THE MARITIME HELICOPTER PROJECT
WHY AND HOW - PART III

The first two articles in this series dealt with capabilities the maritime helicopter will require in order for it to carry out the multitude of roles a Sea King replacement will be tasked to conduct. This final article in this series will deal with the number of maritime helicopters required, and how to make it all affordable.

FLEET SIZE

The capabilities and number of the 1963 Sea King acquisition were determined by the Navy in accordance with its Cold War NATO obligations. Since then, the Army's fleet of medium lift Chinook helicopters has been sold, leaving the Sea King as the only medium lift helicopter (aside from dedicated SAR helicopters) at the governments disposal. The result is that the Sea King has come to be viewed by the Air Force as much a national helicopter resource as it is maritime force asset, and has not hesitated to task it on domestic disaster relief missions that would otherwise have been done by a Chinook. This is as it should be and fulfills a requirement; and the requirement cannot be ignored when determining the fleet size of the maritime helicopter replacement for the Sea King. To consider numbers only sufficient to fulfill an essential minimum naval requirement denies the possibility of conflicting priorities, and by definition means there will be less than the essential minimum after the first accident-even if the aircraft can be repaired. The analysis that follows describes the minimum number of maritime helicopters required to do the work presently being done by the extant fleet of 30 Sea Kings.

The core of the analysis is still the naval requirement, which is determined almost completely by the number of helicopter carrying ships in the naval inventory. The wartime requirement is fairly easy. There are twelve frigates each capable of carrying one helicopter, four destroyers each capable of carrying two helicopters, and two fleet support ships each capable of carrying three helicopters. In the event of war, the navy would make all ships operational and available for tasking at a moment's notice. This means there is a surge requirement for 26 operational helicopters for deployed operations.

That number serves as a benchmark, but the ultimate decision on a peacetime fleet size requires more analysis. For most operations the navy organizes itself into Task Groups comprised of up to four combatants (usually destroyers and/or frigates but could include submarines) and a support ship, with appropriate maritime air support. The makeup of each Task Group is optimally suited to the full range of expected tasks associated with its mission, and it is capable of self-sustained operations for a fixed period of time in any accessible maritime region of the world. A typical Task Group for international security operations, for instance, could be three frigates, one destroyer, and one fleet support ship (AOR), with typically seven (or eight) embarked helicopters depending on the length and operational intensity of the mission.

With one Task Group on each coast, plus our commitments to NATO's Standing Naval Forces in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean, there is a basic peacetime requirement for 16 embarked helicopters. These helicopters and their crews come from operational helicopter squadrons based on each coast, which must maintain a small cadre of trained and proficient aircrew to replace those at sea who, from time to time, may need to come ashore for compassionate or medical reasons. It is necessary therefore, for each squadron to be assigned a shore-based helicopter for proficiency flying in order that replacement aircrew can be available on short notice whenever they may be required. In fact, the two "proficiency" helicopters serve several purposes; they allow replacement aircrew to maintain proficiency when the ships are deployed, they allow domestic missions to be conducted without jeopardizing the capabilities of the Task Group, and they provide the navy the flexibility to task a "ready duty" ship in local waters when the Task Group is deployed. This adds up to a requirement for a peacetime operational fleet of 18 helicopters.

An air force career is not static however; aircrew rotate through desk jobs, get promoted, and retire. The point is that there must be a continuous process of training new aircrew to replace those leaving, and that requires an Operational Training Unit (OTU) that has at least three helicopters. This number is based on the training syllabi for extant Sea King aircrew and the need to replace one quarter of the operational aircrew per year.

The final flyable aircraft requirement is for one of the fleet to be dedicated for the operational test and evaluation (OTE) of new equipment and technologies. Over the 30-40 year life of the helicopter it can be expected that new mission suite requirements will arise, and new technologies or flight procedures will be developed. Good aircraft engineering maintenance practice requires all line aircraft be the same configuration, which results in a minimum maintenance overhead and the use of standardized checklists and procedures. A dedicated OTE aircraft allows new technology and equipment to be installed and trailed without disrupting the fleet configuration. This is not just an engineering maintenance consideration; it also has a great deal to do with flight safety. It is important that each line aircraft is configured the same, otherwise aircrews would have to be trained and proficient on each different configuration. In the final analysis it is the adherence to good engineering maintenance and flight procedures that determines safety, and therefore the effectiveness of the entire operation. The total flyable requirement is therefore 22 helicopters.

The final element in calculating the total fleet size is the preventive maintenance requirement. Using the Sea King as a baseline, and currently accepted engineering maintenance practices, a reasonable number of aircraft to be in scheduled overhaul varies between five and six. That may seem excessive at first blush, but consider that Canada has been able to keep the Sea King flying for as long as it has only because the fleet has undergone regularly scheduled refits based on the number of hours flown. If the maritime helicopter is to last as long, it too must be subject to a rigorous preventive maintenance schedule.

