Force Protection: Project Echidna | ADM Aug 2009
These will see the RAAF's C-130J Hercules fitted with improved self-protection equipment.
But what comes after Echidna?
Gregor Ferguson | Sydney
Project Echidna, Air 5416, has had a long and sometimes turbulent history, and it seems now to be drawing to a close.
And the 2009 White Paper suggests Defence is starting to implement a new post-Echidna approach to managing and developing its Electronic Warfare Self-Protection (EWSP) capabilities.
Along with work currently under way on the Army's Black Hawks and CH-47D Chinooks, the 2009 DCP includes Phases 4B1 and 4B2 - the C-130J Radar Warning Receiver (RWR) and Large Aircraft IR Counter Measures (LAIRCM) upgrades, respectively.
After these phases are completed, there appear to be no dedicated airborne EW acquisition or upgrade programs in the DCP and if the ADF looks after its EWSP capabilities properly, there may never be a requirement for a project of its kind again.
Project Echidna had two main aims: to bestow a credible level of survivability on legacy Army and RAAF helicopters and fixed wing aircraft, and to rationalise an incoherent and unsupportable inventory of EWSP equipment and software.
It also focussed the attention of ADF planners on the need for EWSP equipment as a vital component of force readiness.
Cameron Stewart in The Australian highlighted the issue of readiness earlier this year in a front-page story.
He pointed out that far too many ADF platforms were simply not combat-capable because their lack of EWSP made them vulnerable to even quite low-level threats.
In fact, the picture was changing rapidly even as Stewart wrote his article, but he captured a compelling snapshot of the ADF as it currently was.
There's some history behind this: Going back 20 years or more, many ADF platforms were ordered without any EWSP equipment at all, or had become so old the original equipment was useless.
For example, the Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters and the C-130H and -J Hercules transport aircraft, the original P-3C and the Seahawk helicopter which were delivered without EWSP systems, while the F-111C's original EW equipment was utterly obsolete and required a major upgrade.
When the ADF's operational tempo began to rise during the 1990s, the inadequacies of its airborne EWSP capabilities were starkly exposed.
Put bluntly, the ADF couldn't deploy most of its aircraft and helicopters into any sort of threat environment because they lacked the necessary survivability.
A number of Black Hawks got their first EWSP upgrade in the early-1990s under Project Gemini to operate in Cambodia.
Under Project Apollo four C-130Hs were fitted with a US EWSP suite sourced Off The Shelf (OTS) to operate in Somalia; this was barely adequate, according to contemporary reports, and was upgraded again in the late 1990s.
RAN Seahawks got a minor upgrade in 1990-91 to operate in the Gulf and the F-111s got an improved RWR, the ALR-62V5/6, and a new radar jamming pod, the EL/L-8222, during the late 1990s.
Since the East Timor deployment in 1999 the ADF's operational tempo has increased further, while new threats continually emerge: more capable sensors, command and control systems and missiles; and a proliferation of MANPADS - man-portable air defence systems such as the ubiquitous SA-7 ‘Grail' in the hands of terrorist groups and insurgents.
Frontline concern
The ADF's response has been two-fold: upgrading existing aircraft under Project Echidna; and ensuring that new aircraft are delivered with effective EWSP suites.
The Chief of Air Force directed last year that all RAAF frontline combat, transport and surveillance aircraft must be equipped, and their crews trained, to operate ‘in harm's way'.
The ADF's aim is to ensure every ADF aircraft or helicopter is capable of operating in any combat theatre where Australian troops are currently deployed.
The financial implications of this investment are significant.
As well as capital acquisition costs a critical part of the ‘overhead' associated with an effective EW capability is the significant ongoing investment in maintaining and modernising things like threat libraries, suite controllers, technique generators, processor software and the like.
The ability to enhance, upgrade and re-program EW equipment, often at short notice to meet an unexpected threat, is a core element of national self-reliance.
An important driver for Echidna was the ADF's experience of EW equipment bought from overseas, and particularly the US, with threat libraries and operating software which couldn't be upgraded or re-programmed in-country.
The ADF was often at the mercy of a foreign supplier with little direct control over the capability it was fielding, nor a detailed understanding of its strengths and weaknesses, and reliant on a supply chain that could take an uncomfortably long time to deliver upgrades or patches.
Difficulties in diversity
The diversity of ADF platforms and EW equipment makes the already-daunting task of keeping this fragmented inventory of equipment combat-ready more complicated and expensive.
At present most of the responsibility for honing the ADF's electronic warfare edge falls on DSTO and the Joint Electronic Warfare Operational Support Unit (JEWOSU), which in turn forms part of the RAAF's Edinburgh-based Aerospace Operational Support Group (AOSG).
Since the early-1990s Australia's electronic warfare community (the ADF, DSTO and DMO, along with the industry) have been advocating an integrated approach to acquiring EWSP equipment which would reduce this ‘overhead' significantly by rationalizing the ADF's inventory and focussing the sustainment and development efforts of JEWOSU and DSTO to better effect.
Project Echidna was launched in the mid-1990s to deliver EWSP upgrades right across the RAAF and Army fleet and to try and rationalise the inventory down to a common ‘family' of airborne EWSP equipment capable of being supported, upgraded and enhanced entirely in-country.
When it was re-started following a two-year hiatus caused by the 2000 Defence White Paper its scope embraced EWSP upgrades to the Black Hawk, Chinook and C-130H Hercules.
So far the project has seen a full upgrade of the C-130H, partial upgrades of the Black Hawk and Chinook (progress has been subject to aircraft availability for both trials and production work), an upgrade to the AP-3C and a partial upgrade of the C-130J.
