FC-1/ JF-17
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Back in January 2007, DID wrote:

“The military world has no shortage of irony. The defense industry has its moments too, as Pakistan just discovered. An aircraft whose development was driven by military sanctions from the US and Europe is now derailed by military sanctions. This leaves the Pakistani Air Force dependent on an alternative from… America. Meanwhile, the Chinese are left with no export launch customer for a plane they may now have to reluctantly buy themselves, instead of the favoured and more capable J-10. Somewhere in Delhi, champagne is pouring – but first, a bit of background.”

The arms market also features no shortage of change. The agreement India thought it had, was reversed by Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin. Now Pakistan has begun to take delivery of the new fighters, and is reportedly seeking additional agreements with Western firms for avionics and weapons upgrades. In addition, a joint marketing agency has been set up in conjunction with China…

• The JF-17 Thunder, aka. FC-1 Fierce Dragon
• Stuck in Sichuan: The Saga
• Updates and Key Events [updated]
  
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MEADS: air view
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The Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS program aims to replace Patriot missiles in the United States, the older Hawk system in Germany, and Italy’s even older Nike Hercules missiles. MEADS will be designed to kill enemy aircraft, cruise missiles and UAVs within its reach, while providing next-generation point defense capabilities against ballistic missiles. MBDA’s SAMP/T project would be its main competitor, but MEADS aims to offer improved mobility and wider compatibility with other air defense systems, in order to create an linchpin for its customers’ next-generation air defense arrays.

The German government finally gave their clearance in April 2005, and in June 2005 MEADS International (MI) formally signed a contract worth approximately $3.4 billion to design and develop the tri-national MEADS system. This DID FOCUS Article covers that program, which has just progressed to detailed design. The system will use a slightly different main missile than originally forecast, and a minor contract associated with that has been issued…

• MEADS: The System
• MEADS: Mobility and Employment
• MEADS: The Program
• Contracts & Key Events, 2004 – Present [updated]
• Additional Readings
  
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Tiger HAP & HAC
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A formal contract concerning an HAD version of Eurocopter’s Tiger scout/ attack helicopter was recently signed in Bonn, Germany between Eurocopter Tiger and OCCAR, a French/European organization for armament cooperation. This agreement supersedes the official launch ITP for the multi-role HAD (Helicoptere Appui Destruction) version of the Tiger, signed on December 8th, 2004 by France and Spain. It also set out initial procurement numbers for Spain. This was followed by the French DGA’s official announcement re: the restructuring of its own 80 helicopter order.

Eurocopter’s Tiger had always had a very odd setup in that it came in two seemingly incomplete versions (HAP and HAC/UHT), severely limiting its flexibility. The new Tiger HAD variant helps to rectify this, and has entered a new stage thanks to testing, and ancillary weapons orders from France and Spain…

• Tiger Species: HAP, HAC-UHT, ARH, and HAD [updated]
• Contracts & Related Events [updated]
• Additional Readings
  
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MBDA Meteor
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As part of its Defense Industrial Strategy, the UK looked at the missile sector in 2007 and concluded that a 50% reduction in “complex weapons” funding was expected over the next 5 years. In response, they set up a joint MOD-industry team, including MBDA (UK), Thales, BAES Underwater Systems Ltd and QinetiQ; and talked to lower tier suppliers such as Roxel, SELEX and Ultra. When the song and dance ended, Raytheon was left without a seat, as “Team Complex Weapons” (MBDA UK, Thales, Roxel, and QinetiQ) was set up to provide for the UK’s future needs. A GBP 500+ million contract for a Loitering Munition Demonstration and Manufacture program would follow, conditionally single-sourced to Team CW.

As a next step, Britain and France have launched a multi-million pound Innovation and Technology Partnership (ITP) focused on materials and components for missiles. The ITP will be jointly funded by the British and French governments and an industry and academic consortium led by arms company MBDA. Total funding is expected to be GBP 10.3 million (about $23.5 million): GBP 2.5 million from the UK MoD, GBP 2.65 million equivalent from the French DGA Armament Procurement Agency, plus matching contributions from industry over the ITP’s 3 year period. In the words of the UK MoD release:

“The ITP has been set up to fulfil joint research needs of UK and France for missile technology, identifying common capability and technology needs and examining emerging technologies for future equipment. The ITP aims to consolidate a future European guided weapon capability by building the technological base and allowing a better understanding of common future needs, and prepare for future cooperative programmes.”

