Army Fleet Grounded

After the Australian Army grounded their Nomad fleet they sat around for a couple of years doing nothing. One must remember that the Army had more Nomads than they could use. There were the original aircraft plus the remainder of the production aircraft which had been stored at Oaklands - a Commonwealth depot in Victoria. These aircraft had been upgraded to the tune of at least $15M before being allotted to the Army and the RAAF (this was where ARDU's aircraft and the two N-24's at Tindal came from.)

The modernization tender became a farce. About two weeks before it closed, Defense put such restrictive limitations on the flight of these aircraft that the whole business turned into a joke. It was going to cost a small fortune merely to fly the aircraft out of Oaklands - so those tendering from outside Victoria were severely disadvantaged. ASTA won the tender, of course, and they probably received special dispensation to fly some of the aircraft to Avalon, but I'm not certain of this point. (Does anyone out there know the truth on this?)

Selling the Nomads caused some problems. One needs to sit back and reflect here. The aircraft was designed by one Government Department - Supply - to requirements enforced by another Department - CASA . The Nomads were then to be used by a third Department - Defense - who were responsible in this case through the RAAF, for the airworthiness of the aircraft. This meant that the RAAF could approve modifications, and they did so. However because CASA hadn't also approved these modifications, the aircraft could not be sold as "general aviation" aircraft. CASA believed that RAAF approved modifications would make the aircraft unsafe and would not agree to license any of the Defense fleet for civil service.

No-one with any familiarity with CASA was overly surprised by this attitude. There are CASA people who were and probably still are the most bloody-minded bunch of bureaucrats ever spawned. Don't get me wrong, they have some outstanding engineers - the fatigue people in particular - and there are some good operators there also. But back then they became consumed by the sort of arrogance which declined to certify an aircraft which was already in volume service overseas without expensive modifications. ( the same aircraft have since been determined safe enough to fly in Australian skies unmodified). One didn't get overseas junkets out of certifying Nomads, did one?

Being Defense aircraft (State Aircraft, in the language of the old regulations), many of the modifications had not been cleared by CASA. There was no legal or moral need to do this, as RAAF were the Airworthiness Authority. Yet all of the modifications were approved by the manufacturer, who would have realized there was a possibility that one day they would come on the open market. In any case, they weren't going to approve modifications that weren't safe.

And why weren't RAAF approved modifications good enough for CASA ? We're all Australians aren't we ? This situation caused much comment around various service and civilian bars, concerning the cretin count at high levels of the Federal Public Service.

So the only people who could buy the remaining Nomads were other Defense forces. This limited the takers to the Philippines and Indonesia. The aircraft had been sitting around for a couple of years by now, and a very experienced RAEME Warrant Officer was selected to get them ready for dispatch to Indonesia. This man did a fine job. Every aircraft left on time, and got to Indonesia on the first try. Spares, training materials and training aids were also dispatched. One would be curious to know to whose account these costs were charged to although I suspect the Commonwealth paid. And since then, the Army has had a Nomad Team in Indonesia, helping. Even with the Indons doing the flying and maintenance, none of them have yet fallen apart or dropped from the sky. Food for thought.

At the time, one could buy a good civil Nomad airframe( less engines) for maybe $300k. Add engines, props and you're looking at say $1.2M. Don't forget the $15M upgrade to the later additions to the fleet. The Indonesians got maybe $50 million worth of aircraft and equipment for almost nothing.

No-one remembered the Philippine Air Force, our first commercial customers. (still operating a dozen or so on a shoestring.) It would have been much smarter to have given all of the fleet to the Philippine Air Force – after all, it wasn't the Philippine's armed forces who later wreaked havoc in Timor…and there's no doubt that our Nomads were used by the Indonesian armed forces there to support those operations.

End