Aurora’s Appeal

The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) fleet of Lockheed CP-140 Aurora long-range patrol aircraft is getting some remedial surgery, but Aurora hasn’t lost her appeal for LCol Jason Major, the commanding officer of 405 Maritime Patrol (MP) Pathfinder Squadron, based in Greenwood, N.S.

Major, whose 5,000 hours include 3,500 on CP-140s and the rest flying Royal Air Force Hawker Siddeley Nimrod Mk 2s out of Kinloss, Scotland, on a four-year exchange during which he learned a lot about long-range patrol flying has commanded 405 for two years. He came to Greenwood from a stint as a commanding officer in Kandahar, and his more recent missions include flying out of Italy as a key element of Operation Mobile over Libya. Major is downright passionate about the CP-140 Aurora and says it too early to talk about replacing her.

Based on the Lockheed P-3 Orion airframe, which itself was developed for the United States Navy from the Lockheed L-188 Electra airliner that first flew in 1957, the four-engine turboprop Aurora entered service with the RCAF in 1980-81. It replaced the Canadair CP-107 Argus, a derivative of an even earlier 1950s platform, the Bristol 175 Britannia airliner, which saw only limited production.

Canada has 18 Auroras, split between 404 and 405 Squadrons in Greenwood, and 407 Squadron in Comox, B.C., where LCol Dave Robinson commands four to five operational aircraft.  At any one time during the Aurora structural life extension program (ASLEP), roughly a quarter of the RCAF fleet is in the hands of IMP Aerospace in Halifax, N.S. Under this program, the outer wings, the centre wing lower section and horizontal stabilizers are replaced with enhanced-design components and improved corrosion-resistant materials which should reduce maintenance costs, while extending the aircraft service life by at least 15,000 hours. While the finished aircraft looks almost identical to when it arrived at IMP, its wingtip electronic surveillance measures (ESM) pods are discernibly different. IMP is the only Lockheed Martin-approved facility other than the OEM own main plant in Marietta, Ga., that is capable of doing this level of structural upgrade. The ASLEP kit installation process takes about eight months to complete, depending upon the structural condition of the aircraft.

The wings and the tails are expected to give it a lot of legs; I would say out to 2030, Major told Canadian Skies, agreeing that it might be premature to be talking about specific replacement prospects. There is a project office . . . in Ottawa looking at options for a replacement aircraft, a number of which are very capable. But I personally believe that some of them are still a little bit too expensive and that projects need some time to mature before the government would be willing to get into them.

The duration of the current upgrade program is uncertain. The DND initially planned for 18 aircraft to undergo ASLEP, not including three CP-140A Arcturus aircraft, which Canada snapped up when Lockheed Martin shut down P-3 production in Burbank, Calif., in 1991. The Arcturus was used mainly for training, but the aircraft became redundant when CAE Inc. of Montreal, Que., was awarded a contract for a full-motion CP-140 simulator. The RCAF, which still lists the Arcturus as a current aircraft type, sent its CP-140As to the U.S. military desert boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, in the fall of 2011.

While the DND purchased 18 shipsets of avionics and systems upgrade kits under the Aurora incremental modernization project (AIMP), it only contracted with IMP to change the wings on 10 aircraft. The remaining eight are currently not contracted to have wings replaced on them, and therefore will not benefit from the extended lower operational costs which ASLEP provides, Carl Kumpic, IMP vice-president (international marketing) told Canadian Skies. We’d like to think that Canada will move forward with the purchase and fitment of eight additional wing kits and then we’d be looking at finishing up the modernization program around 2014-2015. If that not the case, the program could wrap up sometime in the next year or so.

The RCAF current Auroras are Block 2 aircraft, featuring a glass cockpit and new navigation and communications suites. The prime contractors were Thales Electronics and CMC Electronics of Montreal, a branch of U.S.-based Esterline Technologies; the former provided various black boxes and the design for a new communications management system, while the latter produced a new navigational flight instruments system. 

Block 2 also includes three laptop computers linked to the aircraft chin-mounted MX-20 turret camera, so that imagery can be displayed in narrow and wide visible light as well as infrared. Developed by Burlington, Ont.-based Wescam, now a division of L-3 Communications Holdings of New York, the MX-20, used by military and police forces worldwide, offers the longest-range detection and identification capability of any commercially-available turret. 

I honestly haven’t used it to read licence plates, Major laughed when asked about the resolution. But in ideal weather conditions, where there is no sandstorm or a haze layer, we can positively identify a person carrying a weapon. 

The MX-20 is also proving valuable on missions at home, where the RCAF is tasked with supporting counter-terrorism, anti-smuggling, sovereignty, fisheries and pollution patrols. We use its ability to record in different modes a lot, Major explained. If you’re catching somebody who polluting in our waters, you can do it from far enough away that they can’t see you, but you can see them if they’re discharging oil. We can fly around the ship to get a 360-degree view. We video them with an exact GPS position and the ship name, so they can’t use the excuse that the oil was already there and they just happened to drive through it as we were taking their picture. A slick may be 40 kilometres long and there its origin! It coming out their bilge pumps. Ideally, they should get these tanks cleaned out before they leave port, a service for which they have to pay, so some operators just dump it at sea.

IMP has been involved from the outset in upgrading what Kumpic says is one of the world best long-range patrol aircraft. IMP was the prime contractor on Block 1, which essentially standardized the fleet configuration. Every aircraft over a period of time developed a certain amount of customization, with modifications performed on some aircraft and not on others, he explained. 

