The history of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF)’s F-111 is well known. After being ordered by the Australian Defence Force (ADF) in 1963, the F-111 would survive almost 50 years of service, ending with retirement in 2010.

A lesser known tale of the F-111 details the evolutionary partnership between the ADF, Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) and the Australian defence industry which was a key turning point for the F-111 – effectively re-establishing the program as one of the best in Australia.

By 1998 the US Air Force retired their F-111 capability, and in the late 1990s, the RAAF recognised that they could no long rely on their US original equipment manufacturers to provide sustainment for the platform. Instead, they saw an opportunity to improve the operational availability of the F-111 by partnering with the Australian defence industry to manage the program’s sustainment.

Excited about this evolutionary opportunity, the Australian defence industry jumped at the chance to partner with Defence using an integrated engineering approach to sustainment. In particular, Raytheon Australia took on the management of the Avionics Business unit, moving into the Amberley facility to work more closely with the RAAF.

This new approach to partnership between Defence and the Australian defence industry is described in Mark Lax’s RAAF publication F-111 From Controversy to Cutting Edge, as he said:

‘This integrated engineering approach allowed the RAAF to focus on training, operations and exercises, and became a win-win for everybody... the relationship between the RAAF and industry became symbiotic once each developed trust in the other.’

By 2004, Raytheon Australia was consistently performing on its contracted outcomes to deliver serviceable assets on the shelf. However, after a year of delivering to its prescribed outcomes, it became clear to the joint Raytheon Australia and RAAF team that these outcomes were not increasing the operational availability of the platform. Furthermore, the outcomes did not address the pending life-of-type issues such as equipment reliability, maintainability, supply chain and obsolescence management.

In addition, substantial cuts to the F-111 sustainment budget threatened to reduce the availability of the F-111 platform.

Together, the RAAF and Raytheon Australia needed to think differently – and deliver sustainment solutions in a smarter way using the same resources. The team devised a plan to restructure the contract.

F-111: The program that redefined Smart Sustainment

After a collaborative investigation, the team decided that the prescriptive contract terms and line-by-line measures should be replaced with an outcome-focused approach. This approach would better align with the evolving needs of the program and ensure the availability of the F-111s avionics through to life of type.

Raytheon Australia leveraged the smart sustainment lessons from F-111 to improve a wide range of programs.

In its place, they developed a performance-based contract, aimed at delivering the F-111 capability to life-of-type, taking an integrated engineering approach to the program’s sustainment through to obsolescence management. Rather than delivering piece of kit after piece of kit, the team would be managing the sustainment of the program from a holistic perspective, leveraging Raytheon Australia’s proven processes, tools and considerable engineering and logistics expertise.

This revised contract would hold Raytheon Australia accountable to deliver outcomes against changing customer requirements within a firm fixed price regime. Additionally, Raytheon Australia was encouraged to act more like a partner than a supplier, and provide innovative solutions to achieve significant cost reduction wherever possible.

The team embraced the consultative approach and within a few months, the results spoke for themselves. The F-111’s profile was converted from “capability threatened” to “capability assured” and by 2010 the team had delivered $20m in savings to the Commonwealth. In addition to the savings realised, the database that was developed by the team using this new process led to financial predictability for budgeting purposes.

By working together, the team increased operational availability whist reducing life cycle costs, as highlighted by the Officer Commanding 82 Wing for the F-111 Squadrons in a letter to

Raytheon Australia stating that ‘despite 22 years association with the F-111 weapon system, I find it hard to remember when the F-111 aircraft availability was better. Whenever there has been a technical issue I have been very pleased with the enthusiasm and ‘can-do’ attitude of all the people at the table. Of note, some of the most enthusiastic and outcome focused members at that table have worn Raytheon patches.’

F-111: Continued

The F-111 program redefined how the ADF and Australian defence industry partner on sustainment.

Image courtesy of the Department of Defence.