Page 41 - Australian Defence Magazine - June 2018

CAPABILITY
Wynd anticipates increasing automation within JORN and installing additional perfor- mance measurement diagnostics to enhance the ability of JCC operators to undertake more maintenance and diagnostic functions remotely; the long-term objective being to reduce manning levels at all three sites.
At present Lockheed Martin operates Radars One and Two with two fly-in fly-out rotations of about 20 staff for the Transmit and Receive facilities at each site.
BAES intends introducing a common operating model for all three radars to facili- tate the movement of personnel between sites and maximise efficiency, particularly when a radar is offline for maintenance or upgrad- ing, Wynd says.
Although JORN operational support contracts are understood to specify 98 per cent availability and the ability for each of the three radars to operate 24/7, the system’s overlapping coverage means an individual radar can be taken offline for maintenance, research and development, and upgrade without disrupting surveillance. The system does not usually operate on a 24-hour basis.
Instead, the operating schedule is advised by the JCC at the request of Air Force through 41 Wing at RAAF Williamstown. Transmit is turned on first at each site
followed by Receive, a process that with fault- checking, atmospheric analysis and deter- mining what transmit channels are available (JORN is always a secondary user of the HF spectrum) takes about two hours.
The JCC then takes over operation of the system and 41 Wing decides on areas of interest (each of which is referred to as a ‘tile’) on which the system will focus (referred to as a ‘dwell’).
As set out in a 1987 technical specifica- tion, the system is configured to detect and track either aircraft the same size or larger than the RAAF’s Hawk Lead-in Fighter Trainer, or maritime vessels the same size or larger than the RAN’s long-decommissioned 41-metre, 220 tonne Fremantle-class patrol boats – so long as they have a metal hull or a metal structure encased in wood. It is not possible to search for both air and maritime targets at the same time.
Officially JORN allows the ADF to moni- tor air and sea activity north of Australia up to 3,000 km from a radar site. This takes in parts of Java, all of Papua New Guinea, and halfway across the Indian Ocean.
It would be an unusual defence establish- ment that was upfront about the performance of a strategic asset such as
JORN, and anecdotal
evidence suggests a range of at least 4,000 km from the Australian coastline depending on atmospheric conditions, with some capability as far north as the Korean peninsula.
Phase 6 upgrade scope
Project Air 2025 Phase 6 is in essence a mid- life upgrade that will move JORN into a new era with digital waveform transmitters and digital receivers, enhanced frequency man- agement, communications and information systems, and better supportability.
As summarised by Dr Gordon Frazer, DST’s Research Leader High Frequency Radar, the project will enable the system to do more things at the same time. It will also significantly advance JORN’s ability to detect – although not necessarily to identify – tar- gets in more difficult ionospheric conditions.
The system currently provides target type, speed, heading and position accurate at best to about 7.5km (at worst about 75km) but not target height which is furnished by other more precise sensors, when available.
Planning for the Phase 6 upgrade and maintaining what Dr Frazer categorically affirms is Australia’s global lead in OTHR
technology began in 2012 on completion of the rolling improvements delivered by Project Air 2025 Phase 5, which incorpo- rated the so-called Jindalee Facility Alice Springs (FAS) integration upgrade.
This created a common user interface across the Queensland and WA radars and the more advanced capabilities of the Alice Springs facility, which was integrated into the overall JORN network.
These advances and enhancements to the radars’ sensitivity have enabled JORN to sur- veil a specific area over a larger geographi- cal region and move more quickly from one area of interest to another. Additionally, new signal processing algorithms have improved detection performance.
Following two years of extensive Phase 5 verification activities, JORN was declared fully operational in 2014 for the first time in its 25-year history amid wide-ranging dis- cussion on the next stage of its development.
Dr Frazer says he had long made the point that a project scheduled to take five or six years was doomed to failure from Day One if it took four years to teach the workforce what to do.
“That was the experience we went through
with Telstra/Marconi; they had no prior expe- rience, they simply didn’t know enough about the business to do it and six years later they were selling out to Lockheed Martin/Tenix with a $600 million loss,” he commented to ADM. “When somebody joins my group in DST it takes them three or four years to have enough knowledge of the OTH radar and become useful in terms of thinking and acting independently – and that is post-PhD.
“We knew we had a few years after Phase 5 to do some things in advance to ensure that when the Phase 6 contract was ultimately signed the project would emerge as a success rather than another drama,” Dr Frazer said.
“Clearly there would be a gap during which we would lose the industrial workforce, so we proposed a program of work under the Priority Industry Capability program for designated sectors of strategic sovereign importance.
“We initially called that JORN Phase 7,
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JORN
“Officially JORN allows the ADF to monitor air and sea activity north of Australia up to 3,000 km from a radar site.”