Page 104 - Australian Defence Magazine November 2021

104 AIRPOWER
NOVEMBER 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
AIR FORCE’S HEAVY LIFTERS
From Afghanistan to Antarctica, RAAF’s medium and heavy airlifters have been in the news in recent times, as Air Mobility Group supports military operations, civilian agencies and disaster relief efforts around the globe.
NIGEL PITTAWAY | MELBOURNE
THERE’S a military maxim that goes something along the lines of, you never have enough airlift assets when the chips are down. This truism has been so since the capability was first developed in the years after the First World War: from the first evacuation of Kabul to the Burma Hump; from the Nor- mandy landings to the Berlin Airlift; and from the war in Vietnam back full-circle to the recent evacuation of Kabul.
In times such as these, the great work done by the air- craft, crews and support personnel is highlighted for the world to see, but the capability comes at a cost and Defence budgets are often skewed towards glamorous big ticket ac- quisition programs such as fighter jets and submarines. Airlift assets are often acquired in penny packets as and when funding can be made available and, when they are needed, they are often spread thinly – with consequences for both concentration of the effort required and the fa- tigue of aircraft and their crews.
This is so even in modern times, as evidenced by the airlift operations to evacuate civilians from Kabul. Assets from the US Air Force and its allies had to be hurriedly brought into theatre and sustained through what was to be- come an intense period of operations. This meant aircraft
and personnel had to be redirected at short notice from other tasks and has reportedly resulted in a forced ‘reset’ period, while maintenance and crew fatigue is addressed and deferred tasking completed.
Australia contributed five aircraft and personnel to the airlift, made up of two Boeing C-17A Globemaster III strate- gic airlifters, two Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 Hercules me- dium airlifters and a single Airbus KC-30A Multi-Role Tank- er Transport (MRTT) – almost one-fifth of all the RAAF’s assets in this class. Over the period of the Kabul evacuation, other time-critical tasks had to be undertaken simultane- ously, including a resupply airdrop over Antarctica.
Details of the RAAF’s efforts to airlift civilians from Ka- bul have unfortunately been suppressed by Defence, so it is difficult to determine how much strain – if any – the opera- tion placed on the ADF. With tensions in the Indo-Pacific region increasing and the impacts of climate-change being attributed for more (and more severe) natural disasters in the future, any review of Air Force’s heavy airlift capabil- ity must also ask if there is actually enough capability to support simultaneous high-intensity operations. Further- more, it must ask if the recent Defence Strategic Update