Page 19 - RAF Lossiemouth Special Report

Visiting RAF Lossiemouth: The RAF Shapes a Way Ahead

“We service modified the aircraft to be able to operate Paveway IVs and we have modified the aircraft to
operate Paveway IVs, sometime ahead of the four nation program.”
The variant the Wing Commander discussed is the air-to-ground modified Typhoon, the aircraft they send to
Red Flag and send to Operation SHADER.
“P1 EB is a software upgrade, with minor hardware changes.”
According to November 27, 2014 article published on the RAF website:
P1Eb is predominantly an air to ground capability upgrade; it provides enhancements to the Litening III Laser
Designator Pod (LDP) and Helmet Equipment Assembly (HEA) (helmet mounted sight) integration, as well as with
Paveway IV.
The LDP can now also be used seamlessly with the HEA to visually identify air tracks at long range, as well as
identifying, tracking and targeting points on the ground.
According to the Wing Commander:
“P1Eb sets us on the path to getting to the point where Tornado can be retired.
“The Tornado was designed for a 4000 flying hour, life.
We now have aircraft in excess of 6 1/2 thousand flying hours.
“I think the intent is to take some airframes up to 7 1/2, maybe even more, thousand flying hours.
We are wearing them out.”
Question: What is the biggest challenge to shaping the hub to support Typhoon?
“Having the right numbers of people in the right place at the right time.
“Deployments pressure the workforce and it is about not burning those people with the qualification
experience necessary to operate the fleet.
“Unless we do things differently, we risk our sustainability of the fleet by not having enough qualified people
in the right place at the right time.
“We would then risk not only successful operations but growth into the future.
We want to ensure that we’re in a sustainable medium-long term future for the fleet.”
Question: What is the big fleet management challenge for you?
“We have fleets within fleets.
“We have Typhoons with different Tranches, and different software configurations or PSCs (Production
Software Configurations).
“A different PSC can do different things.
“It has a different level of capability.

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