The UK Ministry of Defence has awarded BAE Systems and missile-maker MBDA contracts totalling more than £300 million ($595m) to support the Royal Navy’s Sea Wolf short-range air defence missile over the coming decade, it was announced at the show yesterday.
Sea Wolf is mounted on the RN’s Type 22 and 23 frigates. The new ‘contracts for availability’ – known as Sea Wolf In Service Support, or SWISS – will run until 2017.
MBDA’s contract, for £177 million, will cover support for the actual missile, while BAE Systems will receive £141 million to maintain the tracker and command and control systems. Steve Wadey, managing director of MBDA UK, said SWISS incentivised the companies to drive down the cost of supporting the missile.
Sea Wolf entered RN service in 1979 and is the service’s standard point defence weapon. It has an anti-missile capability as well as being employed in the air defence role. It is fired both from conventional launchers and from vertical-launch silos.
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Wadey, together with MBDA CEO Antoine Bouvier, also spoke yesterday of the importance of agreements signed earlier this week with the UK MoD marking milestones in the nation’s Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) and Team Complex Weapons programmes.
Together with a French government white paper published a few days ago, it promised a change in relationships between the companies and their respective defence ministries.
The new arrangements draw both sides into a partnership, sharing common, long-term objectives, says Bouvier. “In industry, it means we have long-term visibility on the requirements of our customers.”
Source: Flight International