Tiger update

Really, truly, Defence does some good things. However it is shackled by the results of many past and present bad decisions. Just one of those is the ARH Tiger helicopter. It started off on bad assumptions as noted in 2005-6.

Read this from a guy that has lived most of his career with this thing.

Can you describe some of the challenges you face in your complex work?

Interacting with European multinational organisations, and with the various nationalities of Europe with their widely varying business and cultural attitudes, is extremely challenging and has come as somewhat of a surprise to me personally. Analysing the decisions and actions of various nations, and generating useful information that could assist our fleet management or sustainment, in the short, medium and longer term, fully occupies my team. This environment takes a lot of getting used to and after being here a year, my learning curve has only steepened. Prior to coming here, I was admittedly somewhat ignorant of the full range of Resident Team functions. However, knowing what I now do, I cannot imagine how we could possibly engage effectively and proactively to deliver the required acquisition and sustainment outcomes for effective delivery of helicopter capability without a permanent footprint in Europe. You might think you could understand the complexities of dealing effectively in this environment when sitting in Australia, but once you spend time here, you know you simply cannot establish and maintain the relationships required without frequent personal interaction.

What will be your focus throughout 2014 and beyond?

In terms of the future, all 22 ARH are now delivered and the first capability milestone has been declared by Army. But for the DMO, we have much to do to finish the job. Our industry partners, Australian Aerospace and their mother company, Airbus Helicopters, with the support of their sub contractors, are conducting a lot of work in Australia and Europe to significantly improve sustainment performance. We look forward to big improvements this year to enable Army to commence operating its second attack/reconnaissance squadron in Darwin from mid year.

For the MRH as well, there remains much work to do to both mature the aircraft to meet the needs of Army and Navy and finalise production and retrofit in the coming years. Also, we need to quickly mature the sustainment system so that Army can retire the Black Hawk and commence operating its new generation tactical lift fleet of aircraft.

Well, the logistics to this helicopter...are still a mess. These 2014-2015 budget notes:

ARH Rate of Effort continues to be impacted by poor sustainment support resulting in reduced aircraft availability and aircrew numbers at 1 Aviation Regiment.

2014. Wow.

Cost per flying hour? $33548.

We will leave it with some comments by reader Johnno from a previous post.

Johnno

I suppose that the real joke is that the Tiger was selected in the first place when it didn't have a data link.

That puts the aircraft back to pre 1990 standards when the ADF started the move to (US) Link 16 compatibility.

Another joke if you want it. The Tiger is a digital aircraft in that it is an air frame wrapped around a data bus(read LAN) and a whole lot of computers. Because of the delays that hardware must be 10 years old by now. How well does YOUR 10 year old computer work?

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-Insert Joke Here

-Tyranny of distance--Long, drawn out helicopter projects are unsustainable

-2014-15 ADF budget shocker - cost per flying hour over the last budget year

-Tiger savaged by Navy League of Australia

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