EW: Is EW a healthy PIC? | ADM May 2012

The future shape, size and sophistication of Australia’s electronic warfare (EW) industry will all be explored in a forthcoming DMO report on what’s required for the EW domain to meet the requirements of a Priority Industry Capability (PIC). Recommendations from the report will be influential in determining how the domain develops.

While a PIC is defined as those industry capabilities which would offer an essential strategic advantage by being resident within Australia, and which, if not available, would significantly undermine defence self-reliance and ADF operational capability, the parameters of what this involves vary according to the PIC involved, particularly when placed in the context of MOTS/COTS acquisitions.

In the case of EW, the report is being compiled in the face of industry concerns that capabilities developed over the past 25 years are being run down to a level where the skills necessary for any Australian specific developments, or enhancements to capabilities purchased offshore, may soon no longer be available.

The DMO report is expected to be agreed internally with Defence stakeholders by the end of June, after which it will go to Defence Materiel Minister Jason Clare for decision working in consultation with Defence Minister Stephen Smith.

Given the sensitivity of the subject and the timing, no substantive official comment was available and most industry executives preferred to speak on background.

However, ADM has established that the DMO report is first scoping out what reprogramming and product development can feasibly be undertaken in Australia, then drilling down to ADF requirements and seeking to match those with domestic capability.

In overall terms, the report will form a judgment on the health of the PIC and issues affecting and likely to affect it.

What complicates PIC health assessment are individual variations. For one PIC, the issue of innovation and access to new technologies may be vital. Another may be deemed healthy but only if a specific defence project starts on schedule. For a third, innovation may not be nearly important as access to skilled labour or an essential piece of infrastructure.

The report will also take a view on any intervention that could be warranted to maintain the sector’s viability, both now and into the future. Such intervention could range from contractual changes and assistance through existing mechanisms such as the Capability and Technology Demonstration (CTD) program and the PIC Innovation Program, to bringing forward a scheduled project.

However, the report will not be limiting itself to industry. It will also assess Commonwealth capabilities, in particular those provided by DSTO and the tri-service Joint Electronic Warfare Operational Support Unit (JEWOSU) at RAAF Edinburgh, the three elements which together constitute the national capability in EW.

Of the 12 official PICs, as of mid-April, health reports had been completed on aspects of combat clothing, ship dry docking and common user facilities, acoustic technologies, signature management, and support of mission and safety-critical software. Work was understood to be well advanced on high frequency and phased array radars, and the Collins class combat system. ADM understands that the ‘easy’ PIC health checks are now complete with the harder domains remaining.

Sources familiar with the PIC reviews have described the EW report as a major priority and one that is now attracting significant attention, given the important structural issues that are involved.

Industry worries about the future of Australia’s indigenous EW capability first came to the fore in 2010 in a hard-hitting speech by the then-Chief Executive of BAE Systems Australia, Jim McDowell.

While acknowledging an element of bias, McDowell warned that by restricting the EW industry by dint of MOTS/COTS acquisitions to a sustainment and support mode “it will lose the key design and development skills necessary to upgrade or even address fundamental obsolescence issues with the capability required – we will become forever reliant on an offshore OEM who will inevitably take decisions which are not aligned to our strategic needs”.

Fast forward two years, and Kim Scott, BAE Systems Australia’s Director of Land and Integrated Systems, agrees that problems and delays in programs like Echidna, the ALR 2002 radar warning receiver and Wedgetail EW suite (the latter two both developed by BAE Systems) had understandably resulted in the Commonwealth deciding that COTS/MOTS was the way of the future.

“The risk that ensues is that in order to maintain and support those assets you need to have a detailed level of understanding and knowledge of the integrated systems; in particular if you ever want to enhance and improve those assets during their life of type you also need to have experience in EW systems design and development to be able to do that,” he comments.

“The majority of technicians and engineers working in support are not necessarily the same guys that do development work and we’re seeing a significant erosion of those skills.

“In July 2009 we had 480 people just in BAE Systems alone who were working EW programs; we’re now down to about 100 of whom less than 40 are EW subject matter experts, and by the end of this year into next year we’ll be down to probably 20 to 30 people with significant EW design experience.” Jeff Walsh, President of the Australian Chapter of the Association of Old Crows, is also concerned at the dilution of the hard won domestic capability.

“There’s not much activity underway in developing new capabilities. There are some activities within DSTO but scientists in DSTO keeping their hand in does not make for an indigenous Australian military and industrial capability for sustainment and sovereign support,” he says.

