Page 18 - Australian Defence Magazine April 2020

18 DEFENCE BUSINESS ANTARCTIC AIR DROP
APRIL 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
DROPPING INTO THE ANTARCTIC WITH NEW TECH
In late January a Royal Australian Air Force C-17A dropped supplies by parachute to Wilkins Airfield, near the Australian Antarctic Division research station at Casey on the southern continent.
NIGEL PITTAWAY | MELBOURNE
WHILE this itself was not remarkable – RAAF C-17As have been flying Air-Land and Air Drop missions in support of AAD scientists on the ice since 2015 – the event marked the first time that two alternate parachute delivery methods were used.
In a single mission on January 27, the C-17A delivered a load using the Joint Precision Air Drop System (JPADS) of guided parachutes and two versions of the Low-Cost Aerial Delivery System (LCADS), which utilises non-reusable parachutes.
The drops were part of a trial to validate the feasibility of resupplying a convoy of vehicles, ahead of an AAD mission to traverse across the continent beginning next Antarctic sum- mer. The traverse is in support of the Australian-led Million Year Ice Core project, which aims to drill an ice core 3,000 metres deep in Antarctica to recover million year-old ice.
OPERATION SOUTHERN DELIVERY
The RAAF’s current involvement in Antarctic operations is Operation Southern Delivery, which began in 2014 and has resulted in a series of C-17A resupply flights to Wilkins each Austral summer since 2015.
Southern Delivery is the ADF’s contribution to a whole of government activity, led by the Department of Environment and Energy, in the Antarctic region.
“It’s an enduring peacetime activity in support of Austra- lia’s national interests and consistent with Antarctic Treaty prohibition of military activity, other than the provision of personnel and equipment for scientific or other peaceful purposes,” explained Wing Commander Dean Bolton, Ex- ecutive Officer of 86 Wing at Amberley.
“We flew proof of concept missions to Antarctica in the 2015-16 season and since then we’ve been flying between six and eight missions per season over the Austral summer period.”
While the Air-Land mission is the preferred method of re- supply, Air-Drop is not as contingent on good weather and can enable rapid resupply of personnel who are not near an ice runway.
The Million Year Ice Core project traverse is expected to begin in the next (2020-2021) season and should the convoy become immobilised on its journey, or otherwise in need of rapid resupply, accurate aerial delivery is an important contingency.
“We have performed a number of tactical airdrops in Ant- arctica already, but the difference between with the mission in January was it was to support a convoy which is underway. Usually with airdrop we provide our crews with detailed drop zone surveys, which are provided by personnel with specific training,” WGCDR Bolton said.
“The first part of our task was carried out pre-mission and we provided training to AAD headquarters in Hobart and personnel on the ice on how to establish a drop zone.”
An aspect to the mission was to validate procedures relat- ing to late notification of an intended drop zone, so a Rapid Drop Zone (Rapid DZ) element was incorporated into the January 27 flight. This method requires personnel on the ice to advise their position and a drop zone survey is then gener- ated remotely.
A further element practised On-Call drop, in which the drop zone party at Wilkins informed the crew of their position when the C-17A was about 20 minutes out, at top of descent, and the crew dropped on the supplied GPS co-ordinates.
“We are contingency planning; the guys on the ice plan to be self-sufficient but we want to be prepared, so the mission essentially tested the hardest, most dynamic and fluid, meth- ods,” WGCDR Bolton added. “It was the first time Australia has done On-Call delivery and Rapid DZ on the ice, so the