Australia’s jet-setting echelon of political leaders, diplomats and senior public servants might finally have long-range, wide-bodied and purpose-built VIP aircraft at their disposal, but there’s a lot to be said for locally fine-tuning the large converted Airbus luxury state jets that double as tankers.
The King’s Birthday Honours list reveals one enterprising Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) sergeant has made a name for herself digging around in the KC-30’s wiring loom to sort out a few nagging issues with the plane’s in-flight phone and e-conferencing facilities that by definition have to be secured to the highest level.
After all, what’s the point in having a prime ministerial jet on call if you can’t do an encrypted Teams or Webex call halfway over the Pacific Ocean because the connection keeps dropping out delivering a pre-NBN user experience to the flying conference suite?
And when those users are deciding Defence budgets, posture and spending priorities, it does help when the in-flight Wi-Fi is working.
According to the Air Force, “When Sergeant Georgia Hannah was confronted with complex bandwidth and network architecture complications for the VIP communications system aboard RAAF’s new KC-30, she took matters into her own hands.”
In lay terms, that seems to have equated to rebuilding some of the systems that shipped a little light on robustness from the factory, a not uncommon scenario when civilian commercial products and systems get subjected to military rigours.
“There was an issue with the antenna to satellite connection. It turned out to be the design,” Hannah said in a Defence rundown of her exploits. Defence said these extended to organising for “stakeholders to go through the network with a fine-tooth comb to identify improvements.”
This resulted in the documentation of technical improvements so they were incorporated into service documents and established a training system to ensure others could benefit from Hannah’s innovation, Defence said.
Put more simply, the newly arrived Air Force network tech pulled down the whole VIP comms rig and then rebuilt it so that it actually worked in the air, which the Air Force characterised as Hannah having “identified solutions to vastly improve the passenger communication system aboard the KC-30A.”
Sufficiently vast that RAAF’s top brass no longer have to explain to the prime minister of the day why their phone and email doesn’t work on a +$200 million plane, which might be problematic.
Such good deeds and problem-solving skills are meritorious, and the reason the glitchy comms system ever broke cover is that Sergeant Hannah received the Conspicuous Service Cross (CSC) in this year’s King’s Birthday awards.
The CSC wasn’t just for finding the solution, it was for passing down the working knowledge to those who come next to lift Air Force’s proficiency and performance.
“It’s really good to get recognition, but it’s better to see it all work after having all those issues rectified. It’s good that people are noticing gaps in the system,” Hannah said.
“I am proud that I was able to train the new operators. I have trust in them that they have the knowledge when the issues arise.”
“IT has always got room for improvement.”