While Thales and CMC were the Block 2 primes, IMP performed the installation design, wiring harness production, the installation itself, and flight testing to ensure systems compatibility, as well as liaising with DND alongside the two primes. 

The Block 3 component of AIMP, the key to a half-century operational life, began in 1998 as the AIMP, but that was halted by DND in September 2007, while it evaluated whether the upgrade should continue or the fleet should be replaced. DND rescinded the stop order three months later. This set the stage for an array of upgraded systems, essentially standardizing to a common platform in a fleet where there had been some customization to keep the aircraft safe and operationally viable until at least 2020. This last block is primed by General Dynamics Canada (GDC), which subcontracted to Texas-based L-3 Integrated Systems for the prototyping and proof-fitting of two aircraft fitted with GDC new mission system, including computers, acoustics, radar and forward-looking infrared capability. 

Block 3 is a total upgrade of the sensors and the data gathering, processing and the display of tactical information, Kumpic said, before explaining that initially IMP was tasked by DND to install the ASLEP and AIMP Block 3 kits separately on individual aircraft to prove the installation concepts. To streamline the programs, the electronics modifications in Block 3 were merged into the ASLEP workstream on the wings and stabilizers. The result is an optimized comprehensive life extension program for the Aurora fleet. Manufactured in Marietta, the ASLEP kit evolved from a C-130 Hercules project Lockheed Martin had done for U.S. operators, after a number of C-130s suffered catastrophic wing failures eventually attributed to wing-box fatigue. 

When the U.S. Navy was flying hundreds of P-3s back in 2005, Lockheed finalized a structural life assessment and determined that a significant number of the P-3s were at or quickly approaching the end of their useful fatigue life, Kumpic said. Since the last P-3 was built in 1991, Lockheed Martin had to refurbish old tooling to produce upgraded wings, using modern alloys and sealants to improve fundamental integrity and corrosion resistance. When Lockheed developed the kit, they told the U.S. Navy that it would provide an extended life of at least 15,000 flight hours, Kumpic said. So, depending how many hours an operator flies on their aircraft, that could be anywhere from 15 to 30 years. . . . With Canada flying rates, it means approximately 25 years of extended life.

As for the CP-140 enhanced reconnaissance capabilities, Major describes the new radar as phenomenal and the ESM as outstanding. Demonstrated to good effect during Op Mobile, the enhanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities of the CP-140 have evidently increased the overall demand for the aircraft services. Major said the ISR data opened a lot of eyes at various headquarters, the result being that the Royal Canadian Navy and the Army are quite interested in having the Aurora participate in their operations, too. Using the Op Mobile example, if you are a commander and you have to destroy targets that are being used to kill civilians, you need to make sure that you’re minimizing casualties and that you’re hitting nothing but the target, Major explained. You’re ensuring that it a legitimate target and you are personally responsible for that.

At the end of an operation, the overall commander in charge must sign off on the targeting information which, in the case of Op Mobile, was then forwarded to the NATO commanding officer based in The Hague, Netherlands. If you’re the person responsible for that, you’re going to want to make sure you’ve got the latest imagery; ideally, live imagery with somebody on top of that target right away, who established the pattern of life of that target, and made sure there are no civilians around. If there are, then you as the guy in the airplane would tell the bomber or whoever going to provide an effect on that target to hold off, wait until the situation improves.

Serviceability is always a critical issue on the flight line, especially when aircraft begin to show their age. While the ratio of maintenance to flight hours varies, Major said the CP-140 is an extremely reliable platform, as evidenced by Op Mobile. We flew 181 missions 1,400 hours with 100 per cent serviceability, he said. We never cancelled a single mission because of a maintenance problem with the aircraft; while it is over 30 years old, our maintainers work very hard to make sure the missions are a go. One Op Mobile flight was aborted due to a bird strike but the aircraft had taken off to do its mission.

Yet another challenge facing the Canadian Forces in some disciplines, especially in some sectors of the RCAF, is crew age. Some pilots retire early to accept jobs at airlines, but Major said that has not resulted in any shortages in the CP-140 crews, which have taken in a significant number of newly-graduated pilots. Op Mobile could not have come at a better time for my squadron, he said. I put the new grads on with my most experienced crews and sent them over to Mobile. My whole squadron was able to do a deployment of basically two-month rotations of five crews. Everyone got to go.

He said the same held true for 407 Squadron. That how our deployment mandate is met; we had two crews and two planes on short notice to move at any time one plane each from 405 and 407. We worked together, shared detachment staff. Overall, the CP-140 deployment on that operation was about 82 officers and non-commissioned officers. The minimum CP-140 crew on a normal mission is 10, but that is bumped up as complexity increases. The typical crew includes the aircraft commander, a co-pilot, flight engineer, tactical navigator, a navigation/communications operator, three airborne electronic sensor operators (AESOPs) and two acoustic sensor operators. With a crew of 12, we would usually add one extra pilot and either an extra AESOP or an extra navcom, depending on the duration or distance of the mission, explained Major. The CP-140 has an unrefueled range of 5,000 nautical miles. With a maximum speed of 405 knots, a mission can easily stretch to 12 hours and often well beyond that. It good to take an extra pilot along just to be sure. 

From coastal sub hunter to modern-day surveillance platform, the Aurora role has evolved over its 32-year history with the RCAF. It too early to say which aircraft will be selected to replace the venerable CP-140. But, thanks to the ASLEP program and proponents such as LCol Major, Canada reliable Auroras will see many more dawns.