Page 34 - Australian Defence Magazine Oct 2020

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HELICOPTERS BATTLEFIELD AVIATION
OCTOBER 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
FIGURE 2
LAND 2097 SPECIAL FORCES HELICOPTER INDICATIVE TIMELINE
Defence would not comment on any of the contenders or CEP process at this time given the deliberations.
TIGER REPLACEMENT
Perhaps one of the more contentious announcements of the 2016 White Paper and confirmed again this year, is the re- placement of the Tiger ARH. Significant work has gone into the upgrade and remediation of the platform.
As reported previously by ADM’s Deputy Editor Nigel Pittaway, Airbus still see a place for the platform in ADF service.
Managing director Andrew Mathewson says Airbus Aus- tralia Pacific’s proposal will leverage features of the European Tiger Mk.3 upgrade program, currently under development by France, Germany and Spain under OCCAR. Mathewson said the Commonwealth can choose which features it wishes to include in the Australian Tiger upgrade
that would normally be done by Defence,” Mathewson said. “So, we have an intimate knowledge of the platform and a great partnership with Defence in support of Tiger (and) we feel very confident in the ability to perform those upgrades here in Australia.”
One of the upgrades is likely to be the in- tegration of Link 16 into the helicopter to replace the current Interim Tactical Data Link (iTDL) capability. The tactical data link ability of the Tiger is one of its ma- jor drawbacks as the platform has trouble talking to anything else in ADF service.
However, other nations operating the Tiger have had successes with their plat- forms. The French deployment of Tigers into Africa for example has been a mas-
sive accomplishment for their forces. Once again, check ADM’s past coverage on this issue.
APACHE OFFERING
The other main contender in this space is Boeing’s Apache. With a long history and now 17 international users, the Apache offering would be a FMS case. ADM spoke to US- based TJ Jamison, Director, International Sales, Vertical Lift, Boeing Defense, Space & Security to explore what the company is putting on the table.
“First, we’re talking about the capability, the certainty, the capability, the reliability, the proven performance of this aircraft. You can ask any Australian special operations soldier who served in Iraq fighting against ISIL, an Austra- lian special operations soldier or a conventional forces who served in Afghanistan about this aircraft, because they’ve
program if the proposal is selected.
He says the $3 billion savings are based on the publicly available Land 4503 acqui- sition program figures and suggests that whichever platform is acquired, it will need to be continually upgraded if it is to remain viable until the 2040s, when Defence may be looking to the US Future Vertical Lift
(FVL) solution.
“Defence has been very plain that they’re
“ARMY IS KEENLY INTERESTED IN THE TECHNOLOGIES AND FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES FOR AUSTRALIAN INDUSTRY THAT PROGRAMS, SUCH AS THE LAND 2097-4 CAPABILITY ENHANCEMENT PROGRAM, SEEK TO DELIVER.”
all been supported by this aircraft in their ground manoeuvre engagements in both those theatres.
“From a cost perspective, you gain ef- ficiencies and costs through quantity of manufacturing and the US Army has a program of record of 791 of the E Model Apaches currently is what’s on the plan, and they conduct what we call multi-year buys. And what we do to ensure the best cost possible to our global customers is we gain options off those multi-year buys. The global customer, and in this case the Aus- tralian customer, can benefit from the cost
focusing on FVL, so you can imagine if
they replace Tiger in the timeframe out-
lined (and) acquire a new capability in the
early 2030s, to have it replaced in the early 2040s, I think would be a waste of taxpayer’s money,” Mathewson said.
savings of those large quantity purchases by the US Army. “We just brought in under a contract in Morocco where we won that campaign, not only on capability but on price. Mo- rocco had somewhat of a limited budget and it was very im-
portant to get them the best price possible, and we did that. “As far as schedule goes and certainty of schedule, we cur- rently have 16 operators but we have 17 customers around the world with Morocco being the newest international customer. We’ve got orders that already have filled produc- tion line spots all the way out to 2028 with more orders to follow. So you talk certainty of capability, certainty of cost,
He says the upgrade work would be performed at Airbus Australia Pacific’s facility in Brisbane, which previously as- sembled 18 of the 22 Tigers in service with Army Aviation and which today includes a state-of-the-art software devel- opment facility.
“We have 260 people working directly on Tiger on a whole range of things, from software development, modifications, training and maintenance and a good number of them are performing the Systems Program Office (SPO) functions