Page 41 - Australian Defence Magazine July 2019

LAND SURVEILLANCE
As impressive as the sunset behind it, a No. 11 Squadron P-8A Poseidon
soaks up the last rays of light on another perfect RAAF Learmonth day.
Information distribution
The way that information collected by Poseidon is distributed from the aircraft, to various elements of the ADF, Government, and Allied militaries, is also different than in the past. To do this properly, 92 Wing is acquiring three Tactical Operations Centres (TOCs), one of which is to be in- stalled permanently at RAAF Edinburgh while the other two are to be Mobile TOCs (MTOCs) that can be deployed with a Poseidon and its crew.
Without a collocated TOC, the informa- tion collected by a deployed Poseidon will not be able to fully follow the Production- Exploitation-Dissemination (PED) process to meet the requirements of the mission’s customer(s), some of whom can be at the highest levels of Defence and Government.
GPCAPT Grime also stated that RAAF will be acquiring a smaller-scale type of TOC, called a Media
Fly Away Kit (FAK), at
the end of 2019, and that there are changes being made to the structure of 92 Wing to better enable the organisation to do PED in order to fulfil its mission requirements.
The TOC is also an
important part of the
crew’s pre-mission prep-
aration, with the TOC
being able to reach-back
to acquire information
necessary to conduct the mission, such as preparing the Poseidon’s sensors and Tacti- cal Open Mission System (TOMS).
With only two MTOCs, there will likely be instances where 92 Wing will need to ex- amine competing priorities when determin- ing which deployed aircraft receive this sup- port. 92 Wing is also working with the U.S. Navy (USN) in figuring out how to best deploy and setup MTOCs, as GPCAPT Grime is hopeful that eventually RAAF and USN MTOCs will be interoperable.
The increase in information available for the mission, being collected by the mission, and being disseminated during and after the mission, for both Poseidon and the MQ-4C Triton (due to enter RAAF service in 2023) is, according to GPCAPT Grime, likely to bring the need for RAAF to have people who are adept at handling information in a way that is different to RAAF recruits of the past.
“I need people that are qualified in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths), that understand information
and how to apply it,” GPCAPT Grime stated. “As an organisation we have actively recruited people that think in a fifth-gen way already; and so we need to exploit that.”
Triton teaming
Air Force, along with 92 Wing, is in the process of determining the personnel num- bers required and what are the necessary skill sets, including how people can cross between the different aircraft; supporting the range of capabilities.
The arrival of the MQ-4C (and eventually the Reaper) will also change the way some 92 Wing crews conduct operations overseas.
“Triton crews may not operate in austere, adverse environments,” GPCAPT Grime said. “They’ll sit in a building very much like this one with a bunch of laptop screens that people will operate and fly the aircraft. And they will go home to their families. But
The access to significantly more, real-time information than had been the case with the Orion, has contributed to a change in the makeup of the crew of the new MPRA. Whereas in the AP-3C there was a Tactical Coordinator (TACCO) and a Navigator/ Communicator (NAVCOM), in the P-8A there is a TACCO and a COTAC (Co- Tactical Coordinator), where the role of the COTAC can be largely to perform the role of an information manager who can deal with the various information coming onto the aircraft in order to assist the TACCO.
GPCAPT Grime said that, “how that (information) is managed leads to how the TACCO employs his or her sensors and how they fight the aircraft.”
they’ve just been, essentially, on-task, in the most difficult of cases, in a conflict zone.”
Given this unique and emerging Service circumstance, RAAF is now considering how these types of engagement scenarios are to be to managed; noting crews conduct- ing missions overseas are not necessarily de- ployed overseas (in these scenarios), but are essentially ‘all-consumed’ in the mission.
Future increments of the Poseidon are also likely to have a greater ability to dis- seminate information, which could involve traditional ‘back-end’ crew members doing more processing off-board, on the ground, thus creating crew models that could be dif- ferent from those currently in place.
Training
Within the buildings that house Number 292 Squadron are RAAF’s simulators for training the Poseidon’s ground and air- crews. A full-scale Poseidon fuselage (which has a room almost to itself), as well as full- scale sub-elements (such as engines and
www.australiandefence.com.au | July 2019 | 41
P-8A
“The increase in information available for the mission, being collected by the mission, and being disseminated during
and after the mission, for both Poseidon and the MQ-4C Triton.”
DEFENCE