Double dash

The paperwork for the two Bombardier Dash-8 Q300s that touched down at Ireland’s Shannon airport in an early morning haze a month apart showed the aircraft were acquired byAbu Dhabi Aviation and had been converted for their new role by Canada’s Provincial Aerospace, of St Johns, Newfoundland.

The journey to their new Gulf owners and operators saw the aircraft roueting to the UAE via Labrador, Shannon and Palermo in Sicily.

The ‘second’ aircraft (the former A6-ADG, wearing UAE military serial 1321) was delivered first, arriving at Shannon on March 9. The ‘first’ (1320, formerly A6-ADF) followed on April 15.

Though acquired from Abu Dhabi Aviation, both aircraft had also been used by Caribbean Star Airlines, with A6-ADF wearing a gaudy 20/20 cricket tournament colour scheme.

The identity of the first aircraft was not unexpected, as the various models shown by Provincial at successive Dubai Airshows had always been marked as A6-ADF.

A recent job advertisement revealed that the two aircraft will be operated on behalf of the UAE Air Force by a local “military MRO” organisation, and that an ex-military Dash-8 experienced captain was being sought to act as a “pilot mentor/training Captain”.

Provincial Aerospace received a $290 million (AED1.071 billion) contract for the two aircraft on February 27 2009, covering the modification of a pair of Bombardier Dash-8 Q300s, converted for the maritime patrol role. The contract included the design of the necessary modifications, as well as the incorporation and integration of new role-specific equipment. The contract also covered training and integrated logistics support for an unspecified period.

Although previously its experience was limited to the modification of just two Dash-8s for the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba Coast Guard (while Toronto-based rival Field Aviation has received 30 orders for such aircraft from Surveillance Australia, Tenix LADS Australia, US Customs and Border Protection, the Japan Coast Guard, the Swedish Coast Guard and the Icelandic Coast Guard), the Newfoundland company has been operating and modifying maritime patrol aircraft for more than 25 years.

In doing so, Provincial has already amassed more than 130,000 hours of mission time on its fleet of ten MPAs (five King Air 200s, two Dash-8 Q100s, and three UAVs), which operate in 30 countries and add 10,000 hours per year to the company’s tally.

Provincial also has years of experience in acting as a designer, modifier and integrator of special mission aircraft solutions across a diverse range of aircraft platforms including Beech King Airs, Bombardier Dash-8s, Canadair CL415s and Swearingen C-26s among others. It has designed and managed the installation and integration of tactical management systems, maritime radars, and sensor suites.

The UAE’s trade is still heavily dependent on shipping and the Emirates needs the commercial waterways of the Gulf for imports and for vital oil exports, while there are also important fisheries to protect and monitor (for pollution and illegal activity), and there is a real requirement for maritime search and rescue. Consequently, maritime patrol in the Arabian Gulf has become an increasingly important priority.

The UAE has had a long-standing requirement for a long-range maritime patrol aircraft and, in 1998, it was widely reported that it had placed an order for four Indonesian-developed CN-235 MPA aircraft that would have enjoyed some commonality with the air force’s fleet of seven CN-235 tactical transports.

These were expected to feature the Thales AMASCOS 300 airborne maritime situation control system with a Thales/EADS Ocean Master 100 radar, a Thales Optronique Chlio thermal imager, and a Thales Gemini navigation computer, as well as a CAE AN/ASQ-508 magnetic anomaly detection (MAD), an Elettronica ALR 733 radar warning receiver.

But the CN-235MPAs never arrived and, by 2007, it was clear that the nine-year-old requirement remained unfulfilled, and that a competition was still under way.

At the Dubai Airshow that year, Provincial showed a model of a Dash-8 Q300 in maritime configuration and wearing UAE Air Force markings, placing it prominently in front of a poster advertising the AMASCOS mission system. 


After what Keith Stoodley, Provincial’s senior vice president for marketing and sales, called “an extensive and exhaustive competition involving many of the world’s largest aerospace and defence companies”, Provincial was selected to modify two Dash-8s to maritime patrol configuration. Many pundits expect the eventual requirement to be for four such aircraft, since long before the contract was awarded, there had been a number of reports that four of the eight DHC-8-315Q aircraft operated by Abu Dhabi Aviation were expected to undergo maritime surveillance aircraft conversion and, of course, the CN-235 order had been expected to be for four aircraft.

The configuration on the UAE aircraft has been kept secret. We do know the Dash-8s used by Provincial to fulfil the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba Coast Guard requirement are relatively modestly equipped, with a 360 degree maritime search radar, a nose-mounted searchlight, an under-fuselage FLIR, extended range fuel tanks, and a drop hatch. The latter incorporates a windbreak and is designed to deploy search and rescue kits. It is pressurised, reloadable, and can be operated from the cockpit.

These sensors and systems are integrated with Provincial’s proprietary airborne data acquisition and management (ADAM) tactical management system. When a UAE maritime Dash-8 was first shown in model form, it seemed to have much the same fit, although it was expected that the aircraft would use the Thales AMASCOS mission system, incorporating sensors and equipment from Thales, surveillance equipment from FLIR Systems (in the form of a gyro-stabilised forward-looking infrared turret, electronic countermeasures equipment from Elettronica Spa, and secure telecommunications equipment from Rohde & Schwarz, as well as unspecified items from Honeywell and from Saab Systems in South Africa (probably Saab Avitronics).

None of this can be confirmed as Provincial has remained tight-lipped about the details of the UAE conversion and about the equipment that has been installed.

In Provincial’s marketing brochure it could be construed that the UAE aircraft may have an anti-submarine warfare capability, using sonobuoys, radar and side looking airborne radar (SLAR) for the detection, classification, localisation and tracking of surface and sub-surface targets. The aircraft features a high bandwidth satellite communications system integrated with the on-board mission system and the ground-based mission data repository, providing real time access to data, video and audio.

The aircraft may also incorporate a signals intelligence gathering capability, allowing it to intercept communications from targets of interest, either airborne or on the surface.

Certainly it has a profusion of antennas and radomes on the forward and rear fuselage, as well as prominent SLAR fairings along the sides of the lower fuselage and what appears to be chaff/flare dispensers mounted above the rear fuselage. There does not appear to be a MAD system fitted.

It was expected that the aircraft would feature a new fully openable air operable door and searchlight (located inside), similar in some respects to the openable door design incorporated on some field Dash-8 conversions, with a built-in windbreak to allow the airborne dispersal of larger life rafts, survival supplies or even paratroops. These doors were designed to allow the mounting of searchlights for the illumination of surface targets. But in the event, photos of the aircraft on delivery do not appear to show an air operable door and, instead, searchlights are housed in Plexiglas domes under each wing root, perhaps indicating that there is no longer an air operable door facility, though an under-fuselage drop hatch is clearly fitted.

The aircraft appears to have a night photography system; with the distinctive twin windows fitted in the starboard lower rear fuselage, and may also be fitted with an infra red linescan in the belly.

But for the full details of the conversion, only time will tell.