A contract that will revolutionise support arrangements for the UK Royal Air Force's Tornado force is currently being drafted by the joint UK Defence Logistics Organisation/BAE Systems Tornado integrated project team. This follows an announcement by Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram on May 25.
Ingram told the UK Parliament: "It is the government's intention to reduce the complexity of the Tornado support arrangements by placing incrementally, where it offers best value-for-money, contracts with BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce Defence Aerospace, leading to the eventual placement of a single-support contract with each company to provide improved platform and engine availability. This approach has the potential to improve significantly the availability and capability of our front-line aircraft."
The Availability Transformation: Tornado Aircraft Contract (ATTAC) is an incentivised whole-aircraft availability proposal which will result in BAE Systems Customer Solutions & Support (CS&S) providing aircraft, spares, upgrades, technical support and training to the RAF.
ATTAC is intended to improve aircraft availability while cutting costs by using cheaper civilian manpower instead of expensive servicemen. This approach has already resulted in cost savings and improved availability for the Nimrod force, and in five pilot programmes involving the Tornado. These pilot contracts cover combined maintenance and upgrade, and long-term arrangements supporting avionics, structures, radar and the secondary power system.
BAE Systems claims that the combined maintenance and upgrade at RAF Marham has cut overall aircraft downtime by a third, and has already delivered savings of over 5 million ($9m). The "historically troublesome AI24 radar" fitted to the Tornado F3 fighter variant is now achieving systems availability of 99%.
The company also claims that the secondary power systems support contract will cost 35% less than previous arrangements and will save 27m through the innovative management of the supply and repair of assets. Over the range of contracts, the target for 85% of "line replaceable units" to be exchanged within an hour is now consistently exceeded.
There is no doubt that these arrangement do result in significant cost savings (between 20% and 40% when compared to traditional support arrangements) and increased aircraft availability, but critics maintain that flexibility and war-fighting capability are adversely affected. The loss of service jobs has reduced manpower available for deployments and operations, increasing the phenomenon of overstretch and reducing the RAF's ability to generate surge capability.
For industry, moving into support offers the opportunity to fill the gaps between the end of one production programme and the start of another. Such gaps are relatively new, since historically BAE Systems was able to count on major programmes dovetailing together. BAE hopes that ATTAC will provide a generic support model to reduce risk, cut costs and boost availability for whole-life support of other aircraft, ships and vehicles.
Source: Flight Daily News
