ryan77
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Hope this hasn't been posted here yet...
http://ebird.dtic.mil/Aug2002/s20020807bae.htm
Aviation Week & Space Technology
August 5, 2002
Pg. 56
BAE Sees Opening For Its MMA Bid
By David A. Fulghum, Farnborough and Warton, England
The U.S. Navy is actively considering giving up the airborne signals intelligence mission and retiring its aging EP-3E fleet, a move that has heartened BAE Systems in its bid to sell the service a new-production version of the MRA4 Nimrod patrol aircraft.
Both senior aerospace industry and U.S. military officials said the Navy is contemplating passing the sigint mission exclusively to the U.S. Air Force's new Multisensor Command and Control Aircraft. The move mirrors the Air Force's decision to turn tactical jamming over to the Navy's EA-6B Prowler force. Driving the shift is the growing cost of developing, integrating and fielding the EA-18 Growler replacement for the EA-6B.
"The EA-18 is eating their lunch and they want the Air Force to provide some relief," a senior U.S. aerospace industry official said. However, top Air Force officials have said they would like to see Navy personnel on one side of the aircraft and Air Force on the other. Even if the Air Force hasn't publicly agreed to the plan, Navy leadership has made the decision internally to focus its funding on the mission of aircraft-carrier-based strike. While there are only 11 EP-3s, they require "big crews" of about two dozen people and "big costs," a BAE official said.
Providing an alternative elint mission payload for a U.S. Navy version of the MRA4 was an expensive task that BAE Systems was not anxious to take on. Before the Navy's reconsideration of the airborne sigint mission, contractors believed the Navy would require two versions of a new Multirole Maritime Aircraft (MMA)--one for strike/surveillance and another for electronic intelligence.
But with the need to come up with only a surveillance and strike mission variant of the aircraft, BAE Systems is ahead of any competition because it plans first flight of its modernized patrol aircraft design by year-end, company officials said. They then want to move the aircraft to NAS Patuxent River, Md., by mid-2003 to take advantage of the consolidated test facilities there and to invite U.S. Navy officials and aviators, as well as congressional staffers, to fly the aircraft. "We'll put it into Pax River and challenge people to try us out," said Tom Nicholson, managing director for Nimrod.
Company officials think they have a fighting chance in the competition because of the combination of a new Boeing-developed mission system, a design ready to go into production at an unnamed U.S. partner's facilities and low cost (expected to be well under $200 million each). However, simply setting the requirements for MMA is proving difficult and has slipped from this summer into sometime during the next fiscal year. Nonetheless, BAE officials expect to have a Nimrod at Patuxent River in 2003 and are aiming at an initial operational clearance in 2005.
"We're going to be hard to beat," said Ray Dennis, program director for Nimrod MRA4. BAE is remanufacturing 18 aircraft into the MRA4 configuration for the Royal Air Force. He believes the company can maintain the low cost even if the need for P-3 replacements slips from a notional 200 aircraft to 130 or fewer. "So that makes us more attractive," he said. "It makes a smaller force affordable." Although the program is considered technically very promising, it has suffered several delays and cost has gone up, eating away at the company's profit.
"It was far more complex than we or the Defense Ministry realized or anticipated," Dennis said. The company also badly underestimated the expense of using commercial off-the-shelf components. "There's no such thing as off-the-shelf," he said. "There were a million changes on every box. But now we've been through the mill" and have worked out the integration problems. The aircraft has 800 computers on board, for example.
NONETHELESS, WITH a product about ready for flight, the MRA4 "will be the best in class for two decades," Nicholson said. Moreover, BAE and the British Defense Ministry have already invested $2.5 billion in development.
U.S. officials say the Navy would not choose Nimrod unless it was forced on them as part of a political decision, but they believe that BAE Systems, by hanging in the competition, will end up in the MMA program. BAE Systems, Boeing and Lockheed Martin are each in a $7-million, five-month study to look at basic requirements, architecture and concept of operations. Phase two will likely involve a narrowing to two contractors. BAE is expected to partner with one or both of the U.S. companies.
BAE strategists know it is unlikely any foreign company will win a major acquisition program in the U.S., but they point out that they are now an "American" company with 25,000 employees in the U.S. They stress that U.S. engines and Boeing's mission system would put U.S. content at 50% by cost even before a partner is found to build and assemble the airframe. "The office in London will be the extent that we're an offshore company," Nicholson said.
