Page 17 - Australian Defence Magazine May 2019

Completion ceremony
Work began on the LIFCAP program at Williamtown in September 2014. The 33rd and final aircraft was handed back to the RAAF one month earlier than originally scheduled and within budget, according to BAE Systems Australia Director of Aero- space Steve Drury.
Drury was one of the keynote speakers at the ceremony, which was conducted in the hangar where the work had been car- ried out and two Hawk aircraft, including A27-24 the last to be completed, served as a backdrop to the proceedings. Following the official part of the ceremony, guests were invited out onto the tarmac to witness a solo handling display.
“The RAAF’s fleet is now among the most capable in the world following this major capability upgrade,” Drury told in- vited guests. “The modified aircraft pro- vides RAAF with a Lead-In Fighter that is comparable to the RAF’s Hawk T.2 Advanced Jet Trainer and ensures the Aus- tralian Hawk aircraft is suitable for a fifth- generation air force, preparing pilots for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
“The enduring partnership we have built in that time with 78 Wing, 76 Squadron, 79 Squadron and the Tactical Fighter Sys- tems Program Office (TFSPO) is one we
are extremely proud of and has helped deliver milestones for the air force like the comple- tionofover100,000 accident-free fly- ing hours on the
Hawk.”
Other speakers included Air Vice Mar- shal Cath Roberts, Head Aerospace Sys- tems Division for CASG, who described the problems which had to be overcome during the development and certification of the Australian software.
“The LIFCAP journey actually began back in 2011 and no-one would charac- terise it as an easy journey,” AVM Roberts told guests. “But the pitch seemed easy, ‘let’s just simply mirror the Hawk 128 ca- pability in the Australian fleet’. But like many of our programs, with the challenges of operating and sustaining a unique fleet, we realised early that it would require a completely new software build that would need tailoring for Australia.”
AVM Roberts said that Second Pass ap- proval was achieved in 2013, but the soft- ware challenges reached a point where there was doubt whether they could be overcome.
“One of my most uncomfortable mo- ments in my time in Air Force
was delivering concerns back
to the Project Office in 2015 of
the possibility that this project might be cancelled, because we were unable to certify the new systems,” she recalled.
“But there was never any
doubt in my mind that this
team, that we have here today,
would be able to ultimately
deliver for RAAF. The Hawk sustainment and LIFCAP
programs represents the best in collabora- tion between Defence and industry, I’ve always placed my trust and faith in BAE Systems, CAE and Cubic Defence to de- liver the best capability and now, as the head of Aerospace Systems Division, I’m
very proud to report that this impor- tant program has delivered to an
extraordinary level.”
LIFCAP described
The LIFCAP has added a new mission computer and Operation- al Flight Program (OFP) software package to the Hawk 127 which includes a radar emulator capability, electronic warfare (EW) systems, a digital mapping system, enhanced ground proximity warn- ing system (EGPWS) and a traffic collision
avoidance system (TCAS).
Other changes to the baseline British air-
craft include the aforementioned ability to employ live weapons and the addition of a
proprietary datalink, which does not have ‘Link 16-like’ functionality but neverthe- less introduces students to the concept of using off-board data at an earlier stage of their training.
The Australian LIFCAP introduced fur- ther complexity compared with its UK coun- terpart, because all RAF Hawk T.2s are new- build aircraft, with the new hardware and software installed during production, whereas a ‘LIFCAP kit’ had first to be developed and then the installation tested on two Australian jets. The first of these validation and verifica- tion aircraft was inducted into BAE Systems’ facility at Williamtown in March 2014.
LIFCAP isn’t just about the Hawk air- craft itself however and one of the key en- ablers of the new training system is the package supplied by CAE, which includes three Full Mission Simulators (FMS), two at RAAF Base Williamtown and one at RAAF Base Pearce.
New capabilities
The first RAAF weapons and tactics course to be undertaken on the post-LIFCAP air- craft began at Williamtown at the begin- ning of 2018 and, in an early test of the new fixed-wing training regime, the first gradu- ates from the PC-21 advanced flying train- ing course at Pearce, will begin flying the Hawk around the end of the first quarter of 2020. The first graduates of the PC-21/ Hawk LIFCAP training continuum are also likely to progress onto the F-35 in the not too distant future.
As the Hawk fleet transitioned to the LIFCAP standard aircraft, some of the Wing’s non-pilot training tasks, such as Army and fleet support, were dropped for a period of time, and which aircraft each student flew during their training was care- fully managed. This meant that students re- mained on either pre or post-LIFCAP jets during their entire course.
Instructors at 76 Sqn at Williamtown,
www.australiandefence.com.au | May 2019 | 17
“The Hawk sustainment and LIFCAP programs represents the best in collaboration between Defence and industry.”