If it's Thursday, it must be war

Thursday morning, and the Wallian crisis has tipped into outright warfare. Joint Warrior 10-02 has moved into the operations phase. We have switched sides and our Falcon is now simulating a Dragonian Sukhoi Su-24 ‘Fencer’ armed with AS-17B ‘Krypton’ air-to-surface missiles for an attack on the carrier Ark Royal and other ships of Caledonia’s task force.

The ‘Fencer’s radar is simulated by NATO-supplied electronic warfare pods, fitted alongside Cobham’s own jammers. Our ‘missile’ is actually a BAe Hawk trainer, flown by Marcus of the Royal Navy’s Fleet Requirements and Development Unit (FRADU), who joins us as we pop out of the cloud that covers all of Scotland and hangs tightly off our wing as we descend over the Minch, the strait that separates the Outer and Inner Hebrides.

After a low-level run we climb to 1500 feet, the Hawk tucked in close alongside. We paint a target with the NATO pod, simulating the ‘Slot Back’ radar of the Su-24.

“Launch Marcus” calls Caroline the Falcon’s pilot, waving her hand forward. The Hawk banks vertically, rolls inverted and dives for the deck out of sight.

We pull a 1.4g turn away onto a reciprocal heading, jamming behind us as we go, before turning back towards the carrier. When Marcus calls an estimated five miles to run, EW operator Mal turns on the simulated missile head and transmits it at the target. The Hawk itself has no radar or weapons, but we can provide a fair simulation for the ships’ defensive systems operators. The Hawk is authorised to overfly the carrier at 100 feet, but today there are issues with helicopters, including the Apaches that ‘Ark’ is carrying, operating below 500 feet near the ships. With the cloud level at 1700 feet and hanging lower in places, we don’t see many warships ourselves.

Marcus rejoins us at another predetermined gate for a launch at the Greek frigate Themistocles. This time we are too low for the inverted dive, so he accelerates away on the level at our signal. Again we paint, jam, turn, reverse and illuminate, and repeat the process once more before the Hawk leaves us for good.

Our last task is a run on the Dutch frigate De Zeven Provincien, a very modern ship with a sophisticated 3D radar system. We are joined for this by ‘Starbeam’, Tony, George and Ted in the other Falcon, which has mainly been stand-off jamming so far. We launch them off our starboard wing then become a missile ourselves. Restricted by helo activity to 1,000 feet, we are an easy target for DCA, - defensive counter-air – a Royal Navy Hawk on combat air patrol playing the part of one of the fighters ‘Ark’ used to have, but despite technically being blown out of the sky, we press on. Passing the tiny Shiant Islands, I glimpse Ark Royal, two Apaches and a Lynx. On the other side we catch the Dutch frigate in a cluster of four ships, which start turning hard to evade us and to present clear arcs for their anti-aircraft weapons. “There’s the Turk” calls Caroline as we pass abeam the Babaros, helpfully flying a large national flag. De Zeven stands out with its paler paint and straighter lines and we zoom over her from stern to stem. “A good catch”.

 I don’t know if we ‘hit’ Ark Royal, but a week later the UK government’s spending review got her, with a ceasing of operations with almost immediate effect. Her regular complement of Harriers followed soon after and RAF Kinloss closed for flying in July 2011.

Jammin'

“Aircraft squawking Mode 3 of 1703 at height 879 feet, on course 219, speed 227, this is Dragonian warship nine-four operating in international waters. Request you report your callsign and state your intentions.”

“Dragonian warship nine-four, this is Caledonian zero-two, we are on an air defence trial in international airspace. We are unarmed. We are unable to deviate from our present course as it would invalidate our trial.”

But that’s not true. We are not a Caledonian C-130 but a converted Dassault Falcon 20 loaded with jamming pods under the wings and an experienced electronic warfare operator down the back working four different radios and ready to jam, spoof or generally sew confusion among shipborne radar and radio operators. Cruising low over a blue sea dotted with treeless brown islands and rugged headlands, we are on a probe/stand-off jamming mission over the calm but disputed waters of the Wallian Archipelago. Tensions over the region have boiled over to the point where a multi-national force has been despatched by the United Nations to preserve order, prevent sovereignty violations and attacks on ethnic minority groups. Facing the UN and Caledonian fleets is that of Dragonia, a small navy, but one equipped with several sophisticated modern vessels. Today we are visiting each in turn and testing their alertness and rules of engagement (ROE) as we try to force a response.

