Caribou replacement 'should be open competition'

Airbus Military’s chief executive, Domingo Urena (pictured), visited Australia in late September and made it clear he believed the replacement for the RAAF’s Caribou DHC-4 Caribou should be chosen by open competition rather than sole source selection.

“We’ll have to wait until the requirements are released before we can confirm our ability to meet them, but the C-295M has won four of the past five competitions in which it has been involved and we look to an open competition for it to prove its value to the Australian taxpayer”, he told Aviation Business Asia-Pacific.

The RAAF’s last 13 Caribous were retired at the end of 2009 and preliminary approval is expected early next year for a program to replace them with up to 10 fixed wing light tactical aircraft under Project Air 8000 Phase 2. Interim light  transport capability is being provided by leased King Air 350s.

The RAAF last tried to replace the Caribou in 2000 when the C-295M and the Alenia C-27J Spartan competed for a 12 to 18 aircraft contract.

The smaller and cheaper C-295M is understood to have headed the evaluation but the competition was cancelled prior to the announcement of a preferred bidder.

The RAAF is believed to favour the C-27J because it shares engine and some systems commonality with the service’s 12 C-130J medium transports.

Urena met in Canberra with Defence Materiel Minister Jason Clare and Air Force chief, Air Marshal Geoff Brown and said that no contentious commercial issues remained regarding the RAAF’s five Airbus Military KC-30A multirole tanker transports.

The third MRTT would be delivered in late October, the fourth by the end of the year and the fifth in May 2012.

The RAAF had requested improvements to the mission planning system and to the refuelling boom operator’s human machine interface but these were not problems, “just normal evolutions of the product,” he commented.