It’s well understood, and long-practiced – but not usually well integrated. The transition from product design to production can often be the most expensive, time-intensive aspect of delivering products. The complexities and extreme specifications of military products make that doubly true, and the growing popularity of concepts like spiral development, and through-life management that includes redesign and upgrades, will tax corporate systems even further. Product life-cycle management (PLM) systems exist, and manufacturing execution systems (MES) exist, but integration is often the missing link. If the resulting back-end systems aren’t agile enough to keep up with accelerating customer demands, the result can be costly mistakes, or even development bottlenecks.

MBDA is a joint venture of EADS, BAE and Finmeccanica, and the European firm has become one of the globe’s top 2 missile suppliers, alongside Raytheon. The firm took advantage of capabilities in Apriso’s July 2007’s FlexNet 9.4 MES update to streamline processes by passing data to their Siemens Teamcenter PLM package. The effect was a system that lets them track manufactured product specifications against paper specifications in a way that’s accessible throughout the supply chain. The firm’s next step was to feed that history into MBDA’s SAP ERP uber-back end system, which adds data about materials used and orders placed before flowing the information back.

This kind of integration creates more than just quality control and tracking; it ends up letting MBDA use work instructions from tracked processes as templates for new ones, which helps them bring their best practices into new production processes. See Manufacturing Business Technology’s “Manufacturers can hit product innovation targets with PLM/MES integration.”

HMS Sutherland
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Brtiain’s Type 23 Duke Class frigates were originally envisioned as pure anti-submarine vessels, to the extent of being planned with no other armament. The 1982 Falklands War quickly put paid to that idea, however, and the Type 23s would end up being commissioned from 1989-2001 and fitted with a main gun, Sea Wolf short range anti-air missiles, and Harpoon anti-ship missiles to accompany her torpedoes, decoys, et. al. These changes turned the frigates from specialized sub-hunters into versatile multi-role combatants that play a key role in the British fleet. The Royal Navy is set to continue shrinking in size (see esp. diagram) due to rising ship costs, and even though key platforms like aircraft carriers and amphibious ships may be more capable, the mid-tier combat role filled by frigates is not slated for new construction any time soon. As such, upgrading the Navy’s 13 remaining Type 23s to keep them in service is vitally important to Britain’s future force.

As part of those upgrade efforts, the Type 23 frigates will receive: Sonar 2087 towed sonars, the Royal Navy’s latest and most sophisticated submarine hunting system (Thales UK, GBP 166 million for machines that go ‘ping!’); Upgraded vertical-launch Sea Wolf Block 2 air defence missiles to help counter supersonic anti-ship missiles (BAE Systems Insyte with MBDA, GBP 300 million); an improved 114mm Vickers Mk 8 Mod 1 main gun, capable of firing long-range ammunition; and a reshaped stern to cut fuel use. Upgrades are also being performed during maintenance periods, some of which are significant to the ship’s overall capabilities…

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LCpl Taylor RM,
Afghanistan
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It seems like a simple, and eminently sensible change. Instead of paying for hours of service and spare parts for military platforms, and trying to forecast usage, set required reliability levels. Then implement public-private partnerships and pay defense contractors a fixed rate per year, with incentives and penalties centered around required in-service rates. Sensible? Yes, and financially attractive because it turns large portions of the maintenance budget into pre-contracted, fixed costs. Simple? No.

Minor complications include the critical importance of in-service availability as something that extends beyond a mere contract term, and the need to avoid bankrupting one’s contractors after they have accepted most of your fleet’s maintenance risk. To which one must add factors such as highly variable per-year usage rates for equipment, the lack of adequate information to make accurate forecasts on either side of the table, the importance of creating the right incentives around long-term maintenance so this is not skimped, and the need to factor maintainability into future equipment contracts in a much more integrated fashion. Each one of those aspects, taken by itself, represents a major challenge. Together, they present formidable obstacles to success.