But that’s not true, either. Caledonia, Dragonia and Wallonia are fictional constructs, part of the regular scenario replayed with variations twice a year as part of the UK’s Exercise Joint Warrior. Roughly speaking, Dragonia is southwest Scotland, western England and Wales, Caledonia is Eastern Scotland and England, and Wallonia is the Outer Hebrides. The Falcon is one of 15 owned by Cobham PLC, who are contracted by the UK Ministry of Defence to provide services such as jamming, target towing and target presentation, of which more later. I am along for the ride with pilots Tony and George and electronic warfare operator Ted, who is working his magic down the back, twisting electrons to do his bidding. We are working off estimated ship positions provided by Eagle Safety, the callsign for a radio operator on one of the ships tasked with deconflicting air traffic and ensuring maximum training value by not having assets like us hunting all over the map for targets. We get help from the Falcon’s weather radar, which does a fine job of spotting surface contacts, to which co-pilot George allocates three-letter callsigns.

We overfly two US Navy ‘Arleigh Burke’-class destroyers, whose combat information centre (CIC) operators appear to be sleeping, as we hear nothing from them at all as we pass overhead. One appears completely dead in the water. “I’m surprised we aren’t dragging any ROE off Whisky Five Alpha” – the USS Stout – says George. The Royal Navy Type 23 frigate HMS Monmouth is on the ball and warns us off before we get too close, adding a hard turn to throw our aim off.

The next visual sighting, hard to make out clearly in the low sun of a bright Scottish autumn sun, turns out to be a tiny elongated island, no doubt one frequently mistaken for a warship over the years. Soon, however, a new ‘Arleigh Burke’ emerges. The USS Nitze is on the nose at 16 miles. This is the Dragonian warship nine-four we encountered above.

“Caledonian aircraft, you are still closing our position. Request you turn east.”

“Dragonian warship, confirm that you want us to turn east” replies Ted.

       “East.”

Ted switches to intercom: “What do we intend to do?” “Go west!” says George.

So as the distance ticks down, we request a turn west, which is only confirmed when we are nearly on top of the frigate. Would we have got so close in a real crisis situation without being threatened or engaged? Should we have?  Testing the ships’ CICs like this may make a big difference on the day that they encounter potentially hostile aircraft for real somewhere like the narrow Persian Gulf where decisions have to be made in moments.

On the EW side of the mission, the Falcon can play various tricks like recording and replaying ship-to-ship voice transmissions to give spoof orders and by using DRFM, or digital radio frequency memory, can create false radar targets. “It’s all first-generation stuff, but still quite effective” says Ted.

We head west off our maps and beyond the Outer Hebrides in search of the stealthy Danish warship Absalon, a ship I am looking forward to seeing as I spent some time aboard her on a 2008 Joint Warrior. En route we ‘Dirfm’ ahead and briefly jam our own radar, a rose-red fan blooming on the screen. Even in the sparsely-populated Western Isles one has to take care not to blot out air traffic control radar heads or the local residents’ TV reception, but right now, says Ted “We’re pointing out into the Atlantic so we can do what we want.”

George peers at his radar display and then out the windscreen. “That’s way too small to be the Absalon”, and indeed it turns out to be a small radar reflector-fitted fishing boat chugging its way back to port with its own radar transmitting on the same I-band as some military systems. On radar it appeared much larger. Absalon’s stealthy shape or perhaps just an outdated position report from Eagle has allowed it to elude us on this mission.

Turning back towards Scotland, Ted indulges in a bit of comms jamming, further confusing the Nitze with whoops of electronic noise before we cruise between the colourfully-named islands of Eigg and Muck and Rum, across the Isle of Skye and then climb into the clouds, leaving some baffled Dragonians in our wake.