Operationally, the Nimrod design offers advantages over other contenders such as the Boeing 737 or an updated P-3. The Nimrod can carry Storm Shadow cruise missiles for an offensive land-strike capability. With the combination of long-range weapons and UAVs for additional reconnaissance, MRA4 "can become a very deep-strike aircraft from standoff ranges," Nicholson said.
It also has its engines buried in the wings instead of hanging under the aircraft in pods. The design improves stealth and offers a clear space under the aircraft for antenna farms and carrying air-launched unmanned aircraft that company planners want to adapt to the aircraft. These "parasite aircraft" could conduct dangerous reconnaissance jobs and considerably extend the aircraft surveillance footprint. Officials said they have signed agreements with Boeing to look at developing UAVs to fit inside the patrol airplane's 40-ft.-long weapons bay.
"THE NAVY WANTS internal carriage of weapons so nobody knows what's being carried," Dennis said. Boeing is looking at the 737-700 and the 19.3 ft. longer 737-800 for its MMA proposal. Researchers are considering weapons bay designs ranging from about 11-14 ft. in length. The Nimrod would also have four vertical launchers mounted vertically, each carrying 10 sonobuoys and still focusing heavily on the antisubmarine and long-range strike roles. Boeing's design appears to concentrate on air, land and sea surveillance as well as command and control with ASW as an adjunct mission.
WITH THE MRA4 DESIGN, endurance for the Nimrod has been extended to 14 hr. from 8.5 hr. for the current Mk. 2 aircraft, said Bob Connolly, manager of flight operations. That would be crucial as missions near China, India and Pakistan become more important. The MRA4 is to carry six Harpoon missiles and enhanced synthetic aperture radar; with a full load, it would be able to take off from an 8,500-ft. runway, he said. The redesign also allowed for reduction of the aircraft crew to 10 from 13--two pilots, two tactical coordinators, two acoustic sensor operations, three electronic sensor operators and a communications specialist. The cockpit has seven flat plate displays to ensure the flight crew has full operational awareness of the tactical situation.
The first MRA4 is to be delivered to the RAF in August 2004, with the first unit of seven aircraft to be operational in 2005. Nimrod is designed so that three aircraft can deploy 3,000 mi. and carry enough support personnel and spares to conduct round-the-clock operations.
http://ebird.dtic.mil/Aug2002/s20020807bae.htm
Aviation Week & Space Technology
August 5, 2002
Pg. 56
BAE Sees Opening For Its MMA Bid
By David A. Fulghum, Farnborough and Warton, England
The U.S. Navy is actively considering giving up the airborne signals intelligence mission and retiring its aging EP-3E fleet, a move that has heartened BAE Systems in its bid to sell the service a new-production version of the MRA4 Nimrod patrol aircraft.
Both senior aerospace industry and U.S. military officials said the Navy is contemplating passing the sigint mission exclusively to the U.S. Air Force's new Multisensor Command and Control Aircraft. The move mirrors the Air Force's decision to turn tactical jamming over to the Navy's EA-6B Prowler force. Driving the shift is the growing cost of developing, integrating and fielding the EA-18 Growler replacement for the EA-6B.
"The EA-18 is eating their lunch and they want the Air Force to provide some relief," a senior U.S. aerospace industry official said. However, top Air Force officials have said they would like to see Navy personnel on one side of the aircraft and Air Force on the other. Even if the Air Force hasn't publicly agreed to the plan, Navy leadership has made the decision internally to focus its funding on the mission of aircraft-carrier-based strike. While there are only 11 EP-3s, they require "big crews" of about two dozen people and "big costs," a BAE official said.
Providing an alternative elint mission payload for a U.S. Navy version of the MRA4 was an expensive task that BAE Systems was not anxious to take on. Before the Navy's reconsideration of the airborne sigint mission, contractors believed the Navy would require two versions of a new Multirole Maritime Aircraft (MMA)--one for strike/surveillance and another for electronic intelligence.
But with the need to come up with only a surveillance and strike mission variant of the aircraft, BAE Systems is ahead of any competition because it plans first flight of its modernized patrol aircraft design by year-end, company officials said. They then want to move the aircraft to NAS Patuxent River, Md., by mid-2003 to take advantage of the consolidated test facilities there and to invite U.S. Navy officials and aviators, as well as congressional staffers, to fly the aircraft. "We'll put it into Pax River and challenge people to try us out," said Tom Nicholson, managing director for Nimrod.
