wider Air Force requirements for postings and promotions.
“So we will have a dedicated Triton squadron where crews can generate and sustain that professional mastery we’ve certainly got with the AP-3C,” continued GPCAPT Lawrence.
“However we will transition some roles or personnel over from the AP-3C to the Triton. The Airborne Electronic Analysts will also be part of the Poseidon’s mission crew with the P-8A, so in years to come they will perhaps do a couple of tours on the P-8A and then follow with a tour or two on the Triton.”
Northrop Grumman and the US Navy are now working to define the first upgrade to the MQ-4C, which will be the capability acquired under Air 7000 and one of the elements under consideration is an Australian requirement for a weather radar system.
“Weather radar is quite important for us because with our CONOPS these capabilities are going to be flying for very long periods and they’re not going to be flying at high altitudes, above weather, for the entire mission. They will have to descend to gain greater awareness of a contact they’ve located and will have to fly around cloud, and in some cases through cloud, to actually get to where we need to go,” GPCAPT Lawrence explained to ADM.
The Australian government has publicly committed to eight Poseidons, with options on an additional four, and up to seven Tritons, but the forthcoming Force Structure Review and Defence White Paper are expected to provide further direction with regard to numbers.
“P-8A plus Triton equals a capability in itself, so if we poke the P-8A bubble we have to have an understanding of the Triton bubble as well. Because collectively it’s a family of systems, we need to understand how much persistence we need and whether it can be done by a P-8A, or a Triton. One thing that is not in doubt; however, and that is the P-8A is a maritime war-fighting capability that can release precision weapons to destroy or degrade adversary submarines and naval vessels – the Triton cannot do that. So, the P-8A is the driving determinant for the maritime family of systems force mix,” GPCAPT Lawrence concluded.
“We are watching the Force Structure Review and White Paper with significant interest in regards to that.”
This article first appeared in Australian Defence Magazine VOL.23 No.3, March 2015