Ashes to Ashes

Note: A version of this appeared in New Zealand Aviation News, June 2010.

On my 2010 visit from the UK back to New Zealand I had managed to visit every RNZAF flying unit, meet every commanding officer and see every aircraft type – except No 5 Squadron and the P-3K Orion. The chance to remedy that came up with the visit of Orion NZ2406 and a 54-person detachment to the UK to take part in Exercise Joint Warrior 101, a bi-annual, UK led NATO exercise held in Scottish waters and airspace. In addition to ships from ten NATO nations and Brazil, maritime patrol aircraft (MPAs) from the USA, Canada, France, and Italy as well as New Zealand were involved, operating from RAF Kinloss, to the east of Inverness on the Moray Firth.

So with a invitation to visit from 5 Squadron’s CO, Wing Commander Nick Olney, I organised a trip up from London to visit the detachment as the fortnight-long exercise entered its second week.

However, neither I, the squadron, the Royal Air Force or Joint Warrior’s exercise control staff had anticipated the insidious effects of an invisible cloud, drifting from an unpronounceable mountain 1600 km away in Iceland.

The disruption caused by the Eyjafjallajökull volcano to civil aviation in the UK and Europe began on Thursday, 16 April, with progressive closure of airspace and suspending of radar service, allowing VFR flying only.

Military flying initially seemed less affected, but the ash soon began to impact Joint Warrior and the concurrent Brilliant Mariner exercise in Germany and Denmark, and one aircraft spotters’ website reported on 17 April that the Canadian and Kiwi P-3s were no longer at Kinloss (but that RNZAF crew had been seen in Forres Tesco’s), so the following morning as I prepared to catch the train to Inverness, a message from Wing Commander Olney that read: “The P-3 and one crew have now departed the UK and are not returning”, was not a huge surprise, although somewhat of a disappointment. As Olney told me when we met the following day, he was given warning of an ash-free corridor to the west at 9AM Saturday, rounded up the crew (who weren’t all on base) by 10AM and set the detachment to packing and planning a departure in the short time window that was forecast. NZ2406 was airborne at 3.30PM. A Canadian CP-140 Aurora also slipped out, but three USN P-3s and three French Atlantics remained stranded for several more days. “Mobilising (the crew and aircraft) was the smartest thing in the world at the time” said Olney.

The whole detachment included two crews, two operations officers and approximately 17 maintainers. All but the crew aboard ’06 were due make their way home to New Zealand via various commercial airlines over the following week as there was no 757 or C-130 support allocated. As of 19 April, a timely return to work at Whenuapai wasn’t looking to be a certainty.

NZ4206 had reached Kinloss by flying westabout via Perth, Mahé in the Seychelles, Dubai and Sigonella in Italy. The planned return journey would have partly reversed those steps, with a diversion via Butterworth in Malaysia for Exercise Bersama Shield starting on 26 April. The training value of two exercises in one trip was one of the driving forces behind 5 Squadron’s epic journey.

But in the immortal words of the Newcastle Song: ‘Don’t you ever let a chance go by’, and the P-3 pulled out when there was a break in the traffic, so to speak, albeit headed in the opposite direction. Last heard of by me trying to get out of CFB Greenwood ahead of a snowstorm, the P-3 would make Malaysia, but only by flying around the world, and then some.

With no aircraft to fly and all fixed-wing flying forbidden by the RAF’s Air Command, the air element of Joint Warrior came to an end several days ahead of schedule. HMS Ark Royal had already disembarked her Harriers ashore and was put on standby to rescue British citizens stranded at European ports. The remaining 5 Sqn personnel occupied themselves with seminars and workshops on anti-submarine techniques and equipment, and talking to the likes of me.

As for the exercise itself, In the four days of Joint Warrior, before it came to a premature end, 5 Squadron managed to fly five sorties, logging 27 hours of a planned total of 110. “It’s quite a big commitment to send two crews and an aircraft around the world, but it’s such good training” says P-3 pilot Flight Lieutenant Aaron Benton. Having flown a night low-level sortie; “We were ready for the next one then the cloud showed up. After that it was waiting and waiting until JTEPS [the Joint Tactical Exercise Planning Staff] cancelled everything”.

