Page 116 - Australian Defence Magazine Sep-Oct 2022

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LAND WARFARE
UNCREWED AERIAL SYSTEMS
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
“Meanwhile we can work with our US training school. If they’re short of instructors we send people over to bolster them and vice versa, that’s been happening for a number of years, and that keeps the instructors’ experience level high.”
While no previous flying experience was required for fu- ture operators “at the end of the day you’re engaging with the air vehicle through a computer interface so we like people with good, pragmatic IT skills and good spatial awareness.
“You’re going through the basics – lift and drag, basic aero- nautical principles, correct military and civil radio procedures, all those basic aviation skills, and obviously the specifics of the aircraft itself, just like you would with a light aircraft.
“These lessons are reinforced by the simulator sessions in learning how to safely operate the UAS in
“YOU HAVE TO various circumstances. Because of
DEPLOYING THE INTEGRATOR
LEFT:
Integrator offers a 24-hour endurance and a 19,500
ft ceiling, cruise speed of 55 knots and a maximum horizontal speed of more than 90 knots
REMEMBER THESE PLATFORMS ARE VERY LONG ENDURANCE, AND
the nature of a UAS platform and the ‘remote pilot’ model there’s effective- ly not a lot of difference between a simulator and a real-life UAS opera-
Ground control stations will be fitted in Bushmasters mod- ified for the purpose, benefitting from work carried out by Boeing Defence Australia in integrating into the same ve- hicles some significant communications infrastructure as- sociated with the Currawong battlespace communications system delivered under Project 2072 Phase 2B.
For travel by convoy the air vehicle’s wings and em- pennage are removed from the fuselage and all packed into a box carried on a truck along with spares and other equipment.
The aircraft is reassembled in place and tested on its maintenance trolley in what Duggan describes as a fairly quick evolution – a well-trained crew with a pre-prepped aircraft and everything ready could have an air vehicle launched in 30 minutes.
The manning structure for 20th Regiment has yet to be disclosed, and Duggan comments that each of Insitu’s global military customers tends to use a different number of people to undertake the task of operating the UAS.
“You have to remember these platforms are very long en- durance, and you quickly run out of crew endurance before you run out of aircraft endurance,” he notes.
“With Shadow and ScanEagle the ADF used multiple people in the Ground Control Station conducting tasks including flying the aircraft, operating the payload(s), and supervising the mission.
“I’m hopeful that in the future these systems will reach their full value when one operator can control or oversee multiple platforms with differing missions, perhaps one doing some sort of automated ISR mission, another an automated EW mission, and another acting as a relay platform.
“We’re not there yet so we’re really focusing on the au- tomation and the machine learning necessary to enable this, that’s what will enable one operator to manage a lot more platforms in the future.” ■
YOU QUICKLY RUN OUT tion, so the simulator training is very
OF CREW ENDURANCE BEFORE YOU RUN OUT OF AIRCRAFT ENDURANCE”
immersive and effective.
“What we don’t train them on is
tactics and how you effectively opera- tionally employ the UAS. That tacti- cal training is conducted by Army,” Duggan explains.
Insitu will also train Army main- tainers to operate in the field while more extensive main- tenance will be undertaken by Insitu at Alderley and at its
major suppliers around Australia.
“Some parts may need to go back deeper in the supply
chain but we’ll ensure there’s sufficient material on the shelves to support operations; we’re targeting a very high availability rate on the platform and we’re putting every- thing in place to support Army seamlessly over the life of the platform,” Duggan adds.
INSITU PACIFIC