Tornado maintenance
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Faced with constrained budgets and rising maintenance costs, however, the British Ministry of Defence has spent the last several years creating exactly this kind of “future contracting for availability” through-life maintenance framework for platform after platform. The efforts of exceptional individuals like former Air Vice-Marshal Nigel Bairsto have made a tremendous difference, and so has the extensive organizational commitment of multiple MoD agencies and front-line commanders. Britain currently leads the world in this field, even as the rising curve of aging defense equipment throughout the Western world forces defense ministries and departments to confront the same issues. This Spotlight article provides an index of DID’s coverage in this area…

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Cheap boost
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It’s a threat that makes modern defense planners shiver. Small turbojets are not uncommon, even as basic GPS receiver technology has become cheap, and guidance systems sophisticated enough to fly unmanned aerial vehicles are being developed all over the world. If fuel efficiency, speed, range, and pinpoint accuracy aren’t driving concerns, they wonder, how hard and how cheap could it really be to slap together a cruise missile from nearly off-the-shelf parts, then fire it from a container ship offshore, flying 200 miles or more to its designated target area? And in an age of falling technology curves, what cargoes might such a weapon contain?

Radar: height matters.
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Just as anti-ballistic missile technology is developing itself for the coming age of the rogue state, America’s nets are slowly being drawn up against the cruise missile threat from those states… and one day, of less-than-states. Persistent surveillance is reaching beyond the limitations of aircraft, and into constant surveillance using lighter-then-air platforms like JLENS tethered aerostats, HAA airships with huge flexible IRIS radars, and even Navy blimps. Fighters are being fitted with AESA radars as their cost of manufacture drops and new generations are bought, and interlocking land and naval defenses that include SM-2/3 missiles, mobile SLAMRAAM and MEADS missile launchers, and longer-range systems like THAAD that can be used against air-breathing threats in a pinch. All this is being networked into a single net via developments like Cooperative Engagement Capability, and more. In time, logic will also demand investments like very long-range supersonic ramjet air-air missiles to extend the intercept circle of patrolling aerial platforms, or threaten key enemy assets like AWACS and tankers behind the front lines. All this and more lies ahead, born of necessity in America – and beyond.

The scope of this threat makes for a daunting scenario when one considers the long coastlines of nations like the USA/Canada, India, Australia, Britain, et. al. Beyond the threat, however, some American military planners looked into this crystal ball and saw something more – an opportunity…

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Rapier launch
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The previous GBP 36 million TRADERS contract with MBDA was signed in March 2004. In August 2005, however, the MoD’s Land Guided Weapons Integrated Project Team (IPT) launched the Air Defence Availability Project (ADAPT) to provide support to Rapier systems in service on an availability basis, rather than paying for parts and labor. This has been a persistent feature of British defense sustainment contracts, one that larger countries like the USA have been slow to recognize and adopt.

The new ADAPT agreement will sustain Rapier FSC until the system’s eventual out-of-service date in 2020, and the UK MoD estimates savings of GBP 175 million (about $355 million) in whole-life costs over that period – but does not divulge the contract’s total value. Approaches adopted to make this example of “future contracting for availability” mutually beneficial to the MOD and MBDA include contract incentives; a joint management team; contractor and Interated Product Team support co-located at a centre of excellence; fleet management; a ‘one stop shop’ for support to training aids; the use of sponsored reserves; and a first-to-fourth line maintenance policy on operations. MoD release.

Rapier FSC provides Low Level Air Defence over the battlefield for UK forces enemy aircraft and cruise missiles….

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Tiger HAP & armament
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As “France & Spain Order New Eurocopter Tiger HAD (updated)” noted, the Eurocopter Tiger is something of an odd duck whose two initial versions (French HAP, German HAC-UHT) each seemed to each be missing a vital piece that was present on the other version. Export orders to Spain (Tiger HAD) and Australia (Tiger ARH) both move to correct some of those deficiencies, and Spain has a few Tiger HAP helicopters from initial deliveries that will be converted to the HAD variant.

Spain’s helicopters will have air-air missile capability, and the short-range MBDA Mistral missile is the helicopter’s default anti-air armament. Spanish Army, airborne, and Marines units already deploy Mistral missiles in a man-portable air defense (MANPAD) role, so it makes a great deal of sense to add a proposed EUR 27.7 million order, spread over 5 years (2007-2011), in order to equip Spain’s Tiger Helicoptero de Apoyo y Destruccion craft with Mistral ATAM missiles and launchers. Another contract will complement the Mistrals with Israeli Spike-LR anti-armor missiles, which also have some anti-helicopter capability. Spanish Council of Ministers release – translation help via reader Pedro Lucio.

UPDATE: A EUR 27.7 million contract was announced on Feb 6/08.