Sentinel to miss revised in-service date, as first airframe arrives in UK for trials
The UK is facing a fresh and significant delay to the introduction of its Airborne Standoff Radar (ASTOR) surveillance system, with a late 2006 operational assessment of the modified Bombardier Global Express business jet having been pushed back to later this year.
The UK Defence Procurement Agency (DPA) last year agreed a revised delivery schedule for ASTOR, under which prime contractor Raytheon Systems (RSL) of the UK will deliver three of its five Sentinel R1 airframes to Royal Air Force Waddington in Lincolnshire by 31 March.
The remainder will follow by year-end, completing a system that will also comprise eight vehicle-mounted and container-housed ground stations capable of interpreting synthetic aperture radar and ground moving-target indication imagery relayed from the aircraft.
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Vital operational testing of the ASTOR system has been pushed back |
A previous target of November 2006 has already been missed for the ASTOR system to achieve its in-service date (ISD), and the revised goal of late next month is now also likely to slip by several months.
"We are keeping the ISD under constant review in the light of progress on the programme," says the DPA. Describing the March milestone as "a challenging schedule", it adds: "We continue to work closely with RSL towards this target, while maintaining flexibility within the programme to achieve the best overall results."
The DPA also confirms that an operational assessment of the ASTOR system planned for late 2006 has "been resequenced within the programme, and is now expected to take place later this year". The first Sentinel airframe, ZJ690, arrived at RAF Waddington on 24 January to "conduct trials in conjunction with ground stations as part of the ASTOR demonstration phase", it adds.
The platform arrived after a flight from Raytheon's Greenville site in Texas - where aircraft two and three are supporting ongoing development activities - via RSL's Broughton plant in north Wales, where the UK's last two airframes are now undergoing modification.
Full operating capability of the ASTOR system will be declared two years after the ISD milestone, under DPA plans.
At project launch in mid-1999 the ASTOR system was expected to enter service in September 2005, but a delayed start to flight testing and the accidental destruction of the programme's first dual-mode radar by Raytheon in the USA caused initial delays.
The core ASTOR project is worth around £950 million ($1.8 billion), with RSL also to provide logistics support for the first decade of use for a further £140 million.
Source: Flight International