Fighter Maintenance- Unchaining the Predators

Fighter Maintenance- Unchaining the Predators

           

            I was a late initiate to Naval Aviation. I had originally been trained at the Naval College of Engineering, INS Shivaji to be an Electrical engineer on IN ships. This was followed by “specialisation” training on weapon systems at INS Valsura, Jamnagar. In-between, we were also deputed to ships for a period of “acquaintance” and “watch keeping”. All in all, I had been moulded well to sail the seas from the confines of the switchboard and generator compartments.

            However, I soon discovered that the view from below decks was shrouded by fumes of engine oil & the incessant noise of diesel engines pounding away. Shutting them down in the interests of a few minutes of peace & quiet was not an option since we were in any case almost always operating with marginal availability of diesel generators! The age of the machinery, ambient vibration levels, limited availability of spares, etc. ensured a busy time below decks and exchange of verbal volleys with shipmates while on the weather deck.

            Luckily for me, during my first tenure, my boss turned out to be an aeronautical engineer blessed with the calmness of the Buddha himself. So, while he helped immensely in maintaining the peace I began to believe that perhaps sanity did prevail in some corner of the universe where this gentleman & officer had sprung from. An exchange of a few quite words during the crossing of the Bay, and he had a convert!

            I duly volunteered for Naval Aviation and joined the Naval Air Technical School graduating twelve months later from the Naval Institute of Aeronautical Technology having benefited from that great man’s (Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam the SA to RM) vision & foresight to upgrade the school to an institute.

            By a quirk of fate, I was one of those sacrificial lambs who were baptised by the mighty paws of the White Tiger, spending many a sleepless night under its fuselage or crawling around its equipment bay. I loved that feat of British engineering called the Sea Harrier and spent the next number of years learning its many moods & developing a healthy respect for its ability to throw tantrums at the drop of a hat. It could refuse to fly the Chief of Naval Staff probably as a salty greeting to the man who had first touched down at Dabolim in it or, it could fly for months without a single whine if it so pleased her.

            The heart & soul of the aircraft was its Pegasus engine for it was indeed built around it. The “bedstead” flew first, before the Kestrel yielded to the Harrier. So, the Brits in honour of the engine, shaped & fitted the airframe around it like a massive cocoon. One problem though…to remove the engine, we had to remove the wing & gut the aircraft. Senior officers with wide foreheads & receding hairlines decreed that an engine should be changed within two weeks on the Sea Harrier, apparently a huge concession in itself since an engine change on a Jaguar can be conceptualised & completed within a few hours! The lady however refused to comply, other than on the very few occasions when literally the whole of the fraternity prostrated itself & capitulated to her whims and fancies by placing all available men & equipment at her beck & call.

            A normal engine change on the Sea Harrier by itself took weeks, but the pandora’s box which was opened while gutting the aircraft to take out the engine often took months to put back together. Items cleared tests on the bench but failed on the aircraft, wiring refused to cooperate, logistics drove everyone insane while the sight of the gutted aircraft sitting forlornly on the jacks gave the senior aircrew and technical officers quite a few greys with the latter also battling constantly to prevent succumbing to Father Christmas’ onslaught. This ghastly nightmare was almost always played out in full view of personnel in the squadron, since before the turn of the century, the same highbrows & receding hairlines had decreed that this massive surgical activity was to be carried out in the squadron’s hangar by the squadron’s ground crew! The logic for undertaking this massive exercise, and one must remember that we are usually very secretive & not given to providing explanations for anything especially to “young” officers, as explained to the protesting technical staff of the squadron was that the affected squadron would move heaven & earth to get the aircraft back on its wings unlike the second line workshops! A massive slur on the capabilities of men in our second line organisation, if you ask me (which no one did, of course).

            Quite naturally, the task of carrying out an engine change placed a huge burden on the squadron. The technical staff of the squadron now not only had to see to the requirements of “operational” aircraft, which was a taxing activity in itself due to the “flexible servicing” concept under which the Sea Harriers operated, but had also to put down & literally build up an aircraft over a period of a number of months. It was therefore quite natural to almost always find a Sea Harrier on jacks in a squadron boasting of a UE of 4/5 aircraft! So a squadron’s technical staff always operated in two modes, never fully focused on operations & never fully as a repair/ overhaul unit. Blurring of lines took place & the “O” & “D” levels of maintenance were literally merged into one with the second line workshops left to act as the supporting cast & deal only with equipment servicing/ repair.

            Were the second line staff incompetent or unworthy of “D” level tasks when it came to the Sea Harrier aircraft as a whole? Of course not! A few aircraft like 605, 651, 617, 654 were indeed “produced” over the years by the second line organisation but, in my opinion, our technical maintenance policy with respect to the Sea Harrier dealt a severe blow to not only frontline efficiency but also to any effort in building up a strong & vibrant second line culture.

            I have done a few tenures with the Sea Harrier squadrons as well as second line organisations particularly during the time when an aging aircraft posed many maintenance challenges predominantly for the Electrical branch & I am convinced that we could have done much better as a technical maintenance fraternity if we had not blurred the lines & blunted the Os to look like Ds, if you know what I mean.

            Call me a romantic if you will, but for me, the front line of a fighter squadron should always be the sharp edge of the sword….always holding true to the warrior spirit & keen to do battle. A squadron is not just the aircrew but also its ground crew. The ground crew breathes life into those aircraft which the aircrew then flies into harm’s way. Both are justifiably proud of their roles and it is debilitating and extremely discouraging to chain one while expecting the other to soar.

            At the same time, the second line also needs to be proud of its role. How proud were we when 651 took to the skies from the second line after a long hiatus. The glow on young Mukesh’s face & the spring in his step as we prepared the aircraft was a joy to behold. It spurred others to action too & we happily moved mountains to get the aircraft flyworthy again. But this activity happened too infrequently. A vibrant second line should have been accepting disabled aircraft and rolling out replacements as a matter of course rather than just becoming a graveyard for aircraft which had suffered an accident which were then restored almost as an afterthought & with the assistance of frontline personnel.

            From a fighter squadron technical officer’s perspective, I think the frontline technical staff should be given a maximum of 72 hours to get an unserviceable aircraft back on line. Any defect or servicing activity requiring a downtime of more than this duration should be considered beyond a frontline’s capability to undertake & the aircraft shifted to the second line with a replacement aircraft being provided by the latter. This would mean a lean frontline on its toes focused on flying operations and a vibrant second line taking pride in being the deeper level maintainer.

            This constant movement of aircraft from frontline to second line & back again would also allow aircraft to be examined by separate teams of people thereby preventing the usual list of “acceptable deferred defects” & “role limitations” from creeping up. A different set of eyes would also assist in detecting subliminal faults which might evade the scrutiny of the frontline crews due to time constraints imposed by flying operations. If adopted as policy, I would presume that with focus of the technical staff now firmly only on “operations”, the overall readiness & performance graph of the squadron would also show a climb.

            Such a policy change would also lead to consolidation of men & material including test equipment & spares at the second line. With more unserviceable aircraft available with it, albeit some for only a short time, the second line could focus on prioritising & turning around aircraft to meet a squadron’s requirement.

            The Indian Navy already operates more than 40 MiG 29Ks and is scouting around to purchase another 50+ fighters over the next few years. Adoption of a maintenance policy as outlined above would augur well for the health of our second line organisation while providing a fillip to frontline operations.