AS THE Tamworth community comes to terms with farewelling the Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) Basic Flying Training School at the end of 2019, BAE Systems is looking to the future for new opportunities, which could involve civil aviation.
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Lockheed Martin was awarded the Air 5428 basic flight training contract for the ADF and will start training pilots at RAAF Base East Sale in 2019.
BAE Systems, which has provided the infrastructure for the ADF BFTS in Tamworth since 1992, has begun looking for new opportunities to fill the void the loss of this contract will leave.
BAE Systems Australia director aerospace Steve Drury said it was “very early days” so the company did not know the full details of the successful tender, but he believed it came down to the aircraft that Lockheed Martin would be using being better suited to the ADF’s simulators and training.
Mr Drury said Tamworth provided a compelling argument, with a great location and accommodating people, but the RAAF wanted combined training that RAAF Base East Sale provided.
All tenderers, including BAE Systems, had to provide tenders for their off-base site, such as Tamworth, as well as a tender for running the training from East Sale.
He said, depending on how initial training goes in East Sale, Tamworth’s BAE Systems could continue to provide basic training into 2020.
“We still have to talk to the air force about the timing, because they have options that go out even further than that,” Mr Drury said.
“They would have to test the new providers of their training and see how they bring their training in and, if there are any problems, it could be extended further, but we don’t want to hang our hopes on someone else’s failure – we have to be positive about our own future.”
Mr Drury said BAE Systems was appreciative the government had spoken to the company earlier in commercial-in-confidence talks about Lockheed Martin being awarded the contract, so BAE could start looking for other opportunities earlier.
“We had always been thinking of the alternatives anyway. We’ve always known to muster some other sort of customer,” he said.
He said it had four years to bring other tenants into play, with the Singapore, Brunei and Papua New Guinea defence forces also using the facilities in Tamworth, but none of the countries it worked with could give BAE the size of the contract the ADF did.
“We have to seriously think about whether it is a great place to have civil flying training,” he said.
He said the company had already started gathering information on whether civil aviation training would work in the region.
“We have to cast that net wide,” Mr Drury said.
“In the next two years, we have to have some pretty good ideas and we have a good team in Tamworth. The team in Tamworth are a fantastic group of people who do a great job for the air force, and this is disappointing for us all.
“We are keen to find the alternative work.”
