Peter La Franchi/CANBERRA
The Australian Army's most senior aviation policy adviser has proposed replacing the Royal Australian Navy's (RAN) Westland Sea King helicopters with a new generation rotary-wing aircraft to provide improved support for amphibious operations and special force missions.
Brig Robert Walford, commanding officer of the Australian Army Aviation Support Group, says the machines could also perform specialist aeromedical evacuation, and combat search and rescue roles.
Addressing the Australian-Pacific Vertiflite conference in Canberra, Walford said Australian Defence Force amphibious force structure plans call for the use of Army Sikorsky S-70 Black Hawk and RAN Sea Kings, but neither is optimised for the role.
He says the army plans to buy a further squadron of Black Hawks to meet an airlift shortfall for land-based operations. That shortfall, however, is set to increase significantly between 2006 and 2008 following the retirement of Australia's Bell UH-1H Iroquois fleet.
One option, says Walford, is to use the development of Australia's amphibious capability to explore "innovative" solutions. "In my view, we need something different to the Black Hawk and something different to the Sea King. If we were to lease, buy or have a privately funded initiative that delivered an aircraft that provided optimum support for our amphibious capability and our special operations capability-that would release approximately 10 Black Hawks back into the air mobility capability."
This would give the army two air mobile squadrons as well as a special operations and amphibious support capability, he says. But there would be a cost in establishing the new capability, possibly in conjunction with the RAN.
Last month, the head of the RAN's Amphibious and Afloat Support Fleet Element Group, Capt Allan du Toit, told the ADF's amphibious warfare conference that in the short term, Australia needs to optimise its assets as an interim amphibious capability, "but we have really got to start looking now as to where we take that aviation capability in the future, and have an aircraft which is well suited to the amphibious role".
The RAN operates seven Sea Kings, which received a mid-life upgrade between 1996 and 1998 and are due to be phased out of service around 2008.
• Australian defence minister John Moore and US defence secretary William Cohen have signed a defence co-operation deal designed to boost the industrial links between the two countries.
Moore says the deal will give Australia greater access to US technology. Other areas covered by the agreement include harmonisation of military requirements and research and development.
Source: Flight International