Based on the foregoing, the minimum fleet size is 28 helicopters; considerably less than the 41 Sea Kings that were bought in the early sixties, but then the threat of actual war is considerably less. What should also be considered however, is that this number does not take into account any allowance for attrition. Eleven of the original 41 Sea Kings have been lost at sea or damaged beyond repair in 36 years of operations. A reasonable estimate therefore, is that upwards of six Maritime helicopters will be lost over 30 plus years of operations, which suggests a purchase of 32 would be appropriate based on a maximum at-sea requirement for 26 plus six attrition aircraft. This would ensure that a full naval mobilization would be possible even at the end of a 30-year operational life. The point has to be carefully argued however, because any capability or number of aircraft over the essential minimum could attract the same sort of attention that killed the so-called "gold-plated" EH-101 program. That said, as with any acquisition program, government or civil, if the contracted fleet size increases the price per helicopter decreases. The question is, would it be less expensive in terms of total program cost to include attrition aircraft with the original contract, or wait and buy replacement helicopters only if and when needed, but certainly at a higher cost per aircraft?

MAKING IT ALL AFFORDABLE

Affordability is a perception that is influenced to a great extent by politics. The EH-101 NSA was cancelled in 1993 because it attracted a great deal of attention during the 1993 election. Indeed, at $4.4B the program was not inexpensive, and its untimely placement on Canada's political agenda ensured it would become the focus of attention on an ex-Minister of National Defence turned vulnerable, incumbent Prime Minister. Since the NSA program was first announced there had been little to no official effort to explain the 'military' requirement, rather than the political sell based almost entirely on the industrial benefits to Canada that would derive from the contract. Specifically, over $3B of new high technology work in aerospace and electronics was to be created representing about 45,000 person years of new employment. Of course, these benefits were to be spread across Canada to gain popular regional support for the program', and all this came at a considerable, all-inclusive price. Moreover, because the EH-101 was the only helicopter in production that met the specified air vehicle requirements for range and endurance, there was little in the way of price competition. The only obstacle was the political sell, and the costs of that were included in the overall program cost of $4.4B. To be fair, the process which culminated in the EH-101 contract was no different than previous capital equipment programs, except that in this case the world circumstances that under-pinned the mission requirements changed between the drafting of the specifications and the signing of the contract. The capabilities of the EH-101 were based specifically on the Cold War submarine threat of the mid-1980s whose technological sophistication was advancing at an alarming rate. Off-the-shelf sub-surface surveillance technology available to Canada was inadequate against the new Soviet submarines, and the program became a "milch cow" for the research and development fraternity. By 1992 of course, the Soviet Union had collapsed and the Cold War threat of bloc-to-bloc nuclear war had almost ceased to exist. Perhaps it was right to cancel the program; certainly the magnitude and sophistication of the anti-submarine mission was no longer required. Nonetheless, the EH-101 helicopter itself was, and still is, a suitable replacement for the Sea King. But here the passage of time is beneficial to the new maritime helicopter project, because there are now at least three off-the-shelf helicopters that meet the range and capacity requirements outlined in the previous articles which means there will be price competition between the contending manufacturers. Not only can the mission suite requirements be competed with off-the-shelf technologies, so too can the air vehicle itself. Furthermore, in order to clearly identify the military cost of the helicopter and reduce any perception of "gold-plated" excess, any premium paid for Canadian technology over and above a less expensive offshore option should be identified, and separated from the costs directly attributable to the military requirement. The point is that the military budget should not be charged for industrial development programs that are not part of its mission. The net cost of the program attributable to the Department of National Defence should be clear, open and defensible on its merits; not a matter of subjective perception as it was for the EH-101.

Stripped of all non-military costs the MHP is clearly a Defence budget obligation, but it is paid out over several years. For example, the NSA budget was to have been spent over thirteen years. There is no reason to believe the Maritime helicopter program will be very much different. When capital expenditure programs are planned in a stable, long-range National Defence budget, the costs of new capital equipment, especially replacement equipment, are budgeted for and paid from within the approved Departmental funding level. Media attention and some Op-Ed pieces would seem to indicate that this sort of acquisition program is funded over and above the approved Departmental budget, and that the expenditure represents a political choice between helicopters and hospital beds. This is not so. The Department attempts to set aside about 20 percent of its approved budget for new and replacement equipment purchases, but this allowance is often eaten up by the costs of international security operations. In fact, a case could be made that the capital portion of the budget should be fixed in order to keep the equipment replacement programs stable, while the budget for international security operations should be left open-ended because it is not controlled by DND. As it is right now, the cost of unforecast increases in these operations, whether they be to Kosovo or Columbia, take money away from equipment replacement programs, which explains why obsolete aircraft are kept in inventory.

Beyond "netting" the attributable program costs and giving a true picture of affordability, there are other measures that can be taken to reduce the up-front cost of the helicopter. For instance, including the provision of spare parts and a preventive maintenance program in the overall contract with industry could result in the unit cost of the helicopters being reduced indirectly with the length and scope of the support agreement. In fact, allowing industry to become part of the solution by specifying only the air vehicle and mission suite requirements and the budget limitations could result in the fleet size being an upwardly variable element in competitive bids supported by multi-year maintenance and sparing agreements. What is clear is that the eagerness of the aeronautical industry to compete and make their project proposals affordable, must be used to advantage.

The three articles in this series have discussed the utility of a multi-purpose, multi-role maritime helicopter to Canadian security and foreign policy. This helicopter is an essential component of our national maritime surveillance and enforcement capability. It is no use buying something less than what is required, because that will inevitably result in a requirement for a second helicopter to do what the minimal helicopter cannot. Moreover, the capabilities described in these articles are available off-the-shelf and subject to price competition. The "gold-plated" experience of the NSA program need not be repeated. A multi-purpose maritime helicopter is an essential replacement for the Sea King, and it is affordable.