Page 24 - Australian Defence Magazine May 2019

EW and UAVs
SEA 129 PHASE 5
“The systems being trialled in the NMP were not necessarily the systems that would be chosen
for Sea 129 Phase 5.”
creased endurance but it’s more difficult to launch and recover off a MFU and takes up a lot of space,” Captain Matthew Royals, the RAN’s Director of Aviation said to ADM.
“It also reduces the flexibility and agility of the flight deck team with a manned heli- copter if they’re going to do some teaming with a UAS, but those are the tradeoffs you make in the RfT and the responses from in- dustry, so ultimately it’s all about the type of effect you want to deliver.”
Although the Arafura class does have a han- gar this was not a problem, since many UAS were containerised and the OPVs could if nec- essary accommodate several such systems.
The ScanEagle was successfully deployed on HMAS Newcastle in the Middle East in 2017 and included simultaneous operations – ‘manned-unmanned teaming’ – with the ship’s MH-60R Seahawk helicopter.
ScanEagle trials continue with the RAN’s HMAS Albatross-based 822x Squadron, upgraded to an operational formation from the Navy Unmanned Aircraft Systems Unit (NUASU) in October 2018.
concept of deployment for these vehicles and the payloads as well as getting all the airworthiness side of it established.
“When we go into Sea 129 Phase 5 we’ll have a readily-established UAS airworthi- ness system and also, ideally, a seaworthi- ness component for shipboard integration.”
Selecting personnel for a new squadron testing a new resource was a major challenge, hence the early start to ensure the squadron was appropriately manned when the project moved into service, CAPT Royals explained.
Currently Navy required a UAS mission commander to have qualified as aircrew, which involved significant overheads in terms of time and cost for training. Payload operators were mostly drawn from aircraft maintenance per- sonnel, and both these issues were under review.
Fuel footprint
For unmanned rotary wing operations the RAN initially relied on a single S-100 Camcopter on loan from Schiebel. This was powered by a Diamond piston engine whose aviation gasoline (avgas) fuel was deemed
unsuitable for combat vessel evalu- ations because of its relatively low flashpoint.
To meet the RAN’s requirements Schiebel replaced the Diamond en- gine with a two-disc Rotron 600, sourced from the UK company Rotron and modified in-house. The Rotron engine accepts JP-5, a ker- osene-based fuel with a flash point above 60 degrees Celsius and speci- fied by the RAN for safety reasons.
However, Andrew Watson, general man- ager Schiebel Pacific, confirmed to ADM in April that two JP-5-powered S-100s deliv- ered to the RAN as lead customer in 2017 had been replaced in late 2018 by two avgas- powered S-100s after failing to meet the RAN’s endurance requirement of six hours with a 20kg payload.
Two S-100s powered by a S-2 heavy fuel engine newly-developed by Schiebel would be delivered to the RAN in late September 2019 to replace the avgas-powered stand- ins and would certainly meet or exceed the Australian requirements, Watson said.
Although the avgas-fuelled S-100s had continued flight trials with the RAN’s 2,935-tonne civilian-crewed MATV Syca- more, the replacement S-100s would move to trials with Anzac-class frigates as soon as they were cleared for warship evaluations, CAPT Royals stated.
The parameters to be established for both the MATV and the Anzac-class include safe
take-off, operating and landing limits under various sea states and lighting conditions. UAS handling, storage, and emergency proce- dures are also put in place during these trials.
Tactical concepts under evaluation include aerial intelligence gathering, maritime sur- veillance and reconnaissance, maritime in- terdiction, constabulary patrols, anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare missions and amphibious operations.
Payload
During recent trials the ScanEagles were fit- ted with the EO900 EO/IR camera and the S-100s are fitted with L3 Wescam’s MX-10 multi-sensor, multi-spectral imaging system.
The option remains in the longer-term of a laser target designator to ‘lase’ targets, although there is no intention of arming either air vehicle as part of Sea 129 Phase 5.
The systems being trialled in the NMP were not necessarily the systems that would be chosen for Sea 129 Phase 5 – “what we’re doing is getting as much data as we can to help us chose the right systems, and we’ll probably look at increasing that maritime tactical UAS footprint at sea as a further derisking”, com- mented CAPT Royals to ADM.
“We have an incredibly close relation- ship with our allies, particularly the US and UK, and we’ve got a range of liaison officers whom we are working closely with on their unmanned systems. We also have a develop- ing relationship with some of the European navies that are working in this area, such as the Germans for example.
“Unmanned systems is a burgeoning area and it’s changing fairly rapidly; but at the mo- ment the footprint for the embarkation at sea of unmanned systems is not much smaller than that for manned aircraft and that’s where we want to see a bigger change, the ca- pacity to control multiple systems from a sin- gle shipborne combat management system.”
Having a common air vehicle across the OPVs and Hunter-class would facilitate the integration of the UAS with the Saab com- bat management system already equipping the Anzac and Canberra-class ships and destined for the OPVs, the Hunter-class, and the two under-construction support ships based on the Spanish Cantabria class in Supply and Stalwart. It would also create significant efficiencies in training.
“In the longer term we don’t want to have a separate ground control station for the air vehicles, we want to be able to control them internally from our combat management system and have them fully integrated,” CAPT Royals stated.
The x in the Squadron’s designation rep- resents its experimental work with ScanEa- gle and the Schiebel S-100 and will remain until the squadron is established as a con- temporary capability.
As of April the unit comprised just 30 personnel but this will grow to a minimum of 110 with the implementation of Sea 129 Phase 5 “and probably half that again if we’re true about the workforce size required," CAPT Royals commented to ADM.
“At the moment the 30 are basically get- ting up their skills on the air vehicles and operating those in restricted airspace at Nowra and then when they can get to sea they’re out there doing their deck work, at the moment mostly on the multirole avia- tion training vessel (MATV) Sycamore.
“The rate at which the payload perfor- mance improves is quite quick and the tech- nological refresh rate has got to be factored into the project. As well as flying, they’re helping develop all the documentation, the
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