These two-week exercises are usually divided into two phases. In the first week, known as the ‘set-fit’ phase, the various forces practice integrating their procedures and testing their systems against a background of a fictional crisis involving two or more nations and a UN/NATO intervention (Dragonia and Caledonia have been fighting inconclusively over Avalon for several years now). The scenario really only kicks in during the second week, when tensions and shadow boxing inevitably boil over into conflict. Supporting all this is a massive organisation based in Faslane near Glasgow, Northwood near London and elsewhere, incorporating all aspects of modern war, not just the armed forces, with legal and political advisors and players representing insurgent groups, aid organizations and the media. The latter, usually civilian contractors, provide radio, TV and print output as ‘Simpress’ during the exercise, contributing to the scenario’s realism.

“The exercise was looking really good.” Says Benton. “We few a few sorties against US, UK and French subs and with Belgian and RN surface ships. In the set fit phase we go out and work with a surface unit of 2-3 ships and their helos and protect them from a submarine, so we don’t use the scenario, but it is excellent training – you know something’s going to happen in those few hours. In the [second week’s] Ops phase you don’t know what will happen, but you get into exercise ROE (rules of engagement) and so on, so it’s good to have both weeks”. Another exercise feature is a “Sim Guard” radio frequency where, for example, a Dragonian warship may warn off a Coalition aircraft, which may reply that it is complying with the rules of the air. This keeps the real Guard free for warning off Russian spy ships, which are known to appear in the middle of manoeuvres, just like the Cold War days.

In order to get the best training value, A Joint Warrior sortie might be combined with some overland ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) on the extensive target ranges at Spadeadam, Cumbria. ISR is a role that has become increasingly important in recent years and to which Orions are particularly suited. “The RNZAF has not done any operational ISR tasking, but it is a role that we are taking on.” Says Aaron Benton. The P-3K2 upgrade will have more ISR capabilities, and when fully in service the RNZAF’s Maritime Patrol Force (MPF) will be renamed the Airborne Surveillance and Response Force (ASRF). “The combination of sensors on the K2 will make the aeroplane a very capable surveillance platform.” Says Nick Olney. “One of my boasts is that we will have the best MPA in the world when the K2 turns up*. It will give quite phenomenal value for money to the New Zealand taxpayer.”

After the overland ISR portion, the P-3 might continue into the Minch (the channel between the Scottish mainland and the Western Isles) for tasked ASW work. For this, 5 Squadron brings its own sonabuoys, which are a different size from that used in the UK. Live bombs and torpedoes are not transported to the UK as their employment can be simulated. Submarines themselves can be simulated with devices like the EMATT, (Expendable Mobile ASW Training Target), but in Joint Warrior real conventional and nuclear submarines are available. The ‘nukes’ are traditionally easier to detect, because of the constant noise source of the coolant pumps for the reactor, but newer subs such as the Royal Navy’s HMS Astute, which was undergoing trials during Joint Warrior are said to be much quieter.

“In the last 10 years we have taken the Joint Warrior invite when we can” says Nick Olney. The exercise was known as the Joint Maritime Course (JMC) up to 2005 and Neptune Warrior from 2006-2007. “For some guys Joint Warrior is their first major exercise”. Part of the learning curve is, surprisingly, understanding the locals: “Sometimes it takes a while for our new guys to understand the Scottish controllers” says Aaron Benton. One of his younger squadronmates who had been at Faslane agreed it was the same there, with “the mess stewards talking Glaswegian at three words a second.”

Participation by 5 Squadron in the next Joint Warrior, JW102 in October is a possibility**. Hopefully next time Icelandic ash will not take an airborne role in the scenario***.

*At the time he added that he didn’t know if he should be saying that at a (future) Nimrod MRA.4 base, but as that programme was scrapped in late 2010, he needn’t have worried.

** They didn’t return, needing to concentrate on the introduction of the P-3K2 while also having fewer aircraft available.

*** It didn’t.