Page 48 - Australian Defence Magazine Oct 2020
P. 48

                   48   FROM THE SOURCE   SCOTT CARPENDALE
OCTOBER 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
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commonality with the US government is always an attrac- tive proposition for the Australian government as we’ve seen on many other programs. Integrating that into an ho- listic training solution is a great opportunity for Australia to re-baseline its pilot training.
ADM: How much involvement will BDA have in the UK's Wedgetail project? Details, dollar value etc? CARPENDALE: While I can’t provide dollar values, obviously we’ve had a couple of different areas where we’re supporting that program and supporting it really actively. We’ve got peo- ple who are developing parts of the mission system for the UK program, and obviously it’s based upon the Australian E-7 plat- form, so the experience and expertise we have in mission sys- tems development here, particularly around some of the unique capabilities that’s required for the UK program, means we are heavily involved in that software development in Australia.
The biggest area of our involvement really is in the devel- opment of the ground segments. Establishing the ground segments that will be required to support and train and then support the platforms as a whole is primarily being led out of Australia. We expect that at its peak there will be at least 150 jobs for Australia supporting the UK E-7 program, primarily between Williamtown and Brisbane. That’s been a really great opportunity for us to leverage the capabil- ity that the Australian government’s invested in for many, many years on E-7 and create an export out of it in our high-end systems and software engineering program.
ADM: So what’s the level of commonality between the UK variant and the Australian Wedgetail?
ABOVE: The Loyal Wingman ATS is a massive accomplishment for BDA.
CARPENDALE: It’s highly common. There are areas where obviously in terms of the timeline of when Australia bought their E-7s and when the UK was buying their E-7s, there’s a significant variance and technology has changed over time, so there are ar- eas where things are slightly different. There’s also local prosperity requirements out of the UK that have driven some subsystems to a UK local supplier solution which would vary from what’s in Australia. And then Australia is going through the Phase 5A upgrade and we’ve done a series of other in-service upgrades on the RAAF’s E-7 fleet as well.
So there are areas where there’s not perfect com- monality between the two platforms. Obviously the base mission system is based upon what Australia has developed and how Australia has iterated their program from the original delivery of E-7. There is certainly an intent between Australia and the UK to continue with the areas to convergence in terms of capability of the platforms, given the close rela- tionship between the countries.
A D M : Are you looking to have a common user group be- tween the UK, South Korea, Turkey and Australia for the E-7? CARPENDALE: We already have a range of forums for the existing E-7 customers to engage; in Australia, the Koreans and Turkish customers. The UK and Australia in particu- lar are working closely around what forums make the best sense for them in regards to both our procurement process and our capability lifecycle, as well as sustainability and supportability elements of the platform. I expect more fo- rums are going to be created to allow those customers to share lessons learnt out of sustaining a platform of this na- ture but also particularly between Australia and the UK, the future plans for the capability.
ADM: Has that product broke even for Boeing? CARPENDALE: I can’t get into numbers in terms of the investment that we’ve made in the original E-7 program across multiple customers. It was a tough development pro- gram and we didn’t shy away from that. We’re quite proud of the fact that we stuck with that program and delivered an exceptional capability in a really challenging environment.
What I can say is that I think the opportunities on the back of the UK acquisition for the E-7 platform and continued variants to the E-7 platform to be a franchise program for the Boeing company are very real. I think there’s opportunities for us to continue to drive this platform as the world’s lead- ing air battle management system into the next generation.
ADM: Why didn't you bid Little Bird for Land 2097 Phase 4 Special Forces helicopter?
CARPENDALE: It’s a good question. After reviewing the Aus- tralian Army’s requirements, we didn’t think Little Bird was the right platform for what they needed. If we put a platform forward to meet the customer’s needs, we really want to ensure that it’s the right platform and that their requirements can be met by the platform. Little Bird was obviously an excellent special operations aircraft used by
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