The RAN's Seahawks underwent their own parallel EWSP upgrade under Project Sea 1405, and these two projects have provided a core inventory of EWSP equipment for the ADF.
Echidna is still a work in progress - last month prime contractor BAE Systems announced the Ph.2A EWSP suite for the Black Hawk had successfully completed a series of critical flight trials at Woomera in May.
These saw the company's ALR-2002 RWR and SIIDAS EW Controller, along with the AAR-60 MAW and Vicon 78 CMDS installed on a flight test pod mounted on a Learjet.
The trial exercised the whole system, including full countermeasures tactics functionality, in-flight training, and other features unique to the Echidna system, according to BAE Systems, and paves the way for flight trials on a Black Hawk in the final quarter of this year.
Thanks to Echidna, Sea 1405 and a small number of other stand-alone platform projects, the ADF has been able to develop or specify its own EWSP suites for a number of aircraft: the Black Hawk, CH-47D Chinook, C-130H, AP-3C Orion, Wedgetail AEW&C aircraft and KC-30A Multi-Role Tanker Transport (MRTT).
This has resulted in some rationalization of the EWSP inventory - in particular, around the EADS AAR-60 Missile Approach Warner (MAW) which now equips the Tiger, MRH90, Black Hawk, CH-47D and AP-3C.
However, the majority of new-build platforms are being acquired with an off the shelf EWSP kit - this has been or will be the case with the JSF, Super Hornet, C-17, C-130J, CH-47F Chinook, Tiger ARH and MRH90.
Phases 4B1 and 4B2 of Project Echidna will see the RAAF's C-130Js - both the current fleet and the two new aircraft to be acquired under the new DCP - equipped with the US baseline equipment of ALR-56M RWR and Large Aircraft IR Counter-Measures (LAIRCM - based on Northrop Grumman's AN/AAQ-24(V) Nemesis DIRCM) system.
Defence has tended not to tinker with these off the shelf EWSP suites: not only does this court unwelcome schedule and integration risk, in most cases they are based on carefully selected and matched components.
But a major challenge has been ensuring that this approach doesn't result in an unsustainable diversity of equipment and software, which Echidna was intended to prevent.
Defence is having to manage its EWSP capabilities carefully.
Sustainability
Another challenge is to ensure Australia's indigenous EW capability remains sustainable.
Defence's recently released list of Priority Industry capabilities (PIC) includes EW.
And attendees at the Rapid Prototyping Development & Evaluation (RPDE) organisation's 7th Biannual Meeting of Participants (BMP7) shortly before the DCP launch were told the organisation had a "Quick Look" task under way, commissioned by the ADF's Capability Development Group (CDG), to determine Australian industry's EW capabilities.
Leaving aside the fact that much of this data probably resides within (or ought to reside within) DMO's Industry Division, the fact that this task is being undertaken after the determination was made that Electronic Warfare should be a PIC suggests a somewhat incoherent approach to industry development and sustainment within Defence.
This only highlights the fact the DCP has no mechanism for injecting EWSP upgrades into the ADF's fixed and rotary wing aircraft fleets once Echidna comes to an end.
This may be the cause of some concern within companies like BAE Systems, Avalon Systems (just purchased by Ultra Electronics) and GKN Aerospace, all of whom have CTD projects or extension programs under way to develop new and in some cases world-class EW capabilities.
However, the 2009 White Paper's explicit focus on force readiness and preparedness and the promise of six-monthly online updates to the DCP suggests that it may actually become easier than it has in the past to raise a project designed to field timely EWSP upgrades.
The 2009 Defence White Paper also announced the establishment of a new Joint Electronic Warfare Centre (JEWC) to manage force-wide EW issues.
Paragraph 9.92 says this will collocate a number of different ADF EW organisations, probably in Adelaide, in order to grow a critical mass of personnel and expertise in training, R&D, counter measure development and the validation and verification of EW systems.
If the reality lives up to the promise this will be a most welcome development, both for the ADF and for industry.
However, practitioners point out that the scope of such an endeavour may be too broad for all of the relevant expertise to be concentrated efficiently in a single facility, like a much-expanded JEWOSU.
Properly speaking, EW embraces intelligence-gathering, Electronic Attack (EA) and Electronic Surveillance (ES), as well as EWSP, across all three services.
The broader aims of projects like Echidna also embrace force protection, which involves more than just defeating the ‘end game' capabilities of a specific threat.
Constant battle
Force protection is an endless, holistic cycle revolving around intelligence and Counter-Measures Development and Validation (CMD&V): counter-measures can include things like armour protection, route selection for aircraft and vehicles, route surveillance, surveillance of suspected terrorists and active counter-measures against IED triggering systems.
It won't be forgotten that Echidna included sub-phases devoted to up-armouring aircraft cockpits and cabins to increase crew protection.
So it's unlikely that the proposed Joint EW Centre will consist of a single facility, even if its headquarters does eventually reside at the Edinburgh defence precinct in Adelaide.
But it will almost certainly draw together specialist technical and T&E expertise from organisations such as JEWOSU, DSTO and the three services.
As for bringing new EWSP capability into service, much will depend on how the ADF chooses to sustain the EWSP capabilities it currently fields or will field in the relatively near future.
The acquisition and sustainment strategies for the Super Hornet and F-35A Lightning II include regular capability upgrades to ensure commonality and interoperability with the US Navy and the broader JSF community respectively.
If Defence takes the same pro-active approach with its other air platforms, if it ensures their EWSP capabilities aren't allowed to atrophy through lack of interest or under-investment, if it ensures that superior capabilities developed in the various CTD and extension programs are developed and fielded in a timely way, there really shouldn't be a need for another project like Echidna.
But that's a lot of ‘ifs'.