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Aviation History
1991
1991 - 2618.PDF
DEFENCE Australia lets out servicing BY PAUL PHELAN IN CAIRNS Implementation of Australia's controversial Wrigley Report on national defence has seen the first tenders called in a pro gramme for substantial military aircraft maintenance, flying and ground training to be carried out by civil contractors. The report identified potential annual expenditure of AU$350 million ($280 million) on priva tised military non-core functions including significant aviation- related contracts. While opera tional maintenance of combat- capable aircraft will remain a military responsibility, the first Tier f round of tenders, de scribed as a "kick start" to the programme, will include: • depot level maintenance of all' Royal Australian Navy aircraft at Nowra, New South Wales, of Royal Australian Air Force HS.748s at Sale, Victoria and of RAAF P3C Orions at Richmond; • intermediate and depot level maintenance of RAAF F-llls and overhaul of F-lll engines at Amberley; • corrosion control inspection, and modification of all military aircraft at Richmond; • turn-key total PC-9 trainer maintenance at Pearce, plus ab- initio pilot training and basic maintenance training at Wagga; • base support functions at sev- Base support contracts will cover weapons-test F-llls eral military bases including RAAF Fairbairn (Canberra), NAS Nowra, and the Weapons Research Establishment at Woomera; • the naval Laser Airborne Depth Sounding (LADS) opera tion. The first request for tender under the new programme, for pilot training, was issued in mid-August. Military establishments cur rently performing the work will be able to tender by submitting in-house bids in competition with the commercial sector. Their costing procedures, for mulae and guidelines will be published in a Commercial Sup port Program (CSP) handbook to be published in October. Tier 1 commercial tender deadlines will coincide with fi- nalisation of in-house bids, timed for December 1992, with decisions to be announced by June 1993. Tier 2 contracts to follow later are expected to in clude heavy maintenance work on F-18s, Boeing 707s, C-i30s, Caribous and Falcons, some of which are civil contracts. Meanwhile Aerospace Tech nologies of Australia (ASTA) has signed a contract for on site intermediate maintenance and modification work on the Aus tralian Army's Sikorsky S-70 Black Hawk helicopter fleet. The operation will be based at the Army's 5 Aviation Regiment workshop at Townsville. The contract, which was nego tiated prior to the CSP implem entation, is for a year initially, with a i2 month renewal option. ASTA has advertised for an ini tial twenty maintenance person nel in all related categories, specifying experience on Black Hawk or Seahawk types. • Israel tests cheap combat evaluator BY ARIE EGOZI IN TEL AVIV The Israeli air force is to flight test an autonomous combat evaluation (ACE) sys tem. Developed by Rada in Is rael, ACE is aimed at replacing existing air combat manoeuver- ing range instrumentation sys tems used as a debriefing tool. The existing range based sys tems, while allowing real time evaluation of a pilot's perform ance, are very expensive and limited to the range area. Be cause the pilots themselves are the prime customers for the data, the air force believes that the real time feature is not vital. Rada has developed a system that is not dependent on any external feature. All the data is calculated, recorded and stored on board each aircraft. All relevant data is gathered by a flight monitor unit (FMU) and chanelled to the integral video system of the aircraft. This system has been modified to record the data, in parallel with the video and audio inputs, on the standard video cassette of the aircraft's system. A global positioning system was incorpo rated which simultaneously gives the aircraft position. According to Rada the FMU collects a list of pre-selected parameters from the aircraft's computer. This includes geomet ric data, velocities, accelerations and other parameters. The status of the aircraft weapon system is also recorded. After landing, the cassettes are loaded into players which are controlled and syn chronised by a desktop com puter. The video and data is displayed on a high resolution alphanumeric/video monitor. Rada says that some air forces in Europe and Asia have shown interest in the system. • Soviet C-in-C wants to make transport pay The new commander in chief of the Soviet Air Force, Col Gen Piotr Deinekin, wants to use profits from commercial op erations undertaken by the Voenno-lransportnaya aviatsiya (VTA — military transport com mand) to improve the living standards of air force personnel. "I hope that the government will allow the air force to use the substantial amount of profit gained from our commercial ac tivities for raising living stan dards of air force personnel," says Deinekin, who also wants to increase air force salaries by a factor of ten. Deinekov reveals that 40,000 air force families, including those of 6,000 pilots, have no permanent accommodation. The problem is being aggravated by the return of regiments previ ously deployed in eastern Eu rope with 25,000 families. "Our previous attempts to solve these problems were not very successful. That is why we greatly appreciate Boris Yeltsin's decree about the necessity of raising the social [status] pro gramme for military forces on Russian territory. We have cop ied this decree to all military locations around the country, proposing that they contact par liaments of other republics ask ing them to follow Yeltsin," says Deinekin. • CASUALTIES UNITED KINGDOM A female cadet was seriously injured after ejecting from a Royal Air Force Harrier T.4 near Driffield, northern Eng land, on 25 September. Cadet pilot Kate Saunders, 22, suf fered a broken leg, broken pelvis, crushed vertebrae and 20% burns when her para chute descended into the fire ball of the crashed Harrier. The pilot was uninjured. Saunders is the first female to eject from an RAF aircraft. 12 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 9 - 15 October, 1991
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