Page 39 - Australian Defence Magazine November 2022

NOVEMBER 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
DEFENCE BUSINESS
PITCH BLACK 2022 39
LEFT: Two Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) F-16Ds during an air to ground mission during Pitch Black 2022
BELOW: The Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF) sent six KF-16C/D fighters to Australia for the first time
OPPOSITE PAGE:
Pitch Black 2022 was an important opportunity for Japan to forge closer regional ties. Here a Mitsubishi F-2A rests between missions in Darwin
MISSION PEGASE 2022
Under its Projection d’un dispositif aérien d’Envegure en Asia du Sud-Est (Projection of a large air force in Southeast Asia) mission, or Pegase (Pegasus), the French Air Force deployed the three Rafales, two A330 MRTT Phénix and two A400M Atlas aircraft from St Dizier in northern France to New Caledonia. The deployment was conducted in less than 72 hours, demonstrating the Armée de l'Air’s ability and willingness to project power into the region.
Pegase 2022 was conducted in three phases, the second of which saw the Rafales, a single Phénix and a New Caledonia- based Airbus CN235-200M transport participating in the RAAF’s Pitch Black air combat exercise.
“After the incident related to the sale of French subma- rines to Australia, Pitch Black 2022 is here to relaunch air cooperation between the two nations,” the French Ministry of Defence said in a statement. “The military dialogue al- ready restarted in January 2022.”
The Rafale fighters were from the 1/ 4 ‘Gascogne’ and 2/4 ‘La Fayatte’ squadrons, based at San Dizier, but crews from all four of France’s Rafale wings participated in Pitch Black and in total 170 personnel were spread between Amberley, Darwin and Tindal.
“I think it’s a very, very good exercise because of the size of the training area, which is almost half of France,” De- tachment Commander Colonel Franck Bottero told ADM. “But France has more than 10,000 civilian movements a day, so there's no way we have sufficient airspace to train in. Actually, all the Rafale operational squadrons are repre- sented here (Darwin) in order to take all the experience we can get from this exercise and share it inside the different units – so, we have pilots from the four different Rafale squadrons in France.”
LIGHTNING STRIKES
Making the fifth-generation fighter’s debut at a Pitch Black exercise a number of RAAF F-35A conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) aircraft flew from Darwin and twelve short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) F-35Bs from the USMC were based at Tindal.
“We like the F-35 because of the high-fidelity informa- tion that it provides us. It's above all else an airborne sen- sor, so it uses the equipment on the jet to provide extremely high-fidelity information for us to make better decisions on the battlefield,” explained Flight Lieutenant Mick Grey, an F-35 pilot with No.75 Squadron, RAAF.
“Its APG-81 radar, combined with the way that the jets speak to each other [via Multi-function Advanced Data Link - MADL], and uses that information to combine all of the data the sensors are pulling in is what we call sensor fusion. That allows us to make better calls on the battlefield when we're out there fighting.
“The other big reason we like it is because of the lethal- ity and flexibility of the platform. It's capable of dealing
NIGEL PITTAWAY
NIGEL PITTAWAY