“Everyone in the military talks about sustainment but sustaining the force in being is one thing; having a sustainable sustainment capability that is exercised, demonstrated and evolves to suit changing requirements and operational needs is something else.

“The industry component of a national support capability has to be there when you need it.”

Both Walsh and Scott among others raise the issue of sovereign capability.

“If in the future you’re wholly reliant on the US or other countries to support upgrades and updates to your EW systems you’re going to be at the end of a long line,” said Scott. “We need an indigenous capability of some sort and we need to decide on the scale of what that is and define in what areas.

“Clearly threat libraries can be critical because the threats in our region are different to the threats elsewhere. The US will have their own specific threat library load relevant to their area of operations; we need to have a local load.

“Some people say programming of threat libraries can all be done by JEWOSO and is the only capability we need to retain, but it’s not only the threat libraries we need to be maintaining, but also supporting and enhancing the actual EW systems, which is where industry plays a key role.”

Sovereign capability relating to EW for Walsh “is the capability to operate in our own interests and prepare ourselves for our own unique actions whether it be in surveillance, signal monitoring or combat and attack…. I don’t think we can allow ourselves to become just an instrument or an arm of any US or other foreign military force”.

In a recent development, a number of industry executives are understood to have been briefed by Capability Development Group (CDG) for the first time on EW programs contained within the classified version of the DCP.

Sources familiar with the briefings said that participants had welcomed the move towards greater visibility of the ADF’s future requirements, but did not regard the projects disclosed at the briefings as substantial although the sustainment element would eventually provide worthwhile work.

Nevertheless, the sources said the C4ISREW environmental working group recently established and sponsored by CDG could greatly assist such briefings and exchanges.

The major disclosed maritime and air EW programs remain Nulka (although the Mk 234 electronic payload was developed by the US), C-130J EWSP under Air 5416 Phases 4B1 and 4B2, upgrade or replacement of the Centaur electronic support system aboard Anzac class frigates under Sea 1448 Phase 4A, and the electronic support system component of the Air Warfare Destroyer program.

Protecting deployed land forces against improvised explosive devices (IEDs) is being undertaken under JP154 Phases 1 and 2. The project aims to develop counter-IED systems and measures in accordance with strategic priorities while remaining sufficiently flexible to respond to unpredictable changes in the threat environment and take full advantage of technological advances.

Smaller projects include JP 3021, which will provide aircrew with the ability to train and rehearse missions in a ground based air defence environment. Currently training is only available to the ADF on overseas EW ranges on an ad-hoc basis during joint ADF-allied exercises, and in Australia using loaned US equipment.

As mandated in the 2011 DCP, the EW PIC requirement includes EW countermeasures development and validation; EW reprogramming and system integration of overseas-developed systems to meet Australian operational needs; the management of threat libraries; and selective product development to maintain high-end electronic warfare knowledge and capacity.

Official sources maintain the ability to develop and validate EW countermeasures is being backed by significant investment in the land and maritime areas, while the JEWOSU model is being expanded to provide EW operations support in the same domains.

Ironically, at a time in which industry’s EW-qualified workforce is shrinking, the sources believe that sustainment skills within both industry and defence will need to be built up to sustain all the capabilities that will eventually be brought into service over the DCP timeframe.

The sources acknowledge that programming and support of the DIRCM (Directed Infrared Countermeasure) units fitted or to be fitted to Wedgetail AEW&C, KC-30A multi-role tanker transports and C-17 and C-130J strategic and tactical transports, will remain in US hands in the short term. In the medium term it’s likely that a support facility will be built in Australia in close cooperation with US government and industry representatives.

Similarly, the electronic pods involved in any future conversion of RAAF F/A-18F Super Hornets to the EAG-18 electronic attack Growler variant would almost certainly be programmed and supported by the US.

While the reprogramming of the EW capabilities of Australian-owned Joint Strike Fighters would also remain American-based, a specialist Australian team of ADF and DSTO personnel in the US would assist with the necessary information flow from Australia, the sources said.

Disagreement between Defence and elements of industry appears to centre on the level of expertise to be required of the indigenous EW sector in the future; an issue on which industry is looking to the PIC report to provide firm and practical guidance that will facilitate investment decisions.

Less contentious is general agreement that the future EW domain needs to be expanded to recognise the confluence of EW, information operations and cyber – a complex issue which is readily acknowledged, but does not yet appear to have been addressed in any meaningful way.