Aerial Common Sensor: Once More, With Feeling

ERJ-145 ACS: no(click to view full) In January 2006, “$8B ACS Spy Plane Program Shot Down By Pentagon” described the demise of the joint Army/Navy Aerial Common Sensor program. ACS intended to replace the King Air derived RC-12N Guardrail, Dash-7 derived RC-7B “Crazy Hawk”/ARL, and P-3 Orion derived EP-3E Aries aircraft, with a new multi-role reconnaissance platform based on a small regional jet airframe. The original Embraer ERJ-145 platform proposed by Lockheed Martin proved too small, and even an attempted move to the same Bombardier Global Express jet used in the UK’s new ASTOR Sentinel R1 reconnaissance platform did not avail them. The US Army expressed no confidence, and put the project back to square one as it revised both its specs and its approach. The Navy, meanwhile, split from ACS and went its own way, initiating the EPX program to replace its EP-3s. Boeing has proposed a reconnaissance and electronic intelligence version of the same 737 aircraft that the Navy plans to use for its P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, and other entrants to the proposed manned aircraft program are likely. Now the Army has also rethought its approach, and begun the process of revisiting the ACS project. A […]