Company officials think they have a fighting chance in the competition because of the combination of a new Boeing-developed mission system, a design ready to go into production at an unnamed U.S. partner's facilities and low cost (expected to be well under $200 million each). However, simply setting the requirements for MMA is proving difficult and has slipped from this summer into sometime during the next fiscal year. Nonetheless, BAE officials expect to have a Nimrod at Patuxent River in 2003 and are aiming at an initial operational clearance in 2005.
"We're going to be hard to beat," said Ray Dennis, program director for Nimrod MRA4. BAE is remanufacturing 18 aircraft into the MRA4 configuration for the Royal Air Force. He believes the company can maintain the low cost even if the need for P-3 replacements slips from a notional 200 aircraft to 130 or fewer. "So that makes us more attractive," he said. "It makes a smaller force affordable." Although the program is considered technically very promising, it has suffered several delays and cost has gone up, eating away at the company's profit.
"It was far more complex than we or the Defense Ministry realized or anticipated," Dennis said. The company also badly underestimated the expense of using commercial off-the-shelf components. "There's no such thing as off-the-shelf," he said. "There were a million changes on every box. But now we've been through the mill" and have worked out the integration problems. The aircraft has 800 computers on board, for example.
NONETHELESS, WITH a product about ready for flight, the MRA4 "will be the best in class for two decades," Nicholson said. Moreover, BAE and the British Defense Ministry have already invested $2.5 billion in development.
U.S. officials say the Navy would not choose Nimrod unless it was forced on them as part of a political decision, but they believe that BAE Systems, by hanging in the competition, will end up in the MMA program. BAE Systems, Boeing and Lockheed Martin are each in a $7-million, five-month study to look at basic requirements, architecture and concept of operations. Phase two will likely involve a narrowing to two contractors. BAE is expected to partner with one or both of the U.S. companies.
BAE strategists know it is unlikely any foreign company will win a major acquisition program in the U.S., but they point out that they are now an "American" company with 25,000 employees in the U.S. They stress that U.S. engines and Boeing's mission system would put U.S. content at 50% by cost even before a partner is found to build and assemble the airframe. "The office in London will be the extent that we're an offshore company," Nicholson said.
Operationally, the Nimrod design offers advantages over other contenders such as the Boeing 737 or an updated P-3. The Nimrod can carry Storm Shadow cruise missiles for an offensive land-strike capability. With the combination of long-range weapons and UAVs for additional reconnaissance, MRA4 "can become a very deep-strike aircraft from standoff ranges," Nicholson said.
It also has its engines buried in the wings instead of hanging under the aircraft in pods. The design improves stealth and offers a clear space under the aircraft for antenna farms and carrying air-launched unmanned aircraft that company planners want to adapt to the aircraft. These "parasite aircraft" could conduct dangerous reconnaissance jobs and considerably extend the aircraft surveillance footprint. Officials said they have signed agreements with Boeing to look at developing UAVs to fit inside the patrol airplane's 40-ft.-long weapons bay.
"THE NAVY WANTS internal carriage of weapons so nobody knows what's being carried," Dennis said. Boeing is looking at the 737-700 and the 19.3 ft. longer 737-800 for its MMA proposal. Researchers are considering weapons bay designs ranging from about 11-14 ft. in length. The Nimrod would also have four vertical launchers mounted vertically, each carrying 10 sonobuoys and still focusing heavily on the antisubmarine and long-range strike roles. Boeing's design appears to concentrate on air, land and sea surveillance as well as command and control with ASW as an adjunct mission.
WITH THE MRA4 DESIGN, endurance for the Nimrod has been extended to 14 hr. from 8.5 hr. for the current Mk. 2 aircraft, said Bob Connolly, manager of flight operations. That would be crucial as missions near China, India and Pakistan become more important. The MRA4 is to carry six Harpoon missiles and enhanced synthetic aperture radar; with a full load, it would be able to take off from an 8,500-ft. runway, he said. The redesign also allowed for reduction of the aircraft crew to 10 from 13--two pilots, two tactical coordinators, two acoustic sensor operations, three electronic sensor operators and a communications specialist. The cockpit has seven flat plate displays to ensure the flight crew has full operational awareness of the tactical situation.
The first MRA4 is to be delivered to the RAF in August 2004, with the first unit of seven aircraft to be operational in 2005. Nimrod is designed so that three aircraft can deploy 3,000 mi. and carry enough support personnel and spares to conduct round-the-clock operations.