AW&ST: (Behind their firewall)
U.K. Rivet Joint Finally Flies
The U.K. Royal Air Force has finally begun training sorties with its first RC-135 Rivet Joint intelligence-gathering aircraft, seven months after it was delivered. The first flight with a British crew in late May was seen as a significant step forward for the $1 billion Airseeker program, an L-3 Communications conversion of three 1960s-vintage U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotankers into RC-135W signals intelligence-gathering aircraft, and the U.K.’s admittance into the U.S. Rivet Joint intelligence-gathering structure.
But the type’s introduction to flight operations has not been straightforward. Since its arrival at its home base of RAF Waddington, England, last November, the aircraft had not moved from its parking spot. Its entry into service was complicated by the changes in air safety governance and the regime of safety case and certification oversight introduced through the creation of the Military Aviation Authority (MAA), which was formed in April 2010 following the Haddon-Cave inquiry into the loss of an RAF Nimrod patrol aircraft over Afghanistan in 2006.
As a type new to the inventory, the Rivet Joint would have normally been taken through a six-part Military Aircraft Certification Process (MACP) to receive its release to service documentation that would clear it for flights by U.K. aircrews. But the lack of paperwork and documentation stretching back to when the aircraft was first built as a KC-135A Stratotanker meant that officials were not able to fulfill two elements of the MACP process: They could not establish and agree the Type Certification Basis (TCB) nor demonstrate the aircraft’s compliance with the TCB. That forced the U.K.’s procurement agency, Defense Equipment and Support (DE&S), to undertake a wide-scale examination of the aircraft, carry out structural and zonal analysis and complete audits to generate evidence and prove the aircraft’s safety. The MAA was brought in to examine DE&S’s work and give its own recommendations.
“We couldn’t follow our own regulation, . . . so what we elected to do is follow an alternative, an as-safe route that . . . demonstrates the requisite levels of safety have been achieved,” Air Marshal Richard Garwood, director general of the MAA, tells Aviation Week. “Because it couldn’t follow the six-part process, we got permission from the secretary of state to take a different course of action, an alternative approach,” Garwood notes. “We haven’t changed the rules, but we couldn’t apply our own either. Two of the six bases required for certification didn’t exist or compliance could not be proved. If you don’t have that, in order to make sure this is safe, you’ve got to—not reverse engineer, but collect that evidence by different methods such as zonal analysis and work backward.”
In the U.S., the Rivet Joint has essentially been given grandfather rights, so DE&S officials had little evidence to indicate how the U.S. flight-envelope clearances were obtained. The MAA and U.S. armed services are collaborating to understand one another’s certification practices. The MAA and U.S. Army completed their work last December with the signing of a mutual recognition certificate between the British authority and the Army’s Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center. Work with Naval Air Systems Command (Navair) is proceeding and expected to finish this year, while work with Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) is being conducted this year. MAA officials say that even if the AFMC recognition had been in place, it would not have been a “silver bullet.” Similar projects are underway with several military certification agencies in Europe as well. The MAA submitted its findings to the assistant chief of the Air Staff on April 23. He issued an initial release to service for the Rivet Joint on April 30, but technical issues with ground equipment delayed until May 23 plans to get the aircraft flying. A full release to service will be awarded at a later date.
The RAF is the first export customer for the Rivet Joint, which is considered to be one of the most complex Foreign Military Sales transactions ever completed between the U.S. and U.K. The RAF is due to declare an initial operating capability with a single RC-135 this October. New aircraft will then be delivered every two years, with a full operating capability expected in